By morning, I was back in my uniform. Hair pinned. Slippers quiet. Spine straight.
Just another palace servant.
I bowed where I was supposed to. Poured tea without spilling. Refilled ink trays and fetched warm cloths. I didn't let my eyes linger on the woman who signed the erasure file the one who nearly burned me with her words.
She sat at the Inner Pavilion's head table, delicately peeling a lychee. Her hands, soft. Her sleeves, perfumed. Her gaze, cold as glass.
"Mei Lin," she said, smiling gently. "You're very quiet this morning."
I bowed. "Apologies, my lady. I did not sleep well."
"Well." She lifted the cup I poured. "Let the jasmine do its work."
I watched her fingers. I knew those fingers wrote the last line in that black ledger. Burn her if necessary.
But I smiled.
I served the others, listened as they gossiped. Eunuchs whispered about a missing clerk from the Records Hall. One maid giggled about Prince Zhen's new shadow servant a boy with no name and no past.
I gathered it all.
Not because I was nosy.
Because everyone in this palace is hiding something, and I've started remembering how to read the signs.
That night, I returned to my quarters and rewrote my notes on silk scraps, in invisible lemon ink. I sketched the symbols I'd seen in the lab. The initials signed beside my file.
H.D.
Her name is Hu Danyin. Royal physician. Trusted by the Empress.
Now I understand,
I wasn't erased because I was weak.
I was erased because I saw too much.
And I'm not done watching.