Taken
Emperor Ren
The morning light falls across the taxation documents I should be reading. I find my attention elsewhere.
This has become a problem.
The word surfaces again—consort—and I examine it as I might examine a curious artifact.
Something foreign that has become familiar through handling.
Two weeks ago the word ‘wife’ was strategy, a cover, a necessary deception to keep her close while we hunt conspirators.
Now it fits differently in my mind. Warmer.
Heavier. I think of her sleeping in my chambers, the way she curls toward me in the night without waking.
The warmth in my chest does something I choose not to analyze.
I am thinking about tonight. About the council meeting I must endure and the hours after, when the court releases me and I can return to rooms that no longer feel empty.
About tomorrow. About mornings that stretch forward without end, and how that no longer seems like duty to be endured but something else entirely.
You are humming.
Tianlong’s voice carries amusement I decline to acknowledge.
I am not humming.
You are. It is a love ballad. From the Third Dynasty. Notably saccharine. The sort of drivel poets compose when they have never actually experienced passion and must therefore imagine it in excessive detail.
I do not know what you are talking about.
The melody concerns a farmer who pines for a river spirit. There are seventeen verses about her hair. Shall I recite them?
I have work to do.
You have been staring at the same taxation report for six minutes. The Qingzhou grain surplus is not so fascinating as to warrant that level of attention, unless you have developed a previously unannounced interest in agricultural yields.
The morning light shifts. I set down the report I have not been reading and rise from my desk, moving toward the window. The palace gardens spread below, winter-bare but peaceful, and somewhere in the eastern wing she is waking. Perhaps already awake. Perhaps thinking of me.
I catch myself and stop the thought before it can settle.
Denial, Tianlong observes, is a river you have swum so long you have forgotten what shore feels like.
Your commentary is not required.
My commentary is always required. You simply lack the wisdom to recognize its value. A pause, and something shifts in his tone. The amusement thins. Something is stirring.
I turn from the window. The bond between us—that thread of fire and consciousness that has connected us for twenty-two years—feels different this morning. Not wrong. Not yet. But there is a faint static where the connection usually runs clear. A distance that should not be there.
What do you sense?
I am uncertain. The admission costs him something; Tianlong is never uncertain. There is… interference. A weight at the edges of my perception. It could be nothing. It could be the wards shifting with the season. A pause. It could be you.
Me?
You are feeling things you have not permitted yourself to feel in twenty-two years.
Wanting things. The bond carries emotion as well as fire, little flame.
I am three thousand years old and I have never felt you like this.
Another pause, longer. It is possible I am sensing your heart learning to beat again and mistaking it for threat.
I consider this. The explanation is plausible.
The bond has always been sensitive to emotional extremes—rage sharpens it, grief dulls it, fear makes it sing like a struck bell.
It stands to reason that whatever this is—this warmth I cannot name, this wanting I cannot stop—might register as something new. Something strange.
And if it is not that? If it is something else?
Then we deal with it. But I cannot act on what I cannot see. His voice gentles, though the unease beneath it remains. Go to your council, little flame. I will keep watching. If it becomes clearer, you will know.
I should press him. I should demand more. But the light is warm and somewhere in the palace she is waking, and the truth is that I want his explanation to be correct. I want the strangeness in the bond to be nothing more than my own heart betraying me.
I want one more ordinary morning.
Just one.
The thought settles in my chest, and I recognize it for the indulgence it is.
Twenty-two years on this throne have taught me that wanting is weakness.
That the empire demands everything and leaves nothing for personal desires.
That the man who sits on the dragon throne must be the throne itself—immovable, impersonal, eternal.
But she makes me want things.
She makes me want to be a man instead of a symbol. To write poetry that is not adequate and have someone laugh at it with genuine fondness rather than terrified flattery. To wake beside someone who sees me—not the crown, not the title, not the power I never asked for—and stays anyway.
Consort. The word again, unbidden. I allow it to rest.
