Liora heard the poem first from a handmaiden delivering tea.
"Did you hear what they're saying now?" the girl whispered, clumsy with sympathy. "About a flower that bloomed out of season…?"
Ami tried to hush her, but Liora raised a hand. "Let her speak."
The maid faltered. "They say it's about you, my lady. But… it's just words."
Liora said nothing.
Words were never just words in the palace.
---
She read the poem that evening, delivered anonymously among the scrolls offered by a poetry circle of minor consorts. The phrasing was delicate, the calligraphy too skilled to be amateur.
Elira's signature, without the name.
Liora read it twice.
Then set it gently into the brazier.
Smoke curled around her fingers like the ghost of a knife.
---
She no longer wept. Not since the child was taken from her.
Now, her grief had folded itself into a quiet armor.
But even armor could crack under silence.
The next morning, none of the consorts spoke to her directly. Two turned away when she entered the pavilion. One, Lady Hua, simply smiled and said nothing — which was almost worse.
Isolation was a palace death.
---
That afternoon, Liora went to the Southern Courtyard — where the lesser consorts often gathered to paint, read, or pretend at peace.
She wore no jewels. Just a robe of soft yellow and pale green, modest but unmistakably elegant.
She greeted the women first.
She listened as one told a story of her childhood, another complained of the cold, and a third showed her a painting of a fox beneath a plum tree.
Liora complimented them all.
When one asked her opinion of the Queen's last banquet, she answered lightly:
"The soup was too salty. But the mood was sweet."
Laughter followed. Genuine or not, it did the work.
---
Later, she found Lady Mei in the herb garden, checking on her daughter's medicine.
Liora didn't ask permission.
She simply sat beside her on the low bench, watching the snow melt from the stone path.
"Did you lose anything today?" Liora asked.
Lady Mei blinked. "Only a sandal."
"I lost a future," Liora said softly. "But I intend to build another."
Mei said nothing, but her fingers tightened around the jar of ginseng she held.
"I don't need loyalty," Liora continued. "I need someone who understands that this place devours the silent."
Lady Mei finally looked at her. "And if I speak?"
Liora smiled, just a little. "Then we stop being prey."
---
By nightfall, a new rumor had begun — this time too soft to trace, too quiet to name.
That Lady Liora still had the King's attention.
That she had not wept over her lost child, but had smiled at the moon.
That the Queen had summoned her twice — not once.
And that Lady Mei had shared tea with her, and left with a bracelet of pearl.
---
In the palace, power moved on whispers.
And Liora had just begun to speak.