The Failed Ritual #3
I should be figuring it out. I should be analyzing the blessing, searching my memories for anything my mother might have told me, anything my grandmother might have mentioned before she died.
I should be doing what I always do—planning, preparing, making sure I have escape routes and backup plans for each one.
Instead I’m sitting in an ancient tomb with an emperor’s hand in mine, and all I can think about is how warm he is. How solid. How he just watched me die. What he through was for real.
“Ren—”
I just look at him—this man who holds an empire on his shoulders, who was chosen by a dragon at twelve years old and has spent two decades being exactly what his people needed—and I see the cracks. The places where the stone has worn thin. The flesh underneath.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be.”
“I made you—”
“You made me feel.” His free hand comes up, cups my jaw. Gentle. Deliberate. “I have spent twenty-two years not feeling. You made me feel, and I would not trade that for anything. Even the grief. Even the fear. Even the—”
He stops himself. But I know what he was going to say.
Even the love.
“You’re an idiot,” I tell him. “You know that, right? Falling for an assassin who tried to kill you. Who’s being hunted by an ancient monster who wants to use her blood to resurrect his dead wife.”
“In my defence,” he says. “I was not made aware of the ancient monster tying to kill you. Or his dead wife.”
I laugh. Or snort, or sob or snot—I’m not too sure. When I write it down later I will definitely make it sound more elegant than what it was though.
“If you had known. Would it have changed anything?”
“Perhaps only how many guards were posted to your chambers.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen, you know. Any of it. I was supposed to kill you and collect my payment and move on to the next job. I wasn’t supposed to—”
I stop.
“Wasn’t supposed to what?”
Stay. Care. Fall. Love.
“Get attached,” I say instead. Coward’s word. Safer word. “I’ve spent a long time not getting attached. It’s the only way to survive when everyone you care about dies and you don’t.”
“But you got attached anyway.”
“To an emperor. Of all people.” I laugh, and it’s wet.
“Do you know how many emperors I’ve outlived?
Somewhere north of a hundred. I lost track around century four—they started blurring together.
They come and they go and their empires rise and fall and I’m still here, still running, still counting deaths instead of days. ”
“And now?”
“Now I died for one.” I meet his eyes. Hold them. “And the terrifying part isn’t that I did it. It’s that I came back and I’m… glad. I didn’t expect to be glad. I expected relief. Finally done. Finally over. Instead I woke up and saw your face and I thought—”
I stop. Swallow.
“I thought, oh. There you are.”
His breath catches.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I say, and I don’t know where the words come from but they’re true, truest thing I’ve said in centuries. “I don’t know how to choose anything except the next job, the next city, the next death. But I look at you and I think—maybe. Maybe I could learn.”
He kisses me.
Soft. Careful. His hands on my face, my jaw, threading into my hair.
I kiss him back.
Not soft. Not careful. I’ve just died and I’m hungry for it, desperate, greedy. I have needs, you have to understand this… I just died!
I pull him closer and he comes, lets me set the pace, lets me take what I need.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“I want to learn with you,” he says against my lips. “For whatever that’s worth.”
“It’s worth a lot.” I rest my forehead against his. “It’s worth everything.”
Silence.
Warm. Safe. Ours.
“We should go,” I say eventually. Not because I want to, but because we’re sitting in an ancient tomb and the Hungering King is still out there and at some point the world is going to demand we deal with it.
“Yes.”
Neither of us moves.
“Dumpling is going to be furious,” I say. “I told you to tell him I was sorry about dinner.”
“He’s fine. Jing fed him.”
“Jing.” I blink. “Your terrified handmaiden fed my demon cat?”
“She is your archivist. And, she was very brave about it.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “He only bit her twice.”
“That’s practically affection. From him.”
We’re doing it again. The thing we do. Banter instead of feeling. Words instead of weight.
But it’s okay. It’s us.
“Can you stand?” he asks.
“Probably.” I test my legs. They shake, but they hold. “Resurrection always takes it out of me. This one was worse than usual.”
He rises first, then helps me up. Keeps an arm around my waist when I sway.
“The mystery can wait,” he says. “Whatever stopped the ritual—whatever the Hungering King saw—we’ll figure it out. Together.”
“Together.” I taste the word. Foreign. Frightening. “That’s new.”
“Many things are new.” He presses a kiss to my temple. Brief. Tender. “I find I don’t mind.”
We make our way out of the tomb slowly, my weight against his side. The night air hits us and I breathe deep—cool and clean and alive. Stars overhead. Moon hanging low.
I’m alive.
I don’t understand why.
But I have a home to return to, and an emperor’s arm around my waist, and somewhere in the palace a fat orange cat is waiting. And for some reason I have an absolute craving for a jianbing.
For now—just for now—that’s enough.
That’s everything.