The Waiting #2
“I’ll stay. The whole night. The waking up thing. The breakfast with ministers thing. The—” I wave my hand. “All of it. Whatever this is. I’ll do it.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t smile. Just looks at me with those dark steady eyes that see too much, and says, “You’re sure.”
“No. I’m not sure. I’m terrified. I’m probably going to panic at some point and say something stupid and try to sabotage this because that’s what I do when things get serious.
But I’m staying anyway.” I cross the room, because if I don’t move I’m going to lose my nerve.
“So. Yes. I’m sure. As sure as I get. Which is not very, but it’s what I’ve got. ”
I stop in front of him. Close enough to touch.
He reaches out. His hand cups my jaw, gentle, the way he always touches me—like I’m something that matters. Like I might break and he’s trying not to let me.
“You won’t break,” he says.
“I know.”
“But I’m going to be careful anyway.”
“I know that too.”
He kisses me.
Not desperate, not urgent. This is slower. This is here, in his chambers, where it means something, where I’ve just agreed to let it mean something.
I kiss him back. I let myself want it. I stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, just for a minute, just for this.
His hands slide into my hair. I arch into him, closer, and he makes a sound against my mouth that I’ve learned means I’m doing something right. We’ve had six weeks to figure out what works. We’re good at this part. The physical part. Bodies are easy.
It’s everything else that’s hard.
He walks me backward. My shoulders hit the edge of his desk—the other edge, not the Dumpling edge—and he lifts me onto it without breaking the kiss, and I wrap my legs around him because I can, because I want to, because I’m done pretending I don’t want every part of this I can get.
“Wait,” I manage, between kisses. “The cat is watching.”
Dumpling stares at us from his warm spot by the lamp. Unblinking. The expression of a creature who has seen many things and judges all of them.
“I’m not doing this with an audience.”
Ren doesn’t argue. He just crosses to the desk, scoops up the ball of offended orange fur, and deposits him in the corridor with the efficiency of a man who commands armies. The door clicks shut. A muffled yowl of betrayal filters through.
“He’s going to make you pay for that.”
“Probably.”
“I’m just warning you. Cats hold grudges.”
“So do emperors.” He’s already crossing back to me, and the look in his eyes makes my train of thought derail entirely. “Where were we?”
“You were—” His mouth finds my throat. “That. We were there.“
We make it to the bed eventually. His robes come off somewhere between the desk and the mattress, mine shortly after, and then it’s just skin and warmth and the particular pleasure of knowing someone’s body well enough to make them fall apart.
I know how to make him breathe harder. He knows the scar on my hip, the one from Death #412, and he traces it with his thumb before he kisses it like he’s memorizing the shape of old pain.
I know the tension he carries in his shoulders and how to work it loose.
He knows I talk too much when I’m nervous and that the talking stops when he does something right.
He does a lot of things right.
Slow. We go slow, because we can, because there’s no guard rotation to beat or mission to maintain or pretense that this is anything other than what it is. His hands on my skin. My nails down his back. The way he says my name like it means something, like I’m someone worth naming.
And when he finally moves inside me, I stop thinking entirely.
There’s just this. Us. The bed that costs more than villages.
The lamplight making gold shadows on the ceiling.
His weight, his warmth, the rhythm we’ve learned together.
I hold on and let myself have it—all of it, without the jokes, without the armor, without the part of me that’s always calculating the exit.
I stay.
My head rises and falls with his breathing, my ear pressed to his chest where his heartbeat thuds slow and steady against my cheek.
The lamp has burned down to embers, casting the room in pools of gold and shadow, and somewhere beyond the silk curtains the palace has gone quiet in the way that means it’s either very late or very early.
His arm is warm and heavy across my back. His breathing has gone deep and even. There’s a looseness in him I’ve only seen a handful of times—after moments where survival stopped being a question and something else took its place.
“I didn’t think I could have this,” I say.
Quiet. Almost hoping he won’t hear.
He hears anyway. “Have what?”
I don’t answer right away. I don’t know if I have the words.
Someone who knows what I am. What I’ve done.
Six hundred and forty-four deaths. Eight centuries of running.
Blood under my fingernails and ghosts trailing behind me like a bad reputation.
I’ve been a killer, a thief, a weapon for hire.
I’ve done things that would make most people flinch, and I’ve done them well, and I’ve survived them, and I’ve never let anyone close enough to see the full scope of the wreckage.
He’s seen it. All of it. The death count and the gallows humor and the way I use jokes like armor because the alternative is actually feeling things.
