The Journey Home
The palace is half a day’s ride away.
I know because I’ve been counting. The stone bridge at noon. The merchant’s waystation where we bought rice wine and didn’t drink it. The temple on the hill where Tianlong made a comment about architecture that was definitely an insult to someone’s ancestors.
Half a day. Twelve hours. Maybe less if we push.
We’re not pushing.
We’ve made camp by a river whose name I won’t remember tomorrow.
The fire’s dying down to embers, painting everything in shades of amber and shadow.
Dumpling has wedged himself into Ren’s saddlebag and is purring like a broken bellows, which means he’s either very content or plotting something. With Dumpling, it’s usually both.
Six weeks on the road. Six weeks of shared beds and stolen touches and pretending we’re just a merchant and his wife traveling south.
Six weeks of watching an emperor learn to haggle badly and discover he hates persimmons but loves salted plums and writes poetry by firelight when he thinks I’m not watching.
I’m always watching.
Tomorrow, it ends.
“You’re brooding,” Ren says from across the fire.
“I don’t brood. I contemplate. There’s a difference.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Contemplating is dignified. Brooding is what heroes do in bad novels before they make terrible decisions.” I poke at the fire with a stick. “I’m far too practical for terrible decisions.”
His mouth does the thing. The almost-smile. I’ve learned all of his almost-smiles by now—the sardonic one, the surprised one, the one that surfaces when Tianlong says something outrageous. This is the soft one. The dangerous one. The one that makes my chest do something inconvenient.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
“Don’t.”
“We should—”
“We really shouldn’t.”
He watches me for a long moment. Patient. He’s always patient. Twenty-two years on a throne teaches you to wait, I suppose. Twenty-two years of everyone wanting something from you teaches you to read the wanting in others.
I wonder what he reads in me.
Probably too much. That’s the problem with him. He sees things. The real things, underneath all the jokes and the deflection and the eight centuries of armor I’ve built up like scar tissue. He looks at me like he’s solving a puzzle he actually wants to understand, not just finish.
It’s terrifying.
It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
From somewhere inside the saddlebag, Dumpling makes a noise like a small demon being exorcised.
“The creature,” Tianlong announces from his traveling pot, “has consumed an inadvisable quantity of rice wine sediment. I have been attempting to ignore this. I have failed.”
“How did he even—” I start.
“Do not ask. The answer will only distress us both.”
Ren laughs. Actually laughs. Out loud, without checking first to make sure it’s appropriate, without smoothing it into something more dignified. The sound hits me somewhere below the ribs.
Six weeks ago, I didn’t know he could laugh like that. Six weeks ago, I didn’t know a lot of things.
Tomorrow, we go back to a world where emperors don’t laugh.
The fire has burned down to coals. Dumpling has recovered enough to demand chin scratches from Ren, who provides them with the solemn focus he probably applies to matters of state.
Tianlong has retreated into what he calls “contemplative silence” and what I call “sulking because nobody appreciates his commentary.”
I should be sleeping. We leave at dawn. Instead, I’m sitting with my back against a tree, watching Ren scratch my cat’s chin and write in the poetry book I bought him four weeks ago in a market that feels like another lifetime.
He writes every night now. Sometimes he shows me. Sometimes he doesn’t. I never ask. That feels important, somehow. That he has something that’s his, something the empire doesn’t touch.
Tonight, he closes the book and looks at me.
“The court will have questions,” I say, because someone has to break the silence. “About where you’ve been. About why you’re traveling with an assassin who tried to kill you.”
“I have answers.”
“Do those answers include the part where we’ve been sharing a bed for three weeks?”
He doesn’t flinch. Of course he doesn’t. “That information seems unlikely to improve the council’s reception.”
“Chancellor Feng might actually have an apoplexy.”
“I confess I am not entirely opposed to this outcome.”
I almost smile. Almost. “So what are you going to tell them?”
He sets the book aside. Moves closer. Not rushing—he never rushes—but deliberate. Intentional. Everything he does is intentional.
“The truth,” he says. “Edited for relevance.”
“And what truth is that?”
“That you are necessary.”
Something catches in my chest. “Necessary.”
“To the investigation. To the empire’s security.” He pauses. The firelight catches his eyes, and I see him decide something. “To me.”
Eight hundred years. Six hundred and forty-four deaths. I have been a lot of things to a lot of people. A weapon. A convenience. A ghost they couldn’t shake. Nobody has ever called me necessary before. Not like that. Not like it’s a confession.
I don’t know what to do with it. So I do what I always do.
