The moon had not yet risen when Liora sat alone in the bathing hall, steam curling around her like mist in a battlefield.
No perfume tonight. No attendants. Only warm water and memory.
The Queen had made her move.
Liora had felt it in her bones before the banquet even began — that tightening of the air, the sudden attention to decorum, the quiet disappearance of neutral faces. She knew how war dressed itself in civility. Her father had once explained it in his study, the firelight flickering over a map of kingdoms long dead:
"Power doesn't shout," he had said. "It whispers… in the places no one looks."
She was now living in one of those places.
---
Jun, the young concubine she'd taken in, slept in the outer chamber. Her wounds were healing, but her fear had not faded. She spoke little, but listened to everything.
A valuable trait.
Liora noticed the way servants from other quarters had begun loitering outside her walls. Not spies exactly — not yet. But curiosity was always the first step.
She let them look. She let them wonder.
"She took in a bruised girl," they would whisper. "Perhaps she's building her own court."
Let them whisper. It was the only power she could wield right now.
---
In the nursery, her daughter had begun refusing to bow to the Queen's name during morning lessons.
"She says the Queen is only a lady in dark dresses," the nurse confessed nervously. "She says you wear brighter colors, so you must be the higher one."
Liora smiled, then gently corrected her daughter in front of the tutor. But when the child asked in private, "Is that wrong?" Liora only said:
"Sometimes being right is dangerous. So you must be clever instead."
The girl frowned, then nodded solemnly. She would learn.
Her son — calmer, quieter — had started imitating the King's hand gestures when playing with his toy soldiers. That, too, she filed away.
The court would soon learn that she was not the only threat wearing her colors.
---
That afternoon, Lady Wen paid a visit.
No formal announcement. No ceremony.
She arrived with a scroll on herbal treatments, pretending to talk about childbirth and incense. But her first words after the maids left were blunt:
"You cannot stay still."
Liora raised a brow. "Did you come to offer warnings, or advice?"
"Advice. And perhaps… a debt."
Lady Wen was not bold, but she was not unwise. Her daughter had just been betrothed to a northern prince, a move arranged by the Queen — but the Queen had not invited Lady Wen to the banquet's inner table.
She was loyal. But loyalty had its limits.
"If you protect the girls," Wen said softly, "they'll protect you. There are many who feel watched. Not many feel safe."
Liora studied her.
The Queen had built her power by enforcing fear. Liora could build hers by promising safety.
It would be slower. Harder.
But it would last.
---
That night, Liora ordered her household boundaries redrawn.
She carved out space in her courtyard for a study, expanded the maidens' wing, and assigned Jun to oversee the sorting of gift petitions — a task usually meant for a senior concubine's steward.
She also had fruit sent to the kitchens with a note:
"To be shared quietly with the unranked women who live beneath the shadowed halls."
The Queen silenced others by watching.
Liora protected others by being seen.
---
The next morning, a servant from the outer palace slipped a folded paper into her maid's basket.
Inside: a simple drawing. The image of a bird in flight, drawn by a child's hand — her daughter's, perhaps. But it was signed with a character Liora recognized:
"Hope."
Not written in court ink, but in peach blossom red.