Chapter 27 - The Lantern Room

The Silk of Fate

Chapter 27 – The Lantern Room

It was Yenli who arranged it.

She didn’t ask questions. She simply whispered, “There’s a disused tea room past the southern garden, beneath the carpentry wing. No one cleans there anymore. If you go after sundown…”

Lianhua understood.

She waited until the bells chimed the third hour past dusk.

Then slipped away.

The room was barely a room—more a covered alcove, its walls half-cracked and its floor scattered with dust and wood shavings. But a single lantern flickered near the window, and beside it…

He was already waiting.

She stepped in without a word. He rose to greet her, but didn’t move closer—giving her space to choose.

She did.

She sat beside him.

“You came,” Idran said.

“You waited,” Lianhua replied.

They didn’t touch.

They didn’t need to—not yet.

The silence stretched, but not uncomfortably.

Outside, the wind rustled the garden leaves. The lantern’s flame danced in its glass cage.

Finally, Lianhua spoke.

“They’ve warned me. Not just to stop. But to let go of whatever they think this is.”

“I know,” he said. “They spoke to me, too.”

“What did you say?”

He looked at her.

“That they’re too late.”

A breath caught in her chest.

Not because the words were sweet—but because they were solid.

Unshaken.

She turned to him, eyes sharp but soft.

“We don’t have forever,” she said.

“I don’t need forever,” Idran replied. “I need truth. As long as we can hold it.”

She nodded.

Then reached into her sleeve and pulled out a folded piece of parchment.

It was one of her poems.

Written in her own hand.

No pen name. No pseudonym. Just her.

She handed it to him.

He didn’t open it right away.

Instead, he looked at her like it was already the greatest gift he’d been given.

“I don’t want to live hidden,” she whispered.

“Then let us walk the edge,” he said. “Carefully. Together.”

For a long time, they sat in that little room of cracked walls and glowing light.

Two people against the noise.

Two people making space for something fragile, fierce, and quietly unstoppable.