13. Till Death Do Us Part #2
He doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t need to.
They usher him out—Wei and the servants and the weight of centuries of tradition—and I’m left standing in silk worth more than villages with his mother’s comb in my hair and the absolute certainty that this is real.
I touch the jade. Press my palm against it until the coolness becomes warmth.
Then I straighten my shoulders, check that Dumpling hasn’t knocked anything else onto the floor, and walk toward the rest of my life.
The Temple of Thousand Ancestors smells like incense and history.
The altar stone is worn smooth by the knees of dynasties. The air is thick with smoke from braziers older than some nations.
The walk to the altar takes forever.
I should be counting exits. Noting guard positions. Cataloguing threats the way I’ve done for eight centuries, because survival is a habit I can’t break.
Instead, I’m watching Ren.
He’s standing at the altar, Tianlong coiled on his collar in smallest form, ancient eyes fixed on me with an expression I can’t read.
The temple is full—courtiers and nobles and diplomats and everyone who matters in this empire, arranged by faction in a seating chart that’s probably already been used to plan three future coups—but Ren isn’t looking at any of them.
He’s looking at me.
My feet know the distance. Three hundred steps, give or take. I counted on the way in, because counting is what I do, because numbers are safer than feelings.
The silk whispers against the ancient stone floor. The guests are a blur of colour and whispered speculation—I can feel their eyes, their assessments, their calculations about what this marriage means for the empire. For their ambitions. For the power structures they’ve spent lifetimes building.
I don’t care about any of that.
Eight hundred years of avoiding this. Loving and leaving. Learning that forever is just a word people say before they die.
And now I’m walking toward someone who wants me to stay.
I reach the altar. His hand finds mine. The touch is grounding in a way that terrifies me—a point of contact I don’t want to lose, a warmth I’m not sure I deserve.
“You came,” he says, quiet enough that only I can hear.
“You thought I wouldn’t?”
“I thought you might run.”
“I considered it. The exits are poorly guarded.”
His mouth curves. “I know. I had them understaffed deliberately. Wanted to give you options.”
Something breaks in my chest. Reforms. Breaks again.
Tianlong doesn’t speak. His eyes are suspiciously bright, furnaces holding emotions he’ll never admit to, but he’s still, and small, and for once not offering commentary. I don’t know what Ren told him before the ceremony. I don’t know what passed between them through the bond.
I know the dragon is watching me like I matter. Like I’ve earned something.
The ceremony begins.
We bow to heaven—deep, formal, the kind of bow that makes my balance uncertain with the bump shifting my centre of gravity.
We bow to the ancestors, rows of tablets stretching back into the temple’s shadows, names I don’t know and histories I wasn’t part of.
We bow to each other, and that one’s easier, because it’s just him, just Ren, just the man who asked me to stay.
The shared cup passes between us—jade worn smooth by centuries of hands, so old the edges have gone soft—and when I drink, the wine tastes like something ancient. Something binding. Sweet and bitter in equal measure, like everything worth having.
The red cord loops around our wrists. One of the ministers is speaking, words I should be listening to, something about unity and empire and the blessing of heaven, but I can’t focus on anything except Ren’s hand in mine and the weight of the comb in my hair and the particular reality of what I’m about to do.
The traditional vows are completed. Centuries of ritual, compressed into minutes. They’re not the part that matters.
Ren’s hand tightens on mine.
“I was told to prepare personal vows,” he says, and his voice is steady until it isn’t. “I wrote…a lot of drafts. Tianlong mocked all of them.”
A breath of laughter moves through the temple. The dragon on his collar looks pointedly at the ceiling.
“None of them were right.” Ren’s eyes are on mine. “Because I kept trying to say something clever. Something worthy of an emperor. And then I realised—I don’t need to be clever. I just need to be honest.”
The temple goes quiet.
“I don’t need forever.” His voice drops, and the words are just for me, but they carry anyway.
“I don’t need promises you can’t keep. I just need—” He swallows.
“I need you. For whatever time we have. However long that is. I need you to stay not because you have to, but because you choose to. I need—”
His voice breaks.
“I need you to know that you’re worth staying for. Even when you don’t believe it. Especially when you don’t believe it.”
He’s dragon-bonded. As long as Tianlong lives, he lives. In theory, that means forever. In theory, I’ve finally found someone I won’t have to bury.
