CHAPTER SIX: The Queen’s Mirror

The Empress did not rage.

She calculated.

While lesser women stormed halls and broke porcelain, she sat before her mirror — a flawless disc of polished silver framed in obsidian. It had no reflection unless one spoke a name.

Tonight, she whispered, "Liora."

The glass remained blank at first. Then a ripple.

Not an image. Just a shadowed outline.

The Empress's painted mouth thinned.

"She wears silver," she said aloud. "And he notices."

The midwife standing silently at the wall flinched.

"She is nothing," the woman said cautiously. "A concubine without title. Her father is disgraced."

The Empress turned her gaze. "So was mine. Before I wore a crown."

The midwife dropped her eyes.

The Empress rose, her gown of ivory and flame trailing behind her like smoke. Her hair was braided in three layers — one for each stillborn child she had claimed to bear. In truth, only one had been hers.

The others… had been borrowed.

And the price still clung to her womb like frost to a grave.

---

That night, she walked alone into the Chamber of Ancestral Names, beneath the palace chapel. A place older than the Empire's current dynasty, where the air never warmed.

There, under rows of incense and forgotten scrolls, she knelt before a stone cradle, veined with red.

They said it was carved from the remnants of the earth where the first Empress had died.

The Empress had used it once.

Not for birth.

But for silence.

She placed her hand on the edge. "Tell me," she whispered, "is the girl a threat?"

The cradle remained still.

Then — a crack in the incense flame.

A single word, breathed not by lips but by the cold stone itself:

"Mirror."

---

In the Lotus Quarters, Liora woke with a jolt.

Something cold had brushed her cheek.

She sat up — but the chamber was still. No breeze. No light. Only moonlight on the floor.

Her feet found the cold wood. She crossed to the screen and opened it.

The plum tree's bare branches swayed, though the night was windless.

Beneath it lay a folded red charm, pierced by a silver needle.

She did not touch it.

She simply looked — and understood.

This was not a warning from a concubine.

This was above them all.

The Empress had seen her.

---

The next morning, the King's summons did not come.

Nor the next day.

Nor the next.

Liora's seat was moved — down one tier, to the edge of the Lotus Row.

Zhen looked away. Wen nodded once. "Winds change."

Elira passed by her chamber that afternoon, trailed by attendants and sweet incense.

She paused at Liora's threshold.

"You burned brightly," she said. "Some flowers bloom in spring. Others too soon — and are cut."

But Liora didn't respond.

Because the needle had been clean.

Not poisoned.

Not cursed.

A message.

Not death.

Warning.

And in this palace, warning was rare mercy.