9. Seating Arrangements #3
I should make a joke. I should say something about the emperor’s father having poor fine motor skills. I should deflect, the way I always deflect, the way I’ve deflected for eight hundred years whenever anyone wanted something real from me.
“Okay.”
He blinks. “Okay?”
“The cord. We keep the cord.” I look away. At the chart. At Dumpling. At anything that isn’t his face right now. “But I’m not wearing twelve-layer formal robes. I can’t fight in layers.”
“You’re planning to fight at our wedding?”
“I’m planning for the possibility of fighting at our wedding. There’s a difference.”
“…I’ll speak to the tailors about mobility accommodations.”
“And hidden blade sheaths.”
“And hidden blade sheaths.” He says it like it’s normal. Like planning for armed combat during one’s wedding ceremony is simply another detail to manage.
Maybe it is. For us.
For us.
I think about that. The shape of it. The way it settles into something that feels less like a phrase and more like a fact.
Tianlong shifts on his shelf. I catch Ren’s expression flickering—the dragon is saying something through the bond. Something that makes Ren’s composure crack, just slightly.
“What?”
“He says we’re both terrible at this.” Ren’s voice is dry. “He also says the binding cord ceremony was the only moment in my father’s wedding where he stopped performing and simply felt.”
“That’s—”
“He also says he’s not being sentimental and I should not tell you he said that.”
“Tell him I didn’t hear anything.”
“I can hear you,” Tianlong says from the shelf. “You are both insufferable.”
“And yet you stay.”
“I stay because the alternative is the garden, and the garden has birds.” He says birds the way most people say plague. “Small. Loud. Disrespectful.”
Tianlong rearranges his coils with wounded dignity. Below, Dumpling’s tail swishes with predatory patience.
“The creature is looking at me once again.”
“They’re going to do this all day, aren’t they,” I say.
“Probably.”
“Should we intervene?”
“Absolutely not.” Ren turns back to the chart. “He needs enemies he can’t incinerate. It’s good for his character.”
“I can hear you,” Tianlong says. “And I could incinerate the creature. I am choosing restraint.”
“Very noble of you.”
“It is. Remember this when he inevitably catches me.“
We work through the rest of the placements. Faster now. He knows the court; I know power. Somewhere in the rhythm of give and take, the tension smooths into something else.
“You’re better at this than you pretend,” he says.
“I’m not pretending. I hate this. I’m just good at things I hate.”
“That…” He stops. Looks at me with something I can’t quite read. “That strangely does not surprise me.”
I don’t know what to do with that. So I look back at the chart.
But I’m smiling. Small. Hidden.
I hope he doesn’t notice.
(He notices. Of course he notices. He notices everything.)
Evening. Finally.
The seating chart is done. The ceremonies are chosen—one binding cord, minimal chanting, maximum efficiency. The robes will accommodate hidden blades. Mei has her response teams, Wei has his measured alcoves, Jing has her historical precedents.
Dumpling is asleep on the Xiang delegation section. Tianlong has reclaimed the windowsill, coiled in the last of the fading light.
I reach for the charts—habit, restlessness, the need to do something with my hands.
Ren’s hand covers mine.
“We’re done.”
“There’s still—”
“Done.” His thumb traces across my knuckles once. Slow. Deliberate.
I should pull away. We’ve been negotiating. Collaborating. Doing something that felt like fighting but wasn’t all day.
I don’t pull away.
“You’re very commanding today.”
“I’m the emperor.”
“That’s really not the selling point you think it is.”
But I’m not moving my hand. And he’s not moving his. And Dumpling is snoring, and Tianlong is pretending not to watch us, and the candles are burning low, and this is—
This is domestic. This is the kind of evening people have when they’re about to marry each other — negotiating seating charts and ceremony details and where to put the relatives who might start fires.
I’ve never had this.
“Two weeks,” I say. My voice sounds strange. Too soft. “Two weeks until the wedding.”
“Two weeks until you’re stuck with me.”
“I’m already stuck with you. The wedding just makes it official.”
“Legal,” he corrects. “It makes it legal.”
“Same thing.”
“Not quite.” His thumb traces my knuckles again. “Legal means I can put your name on everything. Legal means the court can’t pretend you don’t exist. Legal means—”
“Legal means paperwork.”
“Legal means you’re mine.” He says it simply. Without emphasis. Like a fact. “And I’m yours. In writing. Witnessed by four hundred people who will spend the rest of their lives unable to pretend otherwise.”
Four hundred people. Four hundred potential threats, four hundred political calculations, four hundred witnesses to my wedding.
But also four hundred witnesses who will see me choose this. Choose him. Choose something that isn’t survival, isn’t necessity, isn’t the next step in an endless chain of temporary lives.
“Two weeks,” I say again.
“Two weeks.”
That should terrify me. It does.
But not in the way it used to.
And not enough for me to pull away.