Run
Morning breaks soft over the temple ruins.
Mist clings to the broken columns, silvering the scorched stones where Tianlong’s fire left its mark. We pack in silence—bedrolls, supplies, the cache of documents we grabbed before the cultists came. The smell of ash and old magic still hangs in the air.
Dumpling supervises from a fallen pillar, orange tail flicking with the gravity of a general overseeing troop movements.
We ride out as the sun clears the mountains.
The road is narrow at first, overgrown, branches scraping against my legs.
But by midday the mountains give way to farmland.
Rice paddies silver in the sun. Farmers bent in the fields, tending crops that don’t know about curses or conspiracies or ancient bloodlines.
A child drives a water buffalo along a paddy wall.
A woman hangs laundry on a line, cloth snapping in the morning breeze.
Normal life. The kind I haven’t had in centuries.
No one’s trying to kill us.
It’s suspicious, honestly. A whole morning on the road and not a single ambush. Not one cultist leaping from the bushes with a knife and a prayer. Not even a mildly threatening stranger asking too many questions.
My knife hand keeps twitching toward my belt, reaching for threats that aren’t there. Eight centuries of survival instincts don’t just turn off because the road is peaceful and the mist is pretty and a blind monk just told me I’m meant to be a willing sacrifice.
In my saddlebag, Dumpling spots a chicken scratching in the dirt near the road.
The yowl that emerges from his tiny body carries the fury of a thousand wronged ancestors. Pure feline outrage at the audacity of poultry existing in his presence, in his world, where he might be forced to perceive it.
The chicken flaps away in a panic of feathers and squawking, utterly unprepared for the orange fury pursuing it with his eyes.
Dumpling strains against the saddlebag, orange fur bristling, claws flexing with predatory intent, clearly prepared to wage war against the entire species if only I would let him out.
I will not let him out.
I’ve seen what he does to birds.
“The creature has declared war on poultry,” Tianlong observes from Ren’s wrist, where he’s wrapped himself like a very dignified bracelet. His tiny voice carries the weight of ancient mountains. “I respect the ambition, if not the strategy.”
“He’ll forget about it in ten minutes.”
“Will he?”
No. Probably not. Dumpling holds grudges like other cats hold mice—carefully, and with intent to destroy.
I scratch behind Dumpling’s ears until he subsides into disgruntled rumbling, outrage fading into the general background hum of feline superiority. The mist is lifting. The sun is burning through, painting the fields gold and green.
We keep riding.
We make camp by the river as the sun bleeds red and orange across the western hills.
The water moves dark and steady past rounded stones, catching the dying light in fragments—copper, gold, crimson—like a dragon’s hoard scattered across the current.
Fire crackles. Night insects beginning their chorus.
The smell of woodsmoke and river water and the dried fish and rice I threw together for dinner.
Not fancy, but hot, and nobody died from it, which is about all I ask from my cooking.
While Ren builds the fire, I finally sort through the documents we took from the temple.
Most of it is useless. Cult doctrine, ritual prayers, apocalyptic ramblings. I toss page after page into the flames.
But at the bottom of the stack—newer paper. Official paper. The kind with seals and signatures and careful columns of numbers.
Military manifests. Payment records.
“Ren.”
He crosses to my side. I hand him the documents.
He goes still.
“These are from Wei’s division.” His voice is flat. Controlled. “The formatting. The seal.” His finger traces a signature at the bottom. “Not Wei. Huang. His supply minister.”
I check the counter-signature.
Prince Liu.
“Your cousin,” I say.
“My cousin.” Something shifts behind his eyes. The look of a man watching a wound reopen. “He used to follow me everywhere when we were children. I taught him to ride. Gave him his first poetry book.”
A pause. The fire crackles.
“He cried at my coronation.”
I don’t make a joke. Don’t deflect.
I just shift closer until our shoulders touch.
He doesn’t move away.
Neither do I.
The monk’s words echo in my mind. A willing sacrifice. A death freely given, fueled by love. That’s what the Hungering King needs.
And now we know who’s been helping him from inside the palace.
Then, becuase now seems like the perfect time to spiral, I start to think about eight hundred years of exhaustion. Eight hundred years of watching everyone I love turn to dust. The weight of it presses down on my chest like a stone.
The terrible thing is—part of me understands the appeal.