I’ve learned not to trust theories. Eight hundred years of maybes turning to dust will do that. Dragons can die. Bonds can break. Forever is just a word people use until the universe proves them wrong.
But he’s here. Choosing me anyway. Choosing the woman who tried to kill him, who carries eight centuries of running in her bones, who still counts exits in every room.
So I’m going to choose him back. Not because I’m certain. Because I’m done letting uncertainty choose for me.
And now it’s my turn.
I didn’t write anything. Didn’t prepare speeches or craft careful words. But standing here, bump visible under silk, comb in my hair, his hand in mine—
I know exactly what I want to say.
“I’ve spent eight centuries learning not to hold on.” My voice doesn’t waver. “Learning that love is just another word for loss. Learning to leave before anyone can leave me first.”
The temple is silent. Even Tianlong is still.
“And then you asked me to stay.”
A breath. His eyes on mine.
“Not commanded. Not demanded. Asked. Like it was my choice. Like you’d let me go if I needed to.”
I grip his hand tighter.
“I’ve watched you, Ren. The emperor who remembers a scholar’s qualifying exams. Who walked into a burning barn because people’s lives mean something to you.
You carry an empire like it’s a debt you owe, not a throne you won.
You’re kind when no one’s watching. You’re gentle with things that could never repay you. ”
My voice softens. I let it.
“You may not be able to cook rice, or haggle, or propose on the first time,” I see the corner of his mouth twitch upward. “But you are the first person in eight hundred years who made me think forever might be worth the risk.”
His thumb traces a circle on my palm. Small. Deliberate. Ren.
“I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never let someone put a comb in my hair and meant it. Never said yes and wanted it to be true.”
His fingers interlock with mine.
“But I’m saying it now. Yes. Forever. Whatever that means for people like us.”
The cord tightens.
The minister says something. Words about bonds and blessings and the joining of two into one. I don’t hear it.
I’m too busy watching Ren’s face, watching the way his eyes go bright, watching the particular miracle of someone loving me back.
Tianlong makes a sound. Suspiciously like a sniffle.
Ren glances at his shoulder. “Are you crying?”
“Dragons do not cry.” The dragon’s voice is haughty, affronted, everything it’s supposed to be. But his eyes are definitely wet. “I am experiencing a temporary condition. Dust, perhaps.”
“Dust?”
Tianlong’s tail lashes once. “Shut up.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. The sound echoes through the temple, and I should care about decorum, about tradition, about the hundreds of eyes watching us—
I find that I don’t care.
We’re married.
We’re married, and Tianlong is definitely crying, and Ren is looking at me like I’ve given him something he never dared want, and the cord on our wrists is the only binding I’ve ever wanted to keep.
The ceremony ends. The reception begins.
For thirty minutes, I do the thing I’ve never done.
I stand in a room full of strangers and pretend to belong.
Diplomats whose names I won’t remember clasp my hand and offer congratulations I don’t know how to receive. A minor lord says something about hoping for many children. I don’t kill him. Growth.
Ren finds me across the room. Every time our eyes meet, something in my chest releases.
His hand on my back when he passes. The cord still looped on my wrist. The comb heavy in my hair.
This is what people do. They get married and then they stand in rooms full of strangers and pretend to enjoy it.
I’ve never done this.
I’m doing it now.
Food I don’t taste. Wine I don’t drink. Smiles that don’t reach my eyes, because I’m too busy watching the exits, the guards, counting the seconds until—
Until what?
Until I can stop performing. Until I can breathe. Until it’s just us, and whatever comes next.
I start to believe it might last.
We get thirty minutes.
The blade sings through the air three inches from my face.
I move without thinking—pivot, drop, roll—and the silk screams at me, tearing along seams that were never designed for combat, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m calculating the cost of this dress while my body does what it’s done for eight centuries.
Survive.
“FIFTEEN,” I spit, catching someone’s wrist and breaking it in one motion. “Fifteen attackers in a TEMPLE on my WEDDING DAY—”
Steel. Screaming. The incense smell drowned by copper.
Thirty minutes. We had thirty minutes of peace.
I kill the man in front of me—steel through the gap in his armour—and spin, searching for Ren through the chaos.
A blade comes for my spine instead.
Wei’s there before I can turn. His body between me and the strike, deflecting the blade with his own—but not cleanly. The edge catches his arm, slicing through fabric, and I see blood bloom through the silk.
He grunts—just that, just a sound—and keeps fighting. Doesn’t look at the wound. Doesn’t slow down.