Chapter 8 · free to read
The dead wives had begun to outrank the living ones. The living ones noticed before anybody else in the palace did.
Everything we sent her was true, and every piece of it worked, and not one piece could be used a second time without us. We did not buy her. We made ourselves a habit she could not break.
Jinghua rose that autumn faster than any living wife in the palace. Every rung of it was ours, and every rung was recorded before she stood on it.
Nine months we had worked in the space underneath the throne's notice. The summons in my hands was written by the throne itself.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.