CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Mask of Grace

Elira's comb slid through her hair in long, measured strokes.

Each one calmed her.

Each one reminded her of who she was.

She sat before the bronze mirror, the late winter light catching in her eyes, and listened as her maid, Suyin, recited the morning's rumors.

"Lady Liora was seen in the Magnolia Courtyard again last night. Alone."

"She visits that tree too often," Elira murmured. "Let her bury all her children beneath it, if she likes."

Suyin hesitated. "Some say she intervened for Lady Mei yesterday. Publicly."

Elira's hand paused in her hair.

"…Interesting," she said at last. "Very generous. Or very foolish."

She set the comb down with a click. "Have word sent to Mei's attending maid. I want to know what was promised."

Suyin bowed.

Elira rose and crossed to the window, watching the harem gardens below, where plum blossoms had begun to appear.

Liora was a problem. Not because she was clever — not yet. But because she had begun to attract attention from the wrong places. The King. The Queen. The weak women in between.

And attention, once gathered, was difficult to redirect.

---

She met with her younger brother that evening — in secret, in the whispering chamber behind the Hall of Eastern Offerings. No one used it now but her.

He came cloaked in scholar's robes, eyes sharp with inherited ambition.

"She's gaining sympathy," Elira said.

He nodded. "And you're losing control of the middle ranks. The neutral ones."

She tapped her lacquered fan against her palm. "Then we give them something to fear."

He smiled. "What do you want planted?"

Elira thought for a moment. "Nothing outrageous. Just… whispers. That Lady Liora had a sickness before her pregnancy. That perhaps the child was not the King's at all."

He raised a brow.

"I want doubt," she said. "Not accusation. Doubt lingers longer."

---

Two days later, a poem appeared anonymously on a court scroll — unsigned, delicate in tone, and exquisitely cruel in implication. It spoke of flowers blooming out of season, of fruit rotting before it could ripen, and of women whose beauty was borrowed, not earned.

By evening, five concubines had read it aloud over tea.

By morning, Liora's corridor was quieter than usual.

---

Elira watched it all with calm satisfaction.

Until she received a summons — not from the Queen, but from Lady Zhen.

The youngest. The softest.

Elira met her under the pretense of offering sisterly advice.

But Lady Zhen's eyes — usually wide and trusting — held a flicker of something else.

"I heard about Lady Liora's loss," Zhen said shyly. "It must be so hard… being so alone in the palace."

"Some women prefer loneliness," Elira replied gently. "It gives them time to practice their tears."

Zhen tilted her head. "Or their patience."

Elira's smile froze — only for a second.

That night, she dreamed of camellias falling without wind.

And woke with a bitter taste in her mouth.

The war was quiet now.

But the pieces had begun to move.