Morning Glory Never Returns

My older sister was a palace maid who attended to the empress's hair and makeup. After the emperor and empress quarreled, the empress took out her anger by having every servant in the palace beaten with rods, including my sister. The emperor and empress made up again a moment later. But my sister was beaten to death. She had always been careful with her words and actions, and had done nothing wrong. Yet she died the day before she was due to leave the palace. I later took my sister's place as the empress's makeup maid. But she doesn't know that my family has passed down two branches of the same craft: my sister did the living's yang makeup, while I do the dead's yin makeup.