Daughter of the Dawn
Emperor Ren
The temple rises from the mountainside like something the forest has tried to swallow and failed.
Vines strangle the columns. Roots have cracked the steps, splitting stone that was old when my dynasty was young. Morning mist curls through the broken gate, carrying the smell of moss and decay and something else—something that hums at the edge of perception, vibrating in the bones.
We slept last night on bedrolls laid over stone, with nothing between us and the sky but canvas that had seen better centuries.
No cushions. No silk. No servants appearing at precisely the third hour with tea at exactly the correct temperature.
Lián had laughed when I mentioned it—a real laugh, not her armor laugh—and produced a dented pot and a handful of leaves from her pack.
“It will taste like campfire and regret,” she warned me.
“An improvement over the fermented tofu.”
“That was character building.”
“That was assault.”
She made the tea anyway. It did taste like campfire and regret and something else I could not name. Freedom, perhaps. Or the absence of expectation. I drank it all and did not complain.
I have not thought about morning tea in weeks.
The absence of servants, of silk, of the precise third-hour ritual—these things have faded into the strange new geography of this journey.
What has not faded is her. She walks ahead of me now, one hand resting on the knife at her hip, head tilted in that particular way I have learned to recognize.
Listening. Hunting. Sensing something I cannot hear.
“The old magic is awake here,” she says without turning. “Can you feel it?”
I can. Through Tianlong, the sensation translates into a warmth at the base of my skull—not unpleasant, but alert. Watchful. The stones beneath my boots pulse with a rhythm like a sleeping heartbeat.
Something bad happened here. Tianlong’s voice in my mind, and for once there is no amusement in it. No dry observation.
“I know.” I say it aloud so Lián can hear. “Tianlong feels it too.”
She glances back at me. The morning light catches in her eyes, and I watch her assess the ruins with the practiced efficiency of someone who has survived six hundred and forty-four deaths. Three exits. Two blocked by rubble. One through the main gate behind us.
“Stay close,” she says.
“I was not planning to wander.”
“You were planning to be noble and protective. I can see it in your shoulders.”
I was, in fact, planning exactly that. I make a conscious effort to relax my posture.
“Better,” she says, and something in her expression softens. “Come on. What we’re looking for should be in the inner sanctum.”
We find the records buried beneath a collapsed altar.
The hiding place is clever—a false floor, activated by pressing three specific tiles in sequence. Lián discovers it by accident, her boot landing on the pattern while she searches a dusty shelf. The floor shudders. Stone grinds against stone.
“That’s either very good or very bad,” she observes.
It turns out, that it is very good. A compartment opens, revealing scrolls and bound manuscripts wrapped in oilcloth, preserved against centuries of moisture. She drops to her knees and begins unwrapping them; I kneel beside her, close enough that our shoulders nearly touch.
“You take the administrative records,” she says, not looking up. “Dates, names, financial transactions. You think like a bureaucrat.”
“I am not certain that was a compliment.”
“It wasn’t an insult.” She hands me a stack of scrolls. “You see patterns in systems. I see patterns in people. We’ll cover more ground.”
The work is methodical. She translates the older scripts—her eight centuries have given her fluency in dialects that died before my grandfather’s grandfather was born.
The way her brow furrows over a particularly archaic character, the small sound of satisfaction when she cracks a cipher—I find myself watching her more than the documents in my hands.
You are doing it again, Tianlong observes.
I am mapping patterns.
You are watching her mouth move while she reads.
That is not—
I am literally inside your head, little flame. I know what you are watching.
I return my attention to the scrolls with more force than necessary.
“The cult is older than I thought,” I say after an hour. “Older than the empire.”
“Older than me.” She holds up a scroll, her brow furrowed. “This text predates my first death by three centuries.”
The records tell a story. A brotherhood formed around a philosopher-king who sought to conquer death itself.
Rituals. Sacrifices. A bloodline marked for something I do not yet understand.
Names and dates spiral backward through time, and somewhere in the maze of ink and crumbling paper, a pattern begins to emerge.
Lián goes still.
I look at what she is reading. A name. Written in characters so old the strokes seem almost pictographic.
Mei-Ling of the House of Ascending Dawn.
“That’s—” She stops. Swallows. “That’s my mother’s house. My grandmother’s grandmother’s lineage.”
