Echo of the Fallen Empress

Anya

The last thing I smell is my own skin burning. The scent is heavy, sickeningly sweet, like roasted meat left too long on the spit. My silk gown, the one embroidered with the imperial sunburst, melts into my flesh. Smoke claws at my lungs, thick and black. I try to scream, but only a dry, rattling gasp escapes.

“It’s a pity, my love.” His voice cuts through the roar of the flames, cool and untouched. Valerius. My husband. The Emperor. “But the empire needs a stronger heir than you can provide.”

I see his silhouette through the shimmering heat, standing just outside the locked doors of my bedchamber. He is not alone. A smaller, more slender shape is beside him, her hand resting on his arm.

“Don’t worry, cousin.” Livia’s voice is a silken poison. “I’ll take good care of him. And the throne.”

My cousin. My dearest friend. The woman I brought to court, who I trusted with my life. She leans her head on my husband’s shoulder. They watch me burn. The betrayal is an agony sharper than the fire. My world dissolves into orange and black, into a pain so absolute it becomes its own universe. My last thought is not of the empire, or my title, or my life. It is a promise, a curse screamed into the void.

You will pay.

Then, nothing.

Cold. A raw, damp cold seeps into my bones. The smell of fire is gone, replaced by the sharp, clean scent of lye and wet stone. My back aches, protesting a mattress stuffed with straw, not goose down. I blink my eyes open. Rough, grey stone ceilings loom above me, slick with condensation. This isn’t my bedchamber. This isn’t the imperial palace.

I sit up, my head spinning. A coarse linen shift, scratchy and thin, is all I wear. I look down at my hands. These are not the hands of an Empress. They are small and red, with chapped knuckles and calluses on the palms. My nails are cut short, with dirt lodged beneath them. Panic, cold and sharp, stabs through me. I swing my legs over the side of the narrow cot, my bare feet hitting a freezing stone floor. A bucket of water sits in the corner. I stumble toward it, my reflection rippling as I lean over.

A stranger stares back. A girl, no older than sixteen, with a thin face, wide, frightened brown eyes, and plain brown hair tied back in a messy knot. This is not my face. Not Empress Ophelia’s face, with its high cheekbones and violet eyes.

“Anya, get up!” A sharp voice cuts through my confusion. A stout woman with a weary face bustles past, throwing a folded bundle of rough clothes at my cot. “Head Laundress Marta will have our hides if we’re late with the morning collection.”

Anya. My name is Anya. The word feels alien on a tongue that doesn't feel like my own.

“Come on, girl. The Crown Prince’s party returns from the summer palace today. That means double the work.”

The Crown Prince. Not the Emperor. My mind latches onto the words, trying to make sense of them. Valerius has been Emperor for five years. But she said Crown Prince.

My body moves on autopilot. I pull on the drab grey dress and worn leather slippers. My limbs feel clumsy, uncoordinated. I follow the other girl, her name is Lena, out of the small dormitory and into a sprawling courtyard filled with steam and the rhythmic thwack of paddles against wet laundry. This is the servant’s quarter. I, who once ruled this palace, am now scrubbing its filth.

The day is a blur of work that breaks my new, soft body. My hands burn from the harsh soap. My arms ache from wringing heavy velvet cloaks. I keep my head down, my mind a maelstrom of impossible thoughts. Reincarnation? A trick of the gods? A nightmare from which I cannot wake?

By late afternoon, Lena shoves a basket of folded linens into my arms. “These are for the Rosewater Wing. Lady Livia’s chambers. Be quick, and for the gods’ sake, don’t get in anyone’s way.”

Livia. The name hits me like a physical blow. I clutch the basket, the wicker digging into my fingers. I walk through the familiar corridors of the palace, but from a perspective I’ve never known. I am invisible. Guards look past me, courtiers sweep by without a glance. I am part of the furniture.

