CHAPTER 7: THE FACE THAT LIES
PART 1: TWO QUEENS, ONE THRONE
It began with incense.
The priest at the Temple of the First Sky lit the morning braziers himself that day. Not the acolytes. Not the maidens. He did.
Because the Queen had arrived.
She stood at the center of the shrine, head bowed, fingers laced in prayer, while the priest offered blessings and prayers for unity. She accepted them. She gave offerings. She bowed. Courtiers whispered of her humility.
And yet—
That same hour—
A foreign envoy stood at the royal gate, recounting, to no less than three palace guards, how he had spoken personally with the Queen in her private receiving room.
"She gave me the seal herself," he said, holding up a scroll. "Her hand was cold."
The guards did not laugh.
Because the seal was real.
And the Queen's private guard confirmed she had not left the palace that morning.
But she had.
And she hadn't.
Two versions. Same signature.
---
By the second day, the murmurs were impossible to ignore.
"She was in the south corridor."
"No—she greeted the Prime Consort by the lotus hall."
"But I saw her just before the bell in the Mirror Room."
"I bowed to her at the red gate—and then, again, at the blue stairs. Facing opposite directions."
The ministers divided.
Not openly. Not yet.
But some began referring to her as The Crown.
Others whispered only, The Other.
Seorin said nothing.
She walked the garden paths as if nothing had changed.
But every mirror made her pause.
Every whisper tilted toward her.
One morning, in the cedar gallery, Lord Baek approached her alone.
He did not bow.
"Which one are you?"
She looked at him coolly. "The one who still answers when you ask."
He did not smile.
But he stepped aside.
And did not ask again.
---
That night, in her chamber, Seorin stared at the folded robe Yeonhwa had laid out.
The red one.
She did not remember asking for it.
But she wore it anyway
.
Because the court was choosing.
And the mask would not wait much longer.
---
PART 2: THE MAN WITH THE BURNED MOUTH
The message arrived folded into a scrap of silk used to wrap spoons.
Not sealed. Not signed.
But she recognized the hand immediately.
Sharp. Precise. Measured.
The kind of hand that once wrote diplomatic letters before dawn and military dispatches before dusk.
It read:
> Come to the kiln. Alone. No mask. No name.
There were only two people who could send a message like that and expect her to obey.
And one of them she had sentenced to death.
---
The kiln had once served the royal ceramicists, tucked behind the palace's west wall beneath the slope of the hawthorn ridge. It had long since been shut—sealed after a fire took one of the apprentices years ago. No one went near it now. Not even scavengers.
Which made it the perfect place for the dead to speak.
She entered through the back.
No guards. No lanterns. Just smoke-tinged shadows and soot-dusted beams.
He was already there.
Kang Jae-hwan.
Or what remained of him.
His face had been handsome once—sharp eyes, high cheekbones, a strategist's build and a poet's hands. Now, burn scars coiled from his jaw to his throat, tight and shiny. The left side of his mouth no longer moved. But the right eye still burned.
"You lived," she said.
"You don't sound surprised."
"I am."
"But not sorry."
She didn't answer.
He stepped forward.
"You know why I asked you here?"
"You've waited years to say something."
"I've waited for the world to look like this again."
He gestured around them—at the brokenness, the shadows, the whispers curdling in court like curdled wine.
Then he said it:
"I saw two of you the day I died."
Her breath hitched.
"You stood at the steps of the execution yard. I remember. You wore white. You called for my name to be struck from record. You didn't flinch."
"I never did."
"But someone else was there."
He looked at her now. Not through her.
"Behind the curtain. On the upper tier. Same face. Different eyes. She didn't move. She just watched."
Seorin stared at him.
"You're mad."
He smiled with half a mouth.
"Maybe. But the guards saw her too."
He stepped closer. His voice dropped.
"I don't know what you are now. But I know this: if the palace has two queens again, only one of them makes it out whole."
He handed her a piece of black clay.
Unfired. Cold.
Etched with a symbol.
The broken circle. The flame.
"I found it in the kiln when I came back here. It wasn't here before. You tell me who it was ma
de for."
Then he left.
And she was alone.
With the shard.
With the past.
With herself.
---
PART 3: THE TRIAL OF THE MIRROR COURT
It wasn't called a trial.
Officially, it was a "clarification of oaths."
But everyone knew what it meant when the Queen summoned a girl at dawn, behind closed screens, with no witnesses but her shadow.
The court chamber was not used.
This one took place in the Pavilion of Clouds—where the light was soft, and the walls were silk, and what was said could vanish like smoke.
Seorin arrived without invitation.
She didn't need one anymore.
She slipped in with the ladies of the fifth court and stood at the back, still as glass. Yeonhwa trailed behind her, eyes downcast, already trembling.
Because the girl who knelt before the Queen was one of Yeonhwa's own.
A linen maid.
Young.
Shaking.
Eyes wide, but not from guilt.
From certainty.
Seorin watched the Queen.
She was dressed too simply.
Plain robes. No jewelry. Hair half-loose.
But her eyes… were sharper than Seorin remembered seeing in weeks.
