The Hungering King #2
“The Jade Serpent Temple holds the proof you need,” he says.
He fades.
No dramatic exit, no swirl of shadows, no villainous last words. Between one blink and the next, the space where he stood is simply empty. Moonlight falls on bare stone like nothing was ever there, like the last ten minutes were some fever dream my exhausted brain invented.
Except the watchers in the treeline didn’t see him.
I’m certain of that. Whatever surveillance Xiang has in place, however carefully they’ve been mapping our movements—the Hungering King walked right through it like it wasn’t there.
Arrived, delivered his message, and disappeared without leaving a ripple.
That’s a message too. A demonstration. A reminder of what he could do whenever he wanted, and the only reason I’m still breathing is because it suits his purposes.
Dumpling appears in the doorway, and I don’t know when he moved or how long he’s been watching. His fur is standing on end, his eyes fixed on the empty courtyard, a low growl vibrating through his small body.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Same.”
I go back inside, and the shrine feels colder than it did before. Or maybe that’s just the aftermath of standing three feet from something that stopped being human before my great-grandmother was born.
My hands are steady. That’s training. Everything else is shaking in ways I don’t want to look at too closely.
Ren is still sleeping, still reaching for where I was lying. The moonlight catches his face through the broken roof, and he looks younger in sleep—softer, the weight of the throne lifted for a few hours. His hand is outstretched on the pallet, fingers curled around empty space.
Eight hundred years of crisis management says handle it alone. Tell him when it’s over. Don’t burden the people you care about with things they can’t fix.
I’ve run that playbook with everyone I’ve ever let close. Easier to carry the weight yourself. Easier to be the strong one, the capable one, the one who handles things while everyone else sleeps safely.
Easier to leave before they can.
But Ren has never asked me to protect him. From the very beginning—that first impossible night when I tried to poison him and he looked at me like I was a puzzle instead of a threat—he’s met me as an equal. Not someone to shield. Someone to stand beside.
Maybe that’s why I don’t leave.
I touch his shoulder.
“Ren.”
He’s awake instantly, eyes clear and focused, no slow drift up from sleep. Twenty-two years on a throne surrounded by people who’d kill him if they could—threats in the night aren’t new.
“What happened?”
“Everything.” I sit down on the edge of the pallet because my legs have apparently decided they’re done holding me up. “I need to tell you something.”
I tell him.
Ren listens without interrupting. His face shifts through things I’ve learned to read over the past months—alarm when I describe the apparition, calculation when I relay the intelligence about Xiang, something darker and colder when I mention the baby.
But he waits. Lets me find my own words at my own pace.
It’s a courtesy I’m not used to receiving. Most people want to ask questions, offer solutions, prove they’re paying attention. He just listens. Like my words matter.
When I finish, the silence stretches between us.
“You believe him?”
I should say no. Should say I don’t trust anything that creature tells me. Should point out that every piece of information he offered could be manipulation, misdirection, some trap I can’t see the shape of.
Instead I say, “I don’t want to.”
“But you do.”
“Yeah.” The word comes out tired. “Yeah, I do.”
“The Hungering King gave you accurate intelligence about a political conspiracy, for free, without attempting to murder anyone?” Tianlong’s voice cuts through, dry as old paper. “This is deeply concerning. I preferred when he was simply trying to end the world. Helpful is much more alarming.”
I laugh before I can stop myself.
“We need to go back,” Ren says. “To the capital.”
“We need proof first. If we accuse someone of framing Shen without evidence to back it up—”
“Political disaster. Shen’s supporters rally, the real traitor goes to ground, and we’ve accomplished nothing except making enemies.”
“The temple is three days’ ride. Maybe less if we push.”
He nods. Doesn’t question my assessment, doesn’t try to take over or explain why his plan would be better. Just accepts that I’ve been doing threat analysis for eight centuries and might know something about it.
I’m still not used to that. I should probably stop being surprised by it.
“The question,” Tianlong observes, “is whether you can reach the temple before Xiang’s killers reach you.”
“We have the agents. Tairui and Ailun.” Ren says.
“Ah, yes. Hopefully the watchers are all female and we can send the attractive one to negotiate on our behalf. They may even provide us with an armed escort to the temple.”
I snort. “They’re being watched too. The agents, the shrine, probably the road out.” I rub my face with both hands. “Everyone’s being watched.”
“Then we use it.” Ren’s voice goes flat and practical—the emperor voice, the one that makes decisions about people’s lives like moving pieces on a board. “His interest in keeping you alive. If his goals align with ours, even temporarily—”
“We’re not making deals with that thing.”
“Not deals. Geography.” His eyes meet mine, steady and clear. “An enemy of Xiang is currently motivated to protect us from Xiang. That’s not alliance. That’s just the landscape we’re operating in.”
I hate that he’s right. I hate more that eight centuries of survival have taught me the same lesson—use what’s available, question motives later, stay alive long enough to have the luxury of ethics.
The silence stretches again. Not uncomfortable this time. The kind of quiet that happens when two people are thinking the same thoughts.
I reach for his hand.
He’s already reaching for mine.
Our fingers meet in the dark, and his grip is warm and steady and exactly as solid as I needed it to be.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. Not a promise—he’s too careful to make promises he can’t guarantee. An intention.
“You don’t know that.”
“No. But I’m going to act like I do.”
Something cracks behind my ribs. Something soft that I’ve been keeping small and quiet and protected, buried so deep I’d almost forgotten it was there.
I let it crack.
Probably a mistake. Don’t care.
“You are both disasters,” Tianlong observes. “But you are disasters who hold hands. There is something to be said for that.”
We don’t go back to sleep.
Dawn is maybe two hours away. The watchers are still in the treeline. They don’t know what visited us tonight. Don’t know their carefully constructed surveillance got walked through by something older and worse than anything Xiang could field.
I’d feel smug about that if I weren’t so tired.
“Temple first,” Ren says quietly, working through the logistics. “Find the evidence. Then back to the capital.”
“Then back.”
He looks at me in the gray pre-dawn light, and something shifts in his face—emperor to man, strategy to something more personal. “The Hungering King. Whatever he’s planning, this was just the first move.”
“I know.”
“We’ll need more than luck.”
“Always do.”
The baby kicks, gentler this time. Settling in for whatever comes next.
I press my hand to my stomach and feel her warmth through my skin. The impossible reality of her—this child I never expected to have, growing inside a body that’s died six hundred and forty-five times, fathered by an emperor I was hired to kill.
If someone had told me a year ago that this would be my life, I would have laughed in their face. Then probably stabbed them for wasting my time.
Now I’m sitting in a ruined shrine, holding hands with a man who talks to dragons, carrying a child that some ancient horror considers his personal property, trying to outmaneuver a foreign spy network that wants me dead.
Chapter 645 and counting.
Dumpling sits in the doorway, facing the dark. His growl has dropped to something low and steady—not alarm anymore, just warning. Something out there, and he’s letting it know he sees it.
Good cat.
Ren’s hand is still in mine. Neither of us lets go.
Outside, the night holds its breath. The watchers wait. Somewhere in the dark, something ancient is tending a garden it fully intends to salt.
Dumpling’s growl continues—low, steady, certain.