The Cold Palace Bloom

Chen Wen had sneaked into the compound under the cover of darkness, slipping past watchful servants until he found Lian in the ancestral hall. She knelt before the incense burner, her mother's inkstone clutched to her chest. Shadows flickered along the carved wooden beams as sandalwood thickened the air. Lian's gaze was distant, lost in the ghosts of memory, her grip white-knuckled around the stone that had once shaped her mother's most defiant words. 

"Don't go," Chen Wen whispered, his voice raw. He dropped to his knees beside her, hands trembling as they hovered over her arm. "Flee with me. My uncle runs a tea caravan to the Silk Road—we could disappear. Start over." 

Lian turned to him, candlelight sharpening the angles of her grief. "And live as fugitives?" Her laugh was bitter, edged with something fragile yet unyielding. "You've read too many poems." 

Chen Wen swallowed, fingers curling into fists against the cold floor. "Then write your way out," he urged, pressing a mulberry paper scroll into her hands. The parchment was rough, smelling of ink and longing. Inside, the verses were wild—a tapestry of defiance woven from desert winds and boundless skies. 

Lian traced the characters with her thumb, her heart tightening. "The Emperor doesn't notice women like me," she murmured. 

Chen Wen grasped her wrist, urgent yet gentle. "Then make him see you." 

She stared at him, torn between the past she clung to and the future he offered. The ancestral hall loomed around them, walls carved with generations of men who shaped history while women faded into silence. 

A gust of wind fluttered the scroll's edge. The inkstone in her hands grew heavier, as if weighted by the unspoken words of those erased before her. 

"What if I fail?" Her voice wavered. 

Chen Wen's fingers tightened around hers. "Then you'll have tried. That's more than most dare." 

The silence between them swelled—a fragile bridge between despair and defiance. Beyond the wooden screens, the night stretched like an abyss, teeming with risks and possibilities. The inkstone bore the weight of history, but the scroll hummed with promise. 

Lian inhaled sharply, incense burning her lungs. She'd spent too long in shadows, bowing to a world that erased her. 

Perhaps it's time to carve my name into history. One stroke at a time.

She unrolled the parchment further. Chen Wen's verses spoke of endless roads, foreign dawns, voices carried by wind—not the polished poetry of court scholars but raw, untamed freedom. Something stirred in her chest, a buried yearning clawing its way to light. 

"I can't leave," she said softly. "Even if I wanted to." 

Chen Wen exhaled, frustration sharp in his gaze. "Why? Duty? A father who doesn't see you?" 

"Because of my mother." Lian glanced at the altar behind her, where her mother's name stood etched in wood. "She fought for her voice in a world that silenced her. If I run, I dishonor her." 

Chen Wen's shoulders sagged. He raked a hand through his hair. "Then fight, Lian. Find a way to be heard." 

She looked down at the inkstone, its surface worn smooth. Her mother had wielded it like a blade, carving defiance into parchment. Could she do the same? 

A noise echoed from the courtyard. Chen Wen stiffened, eyes darting to the screens. Footsteps. Lantern light flickered at the threshold. 

"Go," Lian hissed, thrusting the scroll back into his hands. "Now." 

Chen Wen hesitated, his gaze locking with hers. Then he vanished into the shadows as silently as he'd come. 

Lian pressed the inkstone to her chest, listening as the footsteps faded. Her heart pounded—not with fear, but resolve. 

The Emperor did not notice women like her. 

But he will her.