CHAPTER TWENTY: Beneath the Still Water

Snow fell the night the Queen's private servant was found dead in the koi pond.

No blood. No marks. Just her pale face under the icy surface, eyes open, mouth parted — as if caught in the middle of a secret.

The court was silent.

Officially, it was declared a tragic accident.

Unofficially, no one believed it.

Not in a palace where even rumors were sharpened into weapons.

---

In the aftermath, the Queen's chambers were sealed for a night. Her maidservants dismissed and replaced.

But it was her silence that unsettled the court most.

No mourning. No anger. No word of investigation.

Just stillness.

The kind that came before a storm.

---

Liora, meanwhile, moved without ceremony.

She began spending quiet afternoons in the lesser courtyard, sharing tea with Lady Zhen, letting the other concubines see them together. Not huddled, not secretive — just… united.

She stopped hiding her correspondence with the Dowager Empress's steward.

And most daringly, she began visiting the royal nursery — not her own, not yet — but Lady Wen's daughter, held in high regard for her foreign betrothal.

"You have a calming presence," Lady Wen murmured to her one morning, as their attendants watched from a distance. "Even the child senses it."

Liora smiled softly, brushing a thumb along the girl's cheek. "Babies sense truth more easily than adults."

She didn't say the rest:

That alliances through children were harder to sever than treaties written in ink.

---

That night, Liora sat alone in her chambers, a candle flickering before her.

A sealed letter rested on the table. Its wax bore the King's crest.

She broke it open with steady hands.

> The snow is falling again. I remember you spoke of snow as silence — but I hear too much of you now for it to feel quiet.

> Come to me tomorrow.

> — K.

Her heart stuttered once — not from love, not anymore — but from the quiet thrill of recognition.

She was being watched again. Chosen again.

But this time, she would not be caught unprepared.

---

Elsewhere, Elira sat in her private quarters, brushing her long dark hair, motionless before the mirror.

She had received no summons.

No invitation.

Not even word of the Queen's mourning rites.

She was being excluded.

Silently.

Systematically.

A handmaid slipped inside and whispered:

"Lady Hua has gifted winter cloaks to three new maids. All bearing your color."

Elira's fingers froze.

So.

The foxes were circling.

Let them come.

---

Lady Mei, now visibly with child, walked each morning by the lotus ponds under heavy guard. The King's orders. The Queen's physician shadowed her closely, but she said little.

Inside, she was already preparing.

A birth would come.

And with it — a reckoning.