The council awaits, Tianlong says, and his voice has returned to its usual sardonic warmth, though I catch the undercurrent of unease beneath it. Try not to humiliate yourself by staring at her across the chamber. It was barely subtle last week, and the ministers are beginning to whisper.
They whisper regardless of what I do.
True. But there is a difference between whispers of fear and whispers of—how did Minister Chen phrase it?—‘unprecedented imperial distraction.’ He thinks you are going soft.
I am not going soft.
You smiled at a servant yesterday. Publicly. Without strategic purpose.
She dropped a tray. I was attempting to put her at ease.
You were humming while you did it.
I cross to the door, and the guards stationed outside snap to attention as I emerge.
The walk to the throne room is familiar—marble floors worn smooth by centuries of imperial feet, walls hung with tapestries depicting victories I know by heart, air thick with incense and old power.
I have made this walk ten thousand times.
Today it feels different. Today I am counting the hours until I can walk back.
The realization settles into me with a weight I do not expect.
I have spent twenty-two years training myself not to count hours.
Not to anticipate. Not to want anything beyond the next duty, the next decision, the next moment of service to an empire that has consumed everything I might have been.
The throne does not permit anticipation.
The throne demands presence, attention, the absolute surrender of self to symbol.
And yet.
I pass a window overlooking the eastern courtyard, and I catch myself looking for her.
She takes her morning tea there sometimes, when the weather permits.
Sits on the stone bench beneath the plum trees and reads reports that Jing has compiled for her, ancient documents about bloodlines and curses, and sometimes she laughs at something she finds there.
I do not know what could be funny in records of death and sacrifice.
I have never asked. I find that I want to ask.
I find that I want to know everything she finds funny.
Every joke that makes her laugh, every observation that cracks through her armor of wit and deflection.
I want to know what she looks like when she is not performing, not protecting herself, not waiting for the next disaster.
I want to know what she looks like when she is simply—
You have stopped walking.
I resume walking.
You were staring at an empty courtyard for forty-three seconds. I counted.
The courtyard is not empty. There are gardeners.
You were not looking at the gardeners.
I have nothing to say to this that would not confirm his suspicions, so I say nothing at all. The silence stretches between us, and I can feel his amusement pressing against the bond like warmth from a banked fire.
Twenty-two years, he muses. Twenty-two years of watching you refuse every comfort, every joy, every possibility of happiness.
Twenty-two years of ‘the throne demands’ and ‘duty requires’ and ‘I do not deserve.’ And then she walks into your palace with a knife and a bad joke, and suddenly you are humming love ballads and staring at empty courtyards.
She did not have a knife when she arrived.
Correct, she had poison. However, I have seen seventeen knives since she arrived. I count those too.
That surprises a breath from me that might be laughter. I catch it before it becomes sound.
There, Tianlong says, and his voice is softer now, the mockery gentled into something that might be affection. That. Right there. That is why I approve of her, little flame. Twenty-two years and you have forgotten how to laugh. She is teaching you to remember.
I do not know how to respond to this. The words sit in my chest, heavy with truth I am not prepared to examine. So I continue walking, and I do not look at any more courtyards, and I pretend I am not still counting the hours.
Hopeless, Tianlong murmurs, but there is something like approval beneath it. Absolutely hopeless.
The throne room is full when I enter.
Ministers bow as I pass, a ripple of silk and murmured honorifics that I acknowledge with the barest nod.
The throne rises at the far end of the chamber—gold and jade and dragon motifs, a seat I have never learned to find comfortable—and I climb the steps with the measured pace the court expects.
Every movement deliberate. Every gesture calculated to project the serenity of heaven’s mandate.
I settle into the throne. The ministers arrange themselves below.
The shadows in the corners of the room are darker than they should be.
I note this. Consider it. Continue with the morning’s business.
“Minister Chen.” My voice carries without effort. “Your report on the northern grain stores.”
Chen steps forward, scroll in hand, and begins reciting figures I should be tracking. The Qingzhou surplus. The Henan deficit. Transport logistics complicated by early snowfall in the mountain passes.
The shadows do not move.