"You were supposed to be the scapegoat," the Fifth Concubine admitted. "The Fourth Princess—weak, ignored, politically irrelevant. If you died from poison that created magical instability, if you became increasingly erratic and dangerous, if you eventually committed some act of violence against the Emperor in a poison-induced rage..."
She shrugged.
"Everyone would believe it. The unstable princess who finally snapped. Your death would be tragic but justified. And in the chaos of the succession crisis that followed, I thought—" She stopped. "I thought maybe the Harem would be forgotten. Maybe in the confusion, some of us could escape. Find new lives. Disappear."
"But I didn't die," Elara said.
"No. You adapted. You survived. You became *dangerous* in ways I didn't anticipate." The Fifth Concubine smiled slightly. "You're not the weak princess I thought you were. You're something else entirely."
Elara processed this information with her usual clinical detachment.