He wants me anyway.
“This,” I finally say. Inadequate. True.
His arm tightens around me. Just slightly. Just enough.
“You have it,” he says.
Three words. Terrifying ones. But they’re real. We both know they’re real.
I let the silence hold it for us.
I’m almost asleep when the door opens.
We both freeze. My hand goes for a knife that isn’t there—under the pillow, old habit, except I’m not in my own room and my knives are somewhere on the floor with my clothes—
An orange shape saunters through the door like he owns the place. Tail high. Completely unbothered by imperial security or locked doors or the basic concept of privacy.
“How,” Ren says flatly.
“He’s learned to open doors.”
“That door was locked.”
“He’s ambitious.”
Dumpling leaps onto the bed, circles twice with the air of a creature selecting the optimal napping coordinates, and settles directly between us. On Ren’s kidney, specifically. He kneads the blanket, claws flexing, and begins to purr.
Ren looks at me. I look at Ren.
We’re both trying very hard not to laugh.
We both fail.
The laughter breaks something loose in my chest—not the bad kind of breaking, but the kind that releases pressure you didn’t know you were holding.
Life is absurd. Joy is allowed. I’m naked in bed with the Dragon Emperor and my cat has just claimed my stomach as his personal throne and somehow this is my life now.
Real. All of it. Real.
“He’s sleeping between us,” Ren observes.
“He always sleeps between us.”
“He’s a menace.”
“He’s your menace now too. Congratulations.”
Dumpling purrs louder. Smug. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
I scratch behind his ears and let my other hand find Ren’s in the dark. Our fingers lace together over Dumpling’s vibrating body. Ridiculous. Perfect.
I’m still here.
Dawn comes soft. Golden light through silk curtains, jasmine drifting up from the garden below, the palace waking around us in a whisper of distant bells and servant footsteps.
Ren wakes slow, blinking, and for a moment there’s something vulnerable on his face—surprise, maybe, or hope, or the fear that I’ll already be gone. Eight centuries and I recognize that expression. I’ve seen it on everyone I’ve ever left.
I haven’t left.
“You stayed,” he says.
“I stayed.” My voice comes out rough with sleep. “Get used to it.”
His mouth does the almost-thing. Almost a smile. “That sounded like a threat.”
“It was a promise. Threats have more knives involved.”
“Noted.”
He reaches out, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture is small, domestic, so achingly normal that my throat goes tight. I’ve never had normal. I didn’t know I wanted it.
I want it.
Dumpling stretches between us, yawns enormously, and resettles with his head on my hip. Claiming me. I’ve been claimed by a cat and an emperor and I’m not even mad about it.
“Same time tonight?” Ren asks.
“Same time.”
It’s a ritual now. Ours. The staying, the waking, the finding each other in the dark.
The bells ring again, louder. Somewhere in the palace, ministers are gathering. Court is waking. The Dragon Emperor will be expected to appear, to perform, to wear the empire on his shoulders for another day.
But not yet.
For a few more minutes, it’s just us. Jasmine light and tangled sheets and an orange cat who refuses to be moved.
I let myself believe I can keep this. Just for now. Just for this morning.
Liu’s warning echoes somewhere in the back of my skull—when He comes—but the Hungering King hasn’t come. Two weeks of nothing. Maybe he’s waiting. Maybe he’s watching. Maybe the blade is already falling and I just can’t see it yet.
I push the thought away. Not now.
Ren’s hand finds mine again. Solid. Warm. Here.
I stay anyway.
Chapter 644: In which our heroine stops counting deaths and starts counting mornings.
I write it in my head while he dresses. Sentimental garbage. The kind of chapter title that would have made me gag a year ago, when I was still pretending I didn’t want anything I couldn’t walk away from.
I want this.
I’m keeping it.
The bells ring a third time. He’s almost ready—crimson robes, gold thread, the weight of the empire settling back onto his shoulders as he transforms from the man in my bed to the Dragon Emperor the world expects.
He looks at me before he goes.
“Same time,” he says again. Not a question.
“Same time.”
Something in his eyes softens. Just for a moment. Just for me.
Then he’s gone, and I’m alone in his bed with a cat and the smell of sandalwood and the terrifying, wonderful knowledge that I’m going to be here again tonight.
And tomorrow night.
And the night after that.
This is either the best thing that’s ever happened to me or it’s going to destroy us both.
Probably both.
I stay anyway.
I’m learning how.