The palace is quiet when it's loudest.
Silence here is never empty it's full of watching eyes, hidden hands, and mouths that speak through glances. It didn't take long for the other servants to start avoiding me. I was the one who'd spoken out. The one who'd seen what wasn't meant to be seen. In the Back Courtyard, that's as good as signing your death warrant in gold ink.
They moved my sleeping mat to the far edge of the servant hall. My porridge grew thinner. The younger maids stopped looking me in the eye. Good. Let them keep their distance. It's easier that way.
Because the Empress didn't dismiss me.
She summoned me.
Her quarters smelled of sandalwood and frost. She sat on a dais of pale silk, her face painted like porcelain, her fingers coiled with jade rings that glinted when she moved.
"You see more than you should," she said.
I bowed. "I see what's there."
"And what do you see now?"
A trap. Obvious, polished, and lethal.
I met her gaze. "A test."
Her painted lips curved. "Clever girl."
She stood, drifting toward me like mist with a crown. "Someone in my circle wants me dead. You'll help me find them."
"I'm a servant," I said carefully.
"No. You're a key."
A key to what, she didn't say.
That night, I returned to my corner with a mark burned into my thoughts: I wasn't here by accident. No one sells a girl with a perfect nose for poison to the palace for one coin. Not unless someone wanted me here.
And someone did.
In the quiet hours, I traced the mark on my wrist—the one I always kept hidden. The faint line of ink beneath my skin had begun to stir again. Warm. Faintly glowing. Reacting.
To what, I still didn't know.
But the closer I got to the Empress, the more it pulsed like a heartbeat not my own.
And I had the strangest feeling…
This wasn't my first time in this palace.