CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Fruit of the Garden

The first whisper came through a serving girl's trembling lips.

"Lady Zhen is with child," she said, eyes darting as though the walls might speak it back.

The second followed hours later.

"Lady Hua as well. Less certain… but her physician returned twice today."

By the time the third reached Liora's ears — that a physician from the imperial court had been sent to confirm both rumors — the entire inner palace hummed like a nest of hornets.

Children were power.

Children were protection.

Children meant a future no rival could easily cut away.

---

Liora did not flinch. Not outwardly.

She ordered warm broth, dismissed her attendants for the night, and stood alone before her mirror.

The faintest flicker of grief stirred in her belly, where her own child had failed to take root.

But she smothered it.

Now was not the time for mourning.

Now was the time for vigilance.

---

Lady Elira made her move before the sun could rise.

A scroll was delivered at dawn — a gift from Elira's calligraphy tutor, it claimed. A poem, composed in praise of the Queen's enduring virtue.

But the script was unmistakably Elira's.

The last line chilled the air:

"Even lilies fade before fruitless vines."

A threat.

A warning.

And a reminder that the harem did not reward the barren.

---

Yet even before Liora could respond, a new summons came.

Not from the King.

Not from the Queen.

But from the Dowager Empress — the King's mother, cloistered in the Pavilion of Silver Pines.

Liora was stunned into stillness.

No one saw the Dowager Empress unless summoned.

And no one left unchanged.

---

The Pavilion was quiet as snowfall. No guards at the entrance — only a servant in pale robes and soft-soled shoes who bowed and guided her through lacquered halls.

The Dowager sat in a garden chamber open to the wind, wrapped in white fur, her hair coiled in a widow's knot. She looked ancient, but her eyes were sharp as blades honed on silence.

"Lady Liora," she said without ceremony. "You play a subtle game."

Liora bowed low. "I play to survive, Your Majesty."

"You'll need more than survival soon. New lives stir in the palace. Their mothers will sharpen claws."

Liora hesitated. "Then I will gather armor."

The Dowager Empress studied her a long moment. Then she turned her gaze to the dormant plum tree outside the screen.

"I saw your mother once," she murmured. "When she was heavy with you. She did not bow low enough."

Liora kept her head bowed. "Then let me atone with my spine, bent in full."

The Dowager smiled thinly. "Stand straight. The Queen is no match for a woman who knows when to bend and when to strike."

She flicked her hand.

A box was brought forward — lacquered black, sealed in jade.

Inside: a single pearl comb and a letter.

Not signed, but unmistakably written in the King's own hand.

Liora's fingers trembled as she lifted it.

"You were favored once," the Dowager said. "Let us see if favor returns before others steal it entirely."

---

By the time Liora left the Pavilion, her mind had shifted.

She would not answer Elira's poem with words.

She would answer with motion.

With strategy.

And with another kind of alliance — perhaps not just with the Dowager, but with one of the expectant concubines. One who feared what would come after the child was born.

Because in the palace, the only thing more fragile than a future… was a mother without protection.