Part of me has been so tired for so long. Part of me has wondered, in the dark hours, what it would be like to just… stop. To finally rest. To not wake up in a new body with the same old grief.
If I loved someone enough to die for them—really loved them, the kind of love that makes you stupid and brave and willing to do anything—
Would that be so bad? To go out that way? Choosing it. Meaning it.
Finally being done.
I look at Ren across the fire. Firelight painting shadows across his face. The sharp cheekbones. The dark eyes that see too much.
And I realize I’m in trouble.
Because I’m starting to think I might love him.
And if I do—if this feeling keeps growing—then the Hungering King wins. He gets exactly what he wants. A willing sacrifice, wrapped up with a bow.
“Lián.” Ren’s voice cuts through my spiral. “Whatever you’re thinking—”
“I’m not thinking anything.”
“You’re thinking about it.” His jaw tightens. “About whether it would be easier to just—”
“I’ve died six hundred and forty-four times.” The words come out sharper than I mean them to. “I’ve earned the right to think about it.”
He doesn’t flinch. Just watches me with those steady eyes.
“I’m not going to let him have you,” he says quietly.
“You might not get a choice.”
He just stares at me, and I see something change in his eyes. A promise, maybe. Or a vow.
I fold the manifests carefully, slide them into my pack. Evidence. Proof. Liu and Huang, their names signed clear as confession.
Eight hundred years of survival instincts are screaming at me to run.
I don’t move.
The heat of the fire touches my face, my hands. The cold of the coming night presses against my back. Between them, I sit and watch the flames dance and try not to think about anything at all.
Tianlong has curled on a rock near the flames, eyes closed, very deliberately not watching us. He’s about as subtle as a thunderstorm.
Dumpling vanished into the tall grass along the riverbank the moment we stopped. Hunting moths, probably. Or communing with the darkness. With Dumpling, you never really know.
I sit across the fire from Ren and feel the words building in my chest like pressure before a storm. They’ve been there all day, growing, taking up space I don’t have to spare.
I’ve been rehearsing arguments for miles. Good ones. Logical ones. The kind of arguments that make perfect sense if you don’t look at them too closely, if you don’t notice the fear stitched into every word.
I’m making excellent arguments. He’s going to agree any moment now.
Any moment.
“I should leave.”
They come out too fast. Too practiced. Like I’m reciting lines from a play I’ve been performing.
“If he wants me—the Hungering King—I’m putting you in danger just by being here.
” The words tumble over each other, filling the silence before anything else can slip through.
Before he can say something that makes this harder.
“He’s patient. He’s had over a thousand years to learn patience.
Longer than I’ve been alive—dying—whatever it is I do.
He can wait for an opportunity, wait for me to get comfortable, wait for me to stop looking over my shoulder, and when he finds his moment—”
“At least with me, you have—”
“What? An army?” I laugh. It sounds wrong.
Too sharp. Too bright. Like glass breaking and pretending to be bells.
“I’ve killed armies. I’ve faced down dynasties.
I watched the Ming fall and I’m still here.
Whatever you’re about to offer, I promise you, it’s not going to be enough.
The smart thing, the logical thing, the thing that anyone with half a brain would do, is for me to disappear.
I’m good at disappearing. Eight hundred years of practice. World champion. I just—”
“Me.”
I stop.
One word.
Quiet.
Not a command—and I know what his commands sound like. I’ve heard them delivered at court, to generals, they fill the space between heartbeats until nothing else can breathe. His commands leave no space for argument or refusal.
This isn’t that.
This is softer. Smaller. More dangerous than anything I’ve ever faced.
This is just… him.
Offering himself.
Not his empire. Not his army. Not the weight of the dragon throne or the power of ten thousand soldiers or all the resources of a dynasty that’s stood for three hundred years.
Just him.
The fire crackles. The river moves, dark and endless, not caring about empires or curses or two people sitting on its bank trying to figure out what they are to each other. Somewhere in the grass, Dumpling yowls at something only he can see.
I don’t say anything.
Can’t.
The most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.
In eight centuries.
Eight centuries of living and dying and living again. Husbands and lovers and people I let close because the loneliness got unbearable. People who promised everything. People who had armies and wealth and power and clever words.
No one has ever just—
No negotiations. No conditions. No careful calculations of what he’d get in return. Not I can protect you or I have resources or you’d be useful to me.
Just me.
Just himself, offered like it was nothing.
Like he was nothing.
Like he was everything.