Chapter 11 - The Princess in the Shadow of Towers

The Silk of Fate

Chapter 11 – The Princess in the Shadow of Towers

There were seven towers visible from Lianhua’s chamber.

Each one a marvel of Yuan architecture—arched roofs, glazed tiles, dragons carved into stone like frozen thunder. Foreign emissaries often stood at her window, awed by the view. “You must feel like a goddess,” one had once said. She had smiled politely. She always did.

But the truth was simpler.

The towers were beautiful.

But they also watched her.

Lianhua woke before the bells. Always did.

She liked the moments before the palace stirred—before maids tiptoed in with their quiet eyes and folded hands, before her aunt arrived with questions about marriage prospects, and her uncle reminded her for the seventh time that diplomacy was a woman’s highest virtue.

She sat by the window, brushing her hair in silence, staring at the seventh tower.

The one without a bell.

The one the Emperor never entered.

She opened her journal and dipped her brush into ink.

A body may be caged by gold and stone.
But a mind must be trained gently,
Or it will find its way through walls.

She signed the line with her pen name, not her given one.

Jun Cao—”the hidden reed.”

She had published three essays under it in the last year. One on the contradictions of imperial tax law. One on the gendered politics of Confucian rites. And one—deliberately vague—on the morality of arranged marriages for statecraft.

No one suspected the author lived three doors down from the Empress’s receiving room.

At least, not yet.

Her maid, Yenli, entered quietly with a tray of tea.

“They’ve confirmed the guest list,” she said. “A prince from Tumapel will be among the envoy.”

Lianhua paused mid-sip.

“Tumapel?”

“Yes. The second son.”

She raised a brow. “Not the heir?”

“No,” Yenli said, carefully. “Some say he’s being sent away. Others say he asked to come.”

Lianhua sipped again, slow and thoughtful. “That’s unusual.”

Yenli smiled faintly. “So are you.”

In the court, Lianhua was known as the soft one.

She did not shout. She did not scheme. She bowed deeply, spoke clearly, and never contradicted her elders.

But they missed what lay beneath all that grace.

Lianhua read more than they allowed.

She listened to guards who thought she was asleep.

She slipped between worlds—palace and page, silk and ink—with the precision of a blade too thin to see.

That evening, as sunset drenched the courtyard in bronze, she walked alone to the scholar’s terrace—a small marble platform overlooking the gardens, meant for reflection.

She brought no guards.

Only a book.

And a question she could not name.

A foreign prince was coming.

Not to marry her, of course. Not officially. But foreign men had a way of becoming options. Pieces in larger games.

She had danced this court too long not to see the ripples in the water.

But what she wondered most wasn’t who he was.

It was why the idea of him—this man she hadn’t met—unsettled her.

Not like a threat.

Like a storm just beneath the horizon. Not yet here.

But moving.

Let him be cruel, and I will endure.
Let him be kind, and I will question.
But if he is like me… what then?