Ju Xian's life was a quiet prison wrapped in silk.
Once, when a visiting official — a friend of her father's — came to dine, a
young maid spilled a pot of hot tea across the lacquered floor. The room
went silent. All eyes turned to Ju Xian.
Her father's stare burned through her.
She rose slowly, voice cold. "Is this how you serve your betters?"
The maid fell to her knees, trembling. Ju Xian, jaw clenched, slapped the girl
hard enough to echo through the hall.
The official nodded approvingly. Her father said nothing.
Inside, Ju Xian's heart cracked.
That night, under moonlight, she slipped into the maid's quarters with a jar
of salve and a warm cloth.
The girl flinched at first, but Ju Xian knelt and took her hands gently.
> "I had to act. It was never meant to be real."
She applied the salve carefully, then looked the girl in the eyes.
> "This house is built on masks. But I remember every kindness. And I will
never forget you."
From then on, the maid served Ju Xian in secret — not as a servant, but as
someone who had seen behind the mask.
From the moment she turned sixteen, her days were bound by etiquette, tea
ceremonies, ancestral offerings, and lectures on virtue. Her mother's sharp
tongue had been dulled by duty, and her father ruled the household with
silence and expectations.
> "Your future is already written," he told her. "Dignity. Marriage. Royal
duty."
Ju Xian never shouted. She never cried. But inside, her soul clawed at the
walls.
She learned the arts to perfection — music, embroidery, poetry — but her
passion was in apothecary scrolls she hid under her mattress. She secretly
brewed herbal infusions for sick servants. She once stitched a maid's torn
arm in the stables and warned her never to tell.
She was called proud at banquets. She let them believe it.
In her garden, she kept a small aviary — but she never let the birds stay
caged. Each morning, she opened the latch and whispered, "Return if you
wish."
And they always did.