CHAPTER SEVEN: The Servants of Silence
Liora did not cry.
She rearranged the flowers in her chamber, swept the incense ash from her writing table, and ate every meal as if nothing had changed. But inside, she was listening — not to praise, but to the absence of it.
The silence was a sharper blade than scorn.
The King no longer sent tokens. Her name was absent from the list of evening summons. Even the eunuchs who once bowed low and smiled now passed her by with hurried steps and averted eyes.
Favor had fled — and in its place came the waiting.
---
"Shall I send a letter to your family, my lady?" her handmaid, Ami, asked carefully, eyes darting to the door.
Liora shook her head. "Not yet."
The Duke, her father, was too embattled. Her half-sister, too entangled. They would offer advice, or worse — interfere.
What she needed now was not rescue.
It was a foothold.
---
She began to walk.
Each morning, Liora left her chambers earlier than expected, wrapped in a robe of pale gray — neither bold nor meek. The other concubines watched her with vague confusion, as if unsure whether to mock her or pity her.
She offered no answer.
Instead, she wandered the lesser halls — where the roof tiles were cracked and the lotus ponds green with neglect. Where servants gossiped freely and forgot to lower their voices.
There, Liora listened.
And she remembered.
---
"Lady Hua used to sing to the Emperor before he slept. Now he doesn't even look at her."
"Lady Mei weeps at night. Still has the locket the King gave her. Doesn't know he gave the same one to Zhen."
"Lady Wen's daughter will be sent to the east. Betrothed to that half-blind prince."
"Elira's brother visited the treasury again. Left with an extra box."
---
Liora brought gifts.
Not bribes — just thoughtful offerings. A hand-woven shawl for an elderly matron with aching joints. A few warm buns left beside a night guard's post. A painted fan offered to a junior concubine during afternoon rest.
She did not demand favors.
She remembered names.
When she passed by Lady Mei's garden, she paused.
The woman sat alone beneath a magnolia tree, draped in muted silk. Her eyes were shadowed, her once-rosy lips pale. Her rank was low, her child lost in a stillbirth no one dared question.
Liora bowed. "You have the best shade in the Lotus Row."
Mei looked up, startled. "Do I?"
Liora gestured toward the petals falling like snow. "Some trees are stubborn. They bloom even when no one's watching."
A long silence.
Then a flicker of something — not warmth, but recognition.
The next day, a servant brought Liora a jar of herbal salve.
"For sleep," the note said. "From one sleepless woman to another."
---
Three days later, Lady Hua summoned her.
Officially, it was to discuss a poem Hua had written about foreign birds. In truth, it was curiosity.
"You do not flatter," Hua said bluntly. "You don't seduce. Yet the King once looked at you."
Liora smiled faintly. "And now he does not."
Hua leaned forward, dark eyes shrewd. "Then you are either a fool… or dangerous."
Liora took a sip of tea. "Aren't we all?"
---
By the end of the week, five servants in the lower ranks knew her name. Two concubines of little rank offered to share gossip over tea. One eunuch — the silent, scarred man who swept the garden path each evening — nodded when he passed.
Ami noticed.
"You are becoming one of them."
Liora smiled.
"No," she whispered. "I'm becoming someone they remember."
---
That night, she sat alone beneath her window, watching the moon pass behind clouds.
She didn't cry.
Didn't write.
Didn't pray.
She listened to the wind passing through the empty corridors and thought of mirrors that did not reflect, of queens who whispered to stone cradles, and of women who had power only when no one saw them coming.
---
This time, she would not shine too brightly.
She would burn slowly.
Until they forgot she was fire at all.