I take the scroll from her hands, careful not to tear the brittle paper. The text describes a woman from Lián’s bloodline. A woman who loved a man who became a monster. A woman whose face—the scroll includes a rendering, stylized but clear—looks enough like Lián that my chest tightens.
“This is about me.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “It’s always been about me.”
“About your bloodline.” I hear myself say the words, steady when I do not feel steady. “Not you.”
“What’s the difference?”
She is shaking. I watch the tremor move through her shoulders, see her jaw clench against it. Eight centuries of practice at hiding vulnerability, and she cannot hide this. Something in me cracks open at the sight.
I reach for her.
My hand hovers in the space between us. I do not know if she wants to be touched. I do not know if touching her now will feel like comfort or like taking advantage of her vulnerability. The old rules of the palace—the careful distance, the measured gestures—these things have no map for this moment.
I reach again.
She lets me pull her close.
Her body is rigid against mine, her breath coming in short, controlled bursts. I do not say anything. I do not offer reassurances I cannot guarantee. I simply hold her, my chin resting on the top of her head, my arms wrapped around the tension in her spine.
Slowly, so slowly, she softens.
“This is not very imperial,” she mutters into my chest.
“I am not being imperial right now.”
“I noticed.” A pause. Her fingers curl into the fabric of my merchant’s robe. “Don’t stop. Not yet. Right now I want Ren. Not the emperor.”
The guardian finds us.
He emerges from the shadows of the inner sanctum as if he has been waiting there for years. Perhaps he has. An old monk, spine curved with age, robes the color of dust. His eyes are milky white, unseeing—and yet they track to Lián’s position with unsettling accuracy.
“Daughter of the Dawn.” His voice creaks like ancient hinges. “I knew you would come. Eventually. All the daughters come.”
Lián has pulled away from me, but not far. Her hand remains on my arm, a point of contact neither of us acknowledges.
“What do you know about my bloodline?” she asks.
The monk’s blind eyes move to me. Study me without seeing. “And the Dragon’s chosen. Interesting. The pattern shifts.”
“What pattern?” I keep my voice level. “Who are you?”
“I am the keeper of what remains.” He settles onto a fallen pillar, moving with the deliberate care of someone who has made peace with the limitations of his body. “I was here when the Hungering King was still a man. I was here when he made his bargain. I have stayed to watch what unfolds.”
Lián’s grip on my arm tightens. “The Hungering King.”
“You know the name.”
“I know the cult uses it. I did not know it was a man.”
The monk’s laugh is dry as paper. “All monsters were men, once. Shen Wei was a king, ruler of an empire that predates yours by four centuries.” His blind gaze turns to me. “He would have liked you, I think. You have the same weight about you. The same burdens.”
I do not respond. Beside me, Lián has gone very still.
“Shen Wei loved a woman.” The monk’s voice takes on a cadence like prayer, like scripture. “Mei-Ling, of the celestial bloodline. She was immortal, as your companion is immortal. They had seven hundred years together. It was not enough.”
I glance at Lián. She has gone rigid beside me, her face carefully blank in a way I have learned to recognize. Her armor is rebuilding. She does this when something threatens to crack her open.
“What happened?”
“She died.” The simplicity of it lands like a blow. “A plague swept through their kingdom. She burned her own life force to heal thousands, severed the tie that bound her existence to his. She chose to save her people instead of living forever with the man she loved.”
Lián’s hand moves—a small, aborted gesture toward her own chest. I know what she is thinking. I know the shape of her fear.
“That’s—” She stops. Swallows. Tries again. “That’s a choice.”
“It was the choice.” The monk’s blind eyes seem to focus on something neither of us can see. “The right one, perhaps. Or the wrong one. Even after so many centuries passed, I still cannot say.”
“And Shen Wei?” I prompt, as much to give Lián time to compose herself as to hear the answer.
“He made a bargain with something old and terrible. Traded his humanity for the power to bring her back.” The monk’s hands fold in his lap. “It did not work. What returned was empty—a shell wearing her face. He destroyed it himself. That is when the hunger began.”
The temple seems to grow colder. I am aware of Tianlong’s presence at the back of my mind, uncharacteristically silent, listening.
“What does he want now?” I ask.