The Empress's garden was unlike any other in the palace. Hidden beyond a set of arched gates wrapped in silver ivy, it hummed with quiet power. No guards stood post, and few dared to speak of it. It was said the Empress walked there to speak to things older than time.
Elara had only seen it once, through the thin crack of a servant's door. A glimpse of moonflowers glowing beneath the night, a hush in the air that stilled even the wind.
She hadn't expected to be summoned there.
The guards at the gate had not spoken. They merely stepped aside, and the way opened.
Now, she stood beneath the weight of centuries. Vines curled through marble columns. Petals brushed her arms like ghosts. The very air shimmered with unseen memory.
At the garden's heart stood the Empress still as a statue, her silk robes pooling around her like spilled ink. Beside her stood Isla. The girl was calm, spine straight, golden braid glinting in the low light. Not like a child at all.
"Elara," the Empress said without turning, her voice smooth and cool as the garden mist. "Come."
Elara stepped forward. Her boots made no sound on the moss-laced path. The scents were strange wild mint, star-anise, crushed moonlily. Everything around her pulsed with a quiet, watching tension.
"I trust Ana woke you in time," the Empress said.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Elara replied, bowing slightly.
A pause stretched. Intentional. Testing.
"You've been in the palace for weeks," the Empress said, "and yet… you still walk like a servant."
Elara's hands tightened at her sides. "I was a servant. That doesn't vanish overnight."
At that, the Empress half-turned.
It was subtle, but Elara's breath caught.
There, resting against the Empress's throat just visible above the edge of her gown was a pendant. Iridescent, flickering with hidden flame. Not identical to Elara's, but carved in the same language.
As if they'd been shaped by the same hand, from the same impossible glass.
She reached instinctively beneath her own cloak, fingers brushing the pendant at her chest.
"Do you believe in legacy?" the Empress asked.
Elara blinked.
"I… I'm not sure."
The Empress walked on, and Isla moved with her silent, steady, as if drawn by gravity.
"Most legacies are illusions," the Empress said.
"Fathers pass down burdens.
Mothers pass down silence.
We inherit scars, not crowns."
Isla glanced up, gold hair catching in the wind. She looked at Elara open, thoughtful. Unafraid.
"You summoned me," Elara said. "Why?"
The Empress stopped. Turned fully now.
Her gaze met Elara's, cool and unreadable.
"You remind me of someone."
Elara's stomach dipped. "Who?"
"She stood in this garden once," the Empress said.
"Before she forgot her place."
Elara swallowed. "Was it… my mother?"
The Empress's lips curved, but it wasn't a smile.
Not quite. "She was a maid.
Common.
Poor.
Not clean enough to walk these paths. And yet she came.
Pregnant.
Foolish. Believing love could lift her."
Elara's chest ached. She stepped forward before she realized.
"My mother " she began, but the Empress cut her off with a glance.
"She was a mistake."
Silence cracked the air like ice.
Elara couldn't speak. Could barely breathe.
But Isla did.
"That's not what the garden remembers." she said quietly.
The Empress turned slowly toward her.
"Excuse me?"
Isla met her eyes without fear. "You said people leave scars. But gardens remember seeds. Not shame."
The Empress stared at her for a long, long moment.
Something old flickered across her face.
Then, without a word, she turned and walked away, silk brushing the moss.
Isla lingered. Her gaze found Elara's soft, but firm.
And then she too was gone.
Only the garden remained.
A wind stirred the leaves. From deeper within, a low chime rang out soft, sorrowful, like glass remembering a song it had once sung.
Elara turned toward the sound.
For a heartbeat, she felt pulled like something in her bones knew this place, this song, this grief.
But when she turned back, the path was empty.
She wasn't sure how long she stood there.
Back in her chamber, Elara closed the door behind her and slumped against it.
Her pulse still hadn't settled.
She reached beneath her collar and drew out the pendant.
It glimmered softly in the low light, pulsing like a living thing.
The Empress had one, too. That wasn't coincidence.
That was a link.
Elara's thoughts spiraled questions she couldn't shape, truths she didn't know how to hold.
She didn't hear the shift in the shadows until it was too late.
"I should ask how you keep getting in," she said softly.
M emerged from the gloom by the window.
"You won't get an answer."
His smile was faint, but his eyes were sharp.
"Did you know?" she asked.
"About my mother?
That she might've been… more?"
M didn't speak right away.
His gaze lingered on her on the weight behind the question, on the fear coiled beneath it.
"She was more than you were told," he said at last.
"But power makes people rewrite stories. You know that."
Elara looked away. "The Empress called her a mistake."
"And you believed her?" M asked quietly.
"I don't know what to believe."
M stepped closer.
His fingers brushed the edge of the pendant.
Then believe what your heart tells you.
"Because the truth won't come from thrones. It won't come from whispers. It comes from blood. From fire."
Elara closed her eyes.
"I think," she whispered, "my mother wasn't just a servant."
"No," M said. "She wasn't."
Before she could ask more, there was a knock.
"Elara?" Ana's voice came through. "May I come in?"
M melted into shadow. Gone, just like that.
Elara opened the door.
Ana stepped inside, hands on her hips. "You look pale."
"I'm fine," Elara said.
Ana eyed her.
"Was the garden terrible?"
Elara blinked.
"Terrible?"
Ana shrugged.
"They say no one comes back from there the same. That it shows you who you really are."
Elara didn't answer.
Instead, she looked toward the corner where M had stood.
Then down at the pendant in her palm.
Her mother had walked that garden once.
Carried her in silence.
Loved in defiance.
And whatever shame the Empress had wrapped her in, it hadn't broken her.
She had left behind more than whispers.
She had left fire in her daughter's blood.
And fire remembers.