As I round a corner into the main garden promenade, I hear their voices. His laugh, rich and confident. Hers, a tinkling bell of false sweetness.

“Honestly, Val, this palace is so dreary,” Livia is saying. She clings to his arm, resplendent in a gown of emerald green silk. She looks younger, her face free of the subtle lines of ambition that would later harden it. “When you are Emperor, we must redecorate. Everything in gold, I think.”

Valerius smiles down at her. He is just the Crown Prince here, his jawline sharper, his shoulders not yet burdened by the full weight of the crown, but the same casual arrogance is there in his eyes. He is handsome, I cannot deny it, a fact that now makes my stomach turn. “Whatever you wish, my dear. A golden cage for my beautiful songbird.”

They stop walking, bathed in the afternoon sun. He traces her cheekbone with his finger, and she leans into his touch. Lovers. Even then. Ten years before my death, they were already plotting. The basket in my arms trembles. The sight of them, so happy, so alive, while the memory of the fire still scorches my soul, fills me with a coldness that has nothing to do with the damp stone floors of the laundry.

It is real. I am ten years in the past. I am in a body that is not my own. And they are here, their futures stretching before them like a sunlit road. A road that will be built on my ashes.

As they turn to continue their stroll, a young maid, even younger than me, scurries past with a watering can. Her foot slips on a damp cobblestone, and a small splash of water arcs out, landing on the hem of Livia’s emerald gown.

The world seems to stop. Livia looks down at the dark spot on her silk dress as if she has been stabbed.

“You,” she says, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. The maid freezes, her face draining of all color. She looks like a terrified mouse cornered by a cat.

“I… I am so sorry, my lady,” the girl stammers, dropping into a low curtsy. “It was an accident.”

“An accident?” Livia’s laugh is sharp, brittle. “This gown came from the finest silk merchant in the Southern Isles. Its cost is more than your entire miserable life. Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Yes, my lady. Please, forgive me.” The girl is trembling so hard the watering can rattles against the stones.

Valerius watches, a lazy, amused smile on his lips. He makes no move to intervene. He enjoys this. He always did.

“Apologize properly,” Livia commands, her voice ringing with authority. She takes a step closer, looming over the girl. “On your knees.”

The maid hesitates for a fraction of a second. It is too long.

Livia’s hand flashes out, and she slaps the girl across the face. The sound is sharp, ugly in the quiet garden. The maid cries out, stumbling back and falling to the ground. The watering can clatters away.

“I said, on your knees,” Livia repeats, her voice like ice. “Now.”

Sobbing, the girl scrambles onto her knees, pressing her forehead to the cobblestones. “Forgive me, my lady. Please, forgive me.”

Livia watches her for a long moment, her expression one of utter satisfaction. She smooths a wrinkle from her dress. “See that you are not so clumsy again. Or I will have you flogged and thrown out of the palace.”

She turns, slipping her arm back through Valerius’s as if nothing happened. “Now, where were we, my prince?”

They walk away, their laughter drifting back on the breeze. Leaving the girl weeping on the ground.

I stand frozen in the shadows of the colonnade, the laundry basket clutched to my chest like a shield. My knuckles are white. The searing heat of the fire returns, but it is not in my skin anymore. It is in my heart. A cold, controlled inferno.

In my first life, I was Empress Ophelia. I was a ruler, a wife, a cousin. I was a fool. I tried to rule with compassion, to win loyalty with kindness. I thought their ambition could be managed, their cruelty tamed.

I see now. They do not deserve compassion. They deserve to be dismantled. Piece by piece.

They don’t know me. To them, I am Anya, a laundry maid. A ghost. Invisible. And from the shadows, a ghost can learn every secret, every weakness. I know their future. I know the conspiracies they will hatch, the famines they will ignore, the wars they will blunder into. I know the precise moments their power is most fragile.

They lit the match that burned my world to the ground. They have no idea that I am the spark that survived the ashes. And this time, I will be the fire.