Choosing, finally #2
My voice cracks. I let it crack. No armor now. No jokes. No clever deflections or walls built from humor and distance and centuries of practice at not giving a damn.
Just me. Just the wound I’ve been carrying since the first person I loved turned to dust in front of me.
“Of having something worth losing.”
I think of Ren’s hands on my face. The calluses on his palms. The way he touches me like I’m something precious, something breakable, even though I’m the furthest thing from breakable that exists in any world ever.
I think of his voice in the dark, reading poetry he pretends not to like. The way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not watching—soft, unguarded, like I’m something he wants to keep.
I think of mornings in his arms, his heartbeat under my ear, the quiet warmth of waking up next to someone who actually wants me there.
“Of—”
The word sticks. Eight centuries of practice, and I still can’t say it. Still can’t admit it. Still can’t crack myself open enough to let it out.
Say it.
The thought is savage. Furious. My own voice, yelling at myself from somewhere deep inside.
You’re about to die for it. The least you can do is name it.
“Of love.”
The word falls out of me like something I’ve been carrying too long. Heavy. Sharp-edged. Catching the light as it drops.
It doesn’t feel like relief. It feels like bleeding.
“That’s what I’ve been running from. Not death. Not pain. Love. The most terrifying thing in any world.”
I’m shaking. My whole body is shaking, fine tremors running through my muscles like my bones have forgotten how to hold me together. When did that start? When did I become this fragile thing, held together by nothing but stubbornness and grief?
“I’ve been running from love. From wanting something. From letting anyone close enough that losing them would—”
I stop. The words pile up behind my teeth, too many of them, too heavy. I have to breathe. Have to start again.
“I had a husband once. In the second century. Kind man. Good man. He laughed at my jokes even when they weren’t funny—and they weren’t, not really, not back then. I was still learning how to be funny. Still learning that humor was the only armor that worked.”
The Hungering King’s expression shifts. Something flickers across his ancient face—recognition, maybe. Memory.
My throat closes. Forces me to swallow. Forces me to keep going.
“I couldn’t even bury him properly. Couldn’t stay for the funeral. I ran. First time of many.”
The tomb is silent except for my breathing, ragged and wet.
“After that, I told myself I wouldn’t do it again. Wouldn’t let anyone close. But I’m weak, apparently. Or stupid. Or just too tired to keep the walls up forever.”
I think of all the people I’ve lost. The friends. The lovers. The ones who made me laugh, made me stay longer than I should have, made me forget for a while that everything ends.
I wasn’t there for any of them at the end. I never was. I always ran before I had to watch them grow old, grow sick, grow still. Easier that way. Cleaner. That’s what I told myself.
“I’ve had people who mattered. And every single one of them—every single one—turned to dust while I kept breathing. While I kept going. While I kept surviving whether I wanted to or not.”
I’m crying. I don’t know when I started. The tears are hot on my cheeks, and I don’t bother wiping them away.
“So I stopped. I stopped letting people in. Stopped wanting things. Stopped staying anywhere long enough for roots to grow. Eight hundred years of running, and I told myself it was because I was tired. Because immortality is a curse. Because nothing matters when everything ends anyway, so why bother pretending?”
I look at the Hungering King—really look at him, past the power and the grief and the eleven centuries of obsession.
He’s crying too.
I don’t think he knows it. Don’t think he’s cried in centuries, maybe longer. But there are tears on his face, tracking through the hollows of his cheeks, and his ancient eyes are bright with something that looks like pain.
“But that was a lie. Wasn’t it?”
My voice is soft now. Soft and raw and bloody.
“You know. You understand. Better than anyone in the world, you understand exactly what I’m saying.”
His jaw tightens. Almost imperceptibly.
“I wasn’t running because nothing matters. I was running because things matter too much. Because love is the most terrifying thing ever, and I’d rather die six hundred times than feel it once.”
The silence stretches between us. Two broken things, looking at each other across a gulf of centuries and grief.
“But I felt it anyway,” I whisper. “Despite everything. Despite eight hundred years of practice at not caring, at not wanting, at not staying.”
I turn.
I look at Ren.
His face is a ruin. Tears streaming down his cheeks, mixing with the shadow that gags him. His whole body is straining against the bindings, every muscle taut, every line of him screaming things he can’t say.
