Shen Zhiwei kneels on the flagstones, her knees long since numb.
In the bronze mirror before her is a bloodless face, finely featured but as fragile as a porcelain doll. The governess’s dry, withered hands press hard on her shoulders. Her voice is like sandpaper scraping a tabletop. “Remember this, Miss Shen. Once you enter the palace gates, your life is no longer your own. You are both a mistress and a servant. When you smile, show eight teeth. When you cry, don’t make a sound.”
She lowers her eyes, rubbing a cold silver needle between her fingertips inside her sleeve. It is the only keepsake her mother left her, an embroidery needle used to pick out threads.
“The governess is right,” she says, her voice so faint it could be carried away by the breeze.
Outside the window, a piercing bird cry cuts through the sky.
Shen Zhiwei raises her head and looks through a gap in the window lattice at the towering palace walls. Outside is the world of the living; inside is hell. She did not come here to become a favored concubine, nor for the favor of the Son of Heaven.
She came to drag every person who caused her mother’s death into this abyss to join her.
Even if she has to become a vengeful ghost herself.
