Jia hadn't intended to stay the night. Her penthouse was closer to the office, quieter, hers. But something about the way the evening had folded in on itself had pulled her back to the house she never quite called home.
She stood by the vanity, towel-drying her hair, the silk of her nightdress clinging damply to her back. Her room was pristine as always, everything untouched since her last reluctant visit. The same pale wallpaper. The same heavy-framed painting her father had insisted on hanging above her bed. Nothing in this house ever changed unless it served the family name.
She heard it then—heels clicking sharply against the marble, deliberate and unhurried. Unmistakably, Linna.
Their rooms faced each other at the end of the west corridor, a design that once symbolized closeness. Now it felt like a standoff.
Then suddenly came a knock on her door. Jia didn't look up when the knock came. Linna never waited for permission anyway.
The door opened.
"How rare," Linna said, stepping in, arms folded. "The heir returns. Should I alert the staff to polish the silver?"
Jia sighed, placing the towel down. "Linna."
Her younger sister smiled, but it was the kind that never touched her eyes. "I saw your little performance today. Very thorough. Very... respectable."
"It wasn't a performance. It was a strategic proposal."
"Right. And yet Father barely blinked. Do you think maybe it's because strategy isn't enough anymore?"
Jia turned to face her fully. "Say what you mean."
Linna stepped further into the room, her gaze sweeping over the untouched bookshelves, the perfectly placed awards. "I mean you're losing. And you know it. You do everything right, and still, he doesn't see you. Because he doesn't want careful. He wants conquest."
"And you think that's you?"
Linna laughed, a low sound like glass sliding across ice. "I don't think. I know."
Jia's jaw tensed. "You don't win by stepping on everyone around you."
"No," Linna said, stepping close now, voice dropping. "You win by stepping over the ones who hesitate. You're brilliant, Jia. But brilliance isn't enough. You still flinch. You still care. And Father sees that as weakness."
Jia held her ground, her voice cool. "And you'll throw away your soul to be seen?"
Linna tilted her head. "It's already gone, jiejie. I gave it to the family years ago. You were just too busy painting edges around yours."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Linna gave a mock salute and turned to leave. "Good night, sister. Try not to dream of thrones."
The door shut.
Jia stood in the silence that followed, her reflection in the mirror sharper than she remembered. Her eyes burned, not from rage, but from something deeper—a knowing.
She wasn't ready to burn. Not yet. But the fire was already there. And one day, it would rise.
----
Lady Liang stood by the wide lattice window of the east wing, her delicate hands resting on the sill as the moon cast silver streaks across the gardens below. The house was quiet. But she had felt the tremor before it ever cracked the air.
She had heard the rise in Linna's voice, sharp and crisp as glass. She had heard Jia's steadier, cooler reply. It was always the same pattern. Fire and ice. Blades drawn not to kill but to wound, always precisely, always somewhere that would bruise.
From here, in her quiet observatory of a room, she couldn't hear words. But she didn't need to. She knew her daughters. Linna would strike first, cutting with ease, her words polished into knives by years of praise and favoritism. And Jia would respond not with fury, but with restraint. Always too restrained. She had learned the cost of too much softness in a house like this.
Lady Liang's reflection wavered in the glass—graceful, still beautiful, but faded like a painting exposed too long to sun and silence. Her robe was soft cream silk, a gift from her husband on her last birthday. He always gave her beautiful things. Things to wear. Things to show. Never anything to say.
Her gaze drifted beyond the gardens, to the path that led toward the guest quarters. She remembered when the house was full of laughter. When Jia and Linna were small and still unmarked by expectation. She remembered Jia crawling into bed beside her during storms, clutching her nightgown and whispering that she didn't want to be strong, not tonight.
And Linna—bright-eyed, fast-talking Linna—who had always wanted to win. Even games. Even affection.
Lady Liang was raised from a tender age to embody the virtues of obedience, grace, and unwavering support for her husband. Entrenched in a lineage that prized power and viewed emotional restraint as a strength, she became the silent pillar behind her husband's relentless pursuit of dominance. His family's legacy, steeped in generations of affluence and authority, dictated a belief in their inherent superiority—a belief he was determined to uphold and pass down.
Though she played her role with poise, Lady Liang's heart bore the weight of sorrow. She watched as her husband's insatiable appetite for control manipulated and strained the bonds within their family. Bound by tradition and duty, she felt compelled to maintain the facade, even as it fractured her spirit. Her empathy, often dismissed as weakness in their world, became a silent testament to her inner strength—a quiet resistance in a household ruled by ambition.
Their father had praised Linna's ruthlessness early. He called it clarity. Purpose. And she had learned quickly that love in this family came through performance. Jia, on the other hand, had always wanted to be enough just by being herself.
Lady Liang turned from the window, walking slowly to her vanity. She opened a drawer and pulled out an old photo—the three of them in a summer courtyard, Jia wearing oversized sunglasses, Linna holding a mango popsicle in one hand and pulling her sister's braid with the other.
Her eyes welled, but no tears fell.
She had loved her husband once. Or at least the boy he had been. Kind, curious, with wild dreams. But power had eaten that boy, and left a man obsessed with legacy. His love now belonged to dynasties and dividends.
And she, well—she had been trained to endure. To smile. To support him no matter what. And she had. Even as it hollowed her out. Even as she watched the same weight pass on to her daughters.
She tucked the photo back into the drawer and folded her hands in her lap. The house felt colder tonight. Heavier. And her daughters were burning from both ends of the same fire.
If only she had been braver. If only she had fought harder. But those were luxuries she had long since forfeited.
So instead, she sat still and Silent. And prayed that somehow, her daughters would find the courage she had once lacked. The courage to survive this inheritance—and to make it their own.