His eyes are wild. Desperate. So full of love and terror and grief that I can barely stand to look at him.
I look anyway.
“I am tired.”
The admission scrapes my throat raw. Three words. The truest words. The ones I’ve been avoiding for eight centuries because saying them means admitting that I want something different.
“I’m tired of running.”
One step toward the Hungering King. My boots echo on ancient stone.
“I’m tired of being alone.”
Another step. The shadows seem to pull back from me, like even darkness doesn’t want to touch what I’m becoming.
“I’m tired of counting deaths.”
Another. I’m close now. Close enough that I can feel the cold radiating off him, the absence of warmth that marks where his humanity used to be.
“You want a willing sacrifice? Fine.”
Another step.
“I choose him.”
The words ring in the tomb like bells. Like promises. Like the sound of eight hundred years of walls finally crumbling to dust.
“I choose mornings with him. Waking up to his face, his warmth, his heartbeat under my ear. I choose the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not watching—soft, unguarded, like I’m something he wants to keep.”
Another step.
“I choose fights with him. Arguments about politics I don’t understand and policies I don’t care about. The way he gets quiet when he’s angry, quiet and still, and the way I needle him until he cracks and actually tells me what’s wrong.”
My voice is breaking. Shattering. I let it.
“I choose his terrible poetry. The poems he writes in the margins of official documents, the ones he thinks I don’t see. The way his whole face changes when he’s writing something that matters to him—soft and focused and young, like he’s remembering who he was before the crown.”
Another step.
“I choose his awful cooking. The dumplings that always come out lopsided. The rice that’s somehow both burnt and undercooked. The way he looks so pleased with himself when he presents something edible that I don’t have the heart to tell him the salt is wrong.”
I’m crying harder now. Laughing too, maybe. It’s hard to tell the difference.
“I choose the way he looks at me like I’m something worth staying for. Like I matter. Like I’m not just a weapon or a tool or a footnote in someone else’s story.”
Something flickers across the Hungering King’s face.
Recognition.
Memory.
Pain so old and deep it’s become the foundation of everything he is.
“I choose the cat who screams for dinner every night at exactly the wrong time. The way he looks at me like I personally invented food and am withholding it out of spite. The warm weight of him on my chest when I can’t sleep, purring like a broken engine.”
One more step. I’m close enough to touch the Hungering King now. Close enough to see every line of grief etched into his ancient face.
“I choose the archivist who brings me tea even when I forget to ask. Jing’s quiet kindness. The way she hovers, worried, trying so hard not to care and failing completely.”
I spread my arms. Open. Vulnerable. The opposite of everything I’ve been for eight hundred years.
“I choose the dragon who calls me ‘little dawn’ and pretends he doesn’t care. Tianlong’s grumbling and his warmth and the way he threatens to incinerate everyone who annoys him but never actually does it.”
The Hungering King is staring at me. Through me. At something that isn’t quite me—a ghost, maybe. The woman he lost, reflected in the woman who’s about to give him everything he’s wanted.
“I choose the palace that’s too big and the politics that make no sense and the empire I never wanted to be part of. I choose all of it. Every ridiculous, frustrating, beautiful piece of the life I built without meaning to.”
“You sound like her,” he says quietly. So quietly I almost don’t hear it. “Mei-Ling. When she chose to save our people. When she chose to burn herself out for love.”
“I know.”
I stop. Close enough to touch him. Close enough to see the tears still tracking down his face, the grief that’s eating him alive even after eleven centuries.
“That’s the point, isn’t it? You’ve been waiting for someone to love like she did. To choose like she did. The bloodline breeds true—women who love so fiercely they’ll sacrifice everything. Women who can’t help but burn.”
His ancient eyes search my face. Looking for her, maybe. Looking for the woman who died eleven centuries ago, whose absence has driven him to become this hollow, hungry thing.
I hope he finds what he’s looking for.
I hope it hurts.
“Here I am.” I spread my arms wider. Open myself to him, to the sacrifice, to whatever comes next. “Choosing.”
I don’t wait for permission.
Permission is for people who have something left to lose. People who are still negotiating, still hoping for a better outcome, still believing that maybe if they say the right words, everything will be fine.
I’ve already made my peace. Already said everything I needed to say. Already let the walls down, let the truth out, let myself feel something other than armor for the first time in centuries.
Now I just have to follow through.