“If you think flattery is going to get you the last rice cake,” I say, “you’re wrong.”
“I have no interest in the rice cake.”
“Liar. You’ve been eyeing it for an hour.”
“I have been eyeing you eating it. There is a difference.”
I stare at him. He stares back. Somewhere in the darkness, Dumpling burps with the confidence of a creature who has never once questioned his place in the universe.
“That,” Tianlong observes dryly, “was almost romantic. The belch truly elevated the moment.”
“Nobody asked you,” we say together.
We go to bed. The same bedroll. The same tangle of limbs we’ve been pretending is practical instead of necessary. His arm around my waist, my back against his chest, his breath slow and steady against my hair.
I cannot sleep.
“I’m scared,” I say into the darkness.
His arm tightens. Just slightly. Just enough.
“Of what?”
Everything, I want to say. Tomorrow. The palace. The way you look at me like I matter. The way I’ve started thinking in we instead of I. The way eight hundred years of running didn’t prepare me for the terror of standing still.
“That this ends,” I say instead. Close enough.
He’s quiet for a long time. Long enough that I think I’ve said too much, that I’ve ruined it somehow, that tomorrow will come and he’ll remember who he is and I’ll remember who I’m not.
“It does not have to.”
“Ren—”
“The road ends. The journey ends.” His hand finds mine in the dark. Interlaces our fingers. “This does not have to.”
I turn in his arms. Face him. It’s too dark to see his expression, but I don’t need to. I know what it looks like. I’ve been memorizing it for three weeks.
“The court won’t accept me.”
“The court will adapt.”
“Chancellor Feng—”
“Chancellor Feng can explain his objections to Tianlong. I am told the explanations would be brief.” His voice is dry. Almost amused. “And heated.”
“You can’t just—”
“I am the Emperor.” Simple. Not arrogant. Just true. “I can do a great many things I have chosen not to. Perhaps it is time I started choosing differently.”
“Choosing what?”
His hand cups my face. Gentle. Deliberate. The way he does everything.
“You.”
I kiss him. Because I don’t have words for this. Because eight hundred years wasn’t enough to prepare me for someone who looks at the impossible and says yes, anyway, I choose this.
He kisses me back. Careful and hungry and certain, all at once.
And then—
He hesitates.
It’s so small I almost miss it. A catch in his breathing. A tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there before. His hand on my waist, steady as stone, except for the finest tremor I’ve ever felt.
I pull back. Just enough to see his face.
“Ren.”
“I should tell you something.” His voice is controlled. His hand is not. “Before we—if we—I haven’t ever—”
Oh.
Oh.
Twenty-two years on a throne. Twenty-two years of being untouchable, unreachable, the dragon-blessed emperor that no one approaches without permission. Twenty-two years of choosing duty over want until he forgot he was allowed to want at all.
“You haven’t,” I say softly. Not a question.
“No.” The word costs him. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens, the way he doesn’t quite meet my eyes. The Emperor of the Jade Throne, and he’s afraid I’ll think less of him for this.
Idiot. Beautiful, impossible idiot.
“Ren.” I wait until he looks at me. “I have died six hundred and forty-four times. I have been stabbed, drowned, poisoned, burned, and once, memorably, crushed by a falling ox.”
“I fail to see—”
“I’m not finished.” I press a finger to his lips. “In eight hundred years, no one has ever looked at me the way you do. No one has ever chosen me the way you just did. So if you think I care that you haven’t—” I stop. Softer. “I don’t. I care that it’s you. I care that it’s us.”
“The rest is mechanics?” The corner of his mouth twitches. Even now.
“The rest is details.” I find the edge of his robe. Pause. Let him feel the question. “And details can be figured out. Together. If you want.”
“I want.” His voice drops, rough and honest. “I have wanted for longer than I should admit.”
“Then let me—” I shift, pressing him gently onto his back, and he goes, watching me with those dark eyes that see too much. “Let me show you.”
I untie his robe slowly. Not teasing—just giving him time. Giving myself time, if I’m honest. My hands aren’t as steady as I’d like. Eight hundred years and I’m nervous. That should be funny. It isn’t.
The fabric falls open. Firelight catches the planes of his chest, the old scar along his ribs I’ve never asked about, the way his breathing has gone shallow. He’s beautiful. I’ve always known that, in the abstract way you know the sun is bright. But this is different. This is mine.
“You can touch me,” I tell him. “I won’t bite.” And then, because I seriously must have something wrong with me, I add: “At least not this time.”