She looked more awake than she had in months.
Too awake.
"State your words again," the Queen said, voice even.
The girl swallowed.
"I—I said I saw you in the northern corridor."
"And?"
"And then I saw you again. In the west gate. Not a minute later."
"Could I have passed unseen?"
"No," the girl whispered. "You passed me both times. And looked directly at me."
The Queen tilted her head.
Her smile was soft.
"Then perhaps I am everywhere."
The court chuckled, nervously.
The girl did not.
"She looked like you," the girl said. "But she walked like someone else. Like her bones weren't the same."
The Queen's gaze cooled.
"Whose bones, then?"
"…The other you."
Seorin felt her own stomach tighten.
The Queen stood.
Walked forward—slowly.
The entire room stilled.
"I will ask one more question," she said.
Her voice dropped.
Soft. Dangerous.
"What color was her ribbon?"
The girl blinked. "Her… what?"
"She wore a ribbon," the Queen said. "She always did, even before she forgot. What color was it?"
Seorin's blood turned to ice.
Only she would know that.
Only Seorin.
The ribbon had been her own—sea-gray silk, frayed at the edges. From her childhood. Always worn at the base of her braid, tucked beneath layers.
A part of herself no one in the palace ever noticed.
Except her.
Except the Queen.
The girl hesitated.
Then said: "Gray."
The Queen smiled.
Turned.
And said, "Take her."
Two guards moved forward.
"But—!" the girl started.
She never finished.
Seorin stepped forward instinctively.
But Yeonhwa gripped her sleeve.
"Don't."
She didn't.
And the girl was gone.
---
That night, Seorin passed by the Pavilion of Clouds again.
There was no sound.
But the candle in the Queen's chamber window had gone out early.
As if she didn't need the light anymore.
---
PART 4: THE BURNING MASK
The smell hit her first.
Char.
Ash.
Something acrid, old, and personal.
Seorin stepped into her chamber and saw the mask lying on her bedding.
Not stored. Not hidden.
Placed.
Face-up.
The red lacquer blistered. The gold edges warped. The wood blackened around the eyeholes, as if something had looked through it while burning from the inside out.
Her fox mask.
The one she'd worn to the solstice masquerade.
The one the mirror had smiled with.
Now ruined.
And warm.
Still.
Seorin didn't move.
Didn't touch it.
Yeonhwa entered behind her, carrying folded robes.
She saw it. Stopped.
Then, after a breath, whispered, "You didn't leave it there."
Seorin said, "No."
Yeonhwa stepped back without being asked.
The meaning was clear.
Someone had come into the room.
Someone who didn't need a door.
---
It was nearly midnight when Seorin returned to the old kiln.
She carried nothing.
Not even her name.
She walked barefoot through the soot.
The room smelled of stone and burned glaze.
The furnace sat like a god with its mouth open—cold now, its last flame gone years ago.
But beside it—
A worktable.
And on it—
A new mask.
Half-finished.
The shape unmistakable.
Fox-faced. Narrow. Elegant.
Her own.
But the lacquer was wet.
Still setting.
Not red.
Not yet.
The undercoat was bone-white.
Seorin leaned closer.
And saw that beneath the lacquer…
Something pulsed.
Very faintly.
As if the mask had already begun breathing.
---
She didn't stay.
She turned.
And walked back through the soot.
Leaving the unfinished face behind.
But as she left—
The kiln behind her sighed.
Like something exhaling through teeth.
And smiling.
---
PART 5: THE FACE THAT LIES
The ancestral shrine hadn't been opened in weeks.
Dust lined the candle bowls. The floor was undisturbed. The offerings had not been replaced. Yet the incense burned.
Fresh.
Seorin stepped over the threshold and into the dark, her breath catching in the throat of her memory.
The mirror stood at the center of the chamber, just as it had the day she first realized what was haunting her wasn't after her—
It was her.
And she wasn't alone.
The Queen stood on the other side of the mirror.
No guards.
No attendants.
No mask.
Only silence between them.
And that terrible reflection.
Seorin's voice was calm.
"Hayeon."
The Queen didn't blink.
She answered, "Seorin."
And both names were true.
They stepped forward at the same time.
Two figures. One face.
Two souls. One body.
One truth.
But not enough room.
The mirror fogged.
Not from breath.
From within.
A condensation of memory—too much of it. The surface blurred, shimmered, cracked faintly at the edge.
Seorin watched her reflection.
It tilted its head—but not as she did.
Off-beat. Too slow.
Behind it, the Queen's eyes darkened.
"I dreamed of your death," she said softly.
"I lived mine," Seorin replied.
"You took my name."
"You gave it up."
"You broke the crown."
"No," Seorin said. "I split it."
The Queen raised her hand.
So did Seorin.
Their fingers met the mirror at the same moment—
But only one touched glass.
The other's hand went through.
Seorin gasped.
Her own reflection—
Gone.
Vanished like breath in winter.
Only the Queen remained, staring back.
Her voice low.
"I remember now."
Seorin stumbled back.
The
mirror cleared.
There was only one woman in it.
And she was not the one standing in the room.
---