Anya
I watch until the weeping girl is hauled away by two senior servants. Livia’s casual cruelty leaves a stain in the air, more permanent than the water spot on her dress. My knuckles are bone white where I grip the wicker basket. Power. That is the only language they understand. The power to hurt, to dismiss, to destroy. My first life taught me that kindness is a vulnerability. This life will be a lesson in wielding power from the shadows.
I turn and deliver the linens to Livia’s chambers. The rooms are already filled with her cloying rosewater perfume. The scent of my betrayal. I move silently, a ghost in my own home, and leave without being seen.
The work in the laundry is endless, a cycle of filth and steam designed to break the body and dull the mind. My hands are raw, my back a constant, screaming ache. But the pain is a useful anchor. It reminds me I am no longer Empress Ophelia, draped in silks. I am Anya, caked in lye, and Anya must be smarter. Stronger.
“Your hands are bleeding again,” Lena says a few days later, her voice flat with exhaustion as we scrub the Crown Prince’s hunting cloaks. The fabric is thick with mud and the metallic scent of dried blood.
“It’s nothing,” I say, plunging my hands back into the scalding water. The sting is sharp, welcome.
“It’s everything,” she mutters. “This is our life, Anya. Buckets and bleach until we’re too old to lift a paddle.”
“There are other lives,” I say, my voice low.
Lena gives a short, bitter laugh. “Not for us. We’re born to this. We die in this.”
Her words are meant to be a final judgment, but they spark a fire in my mind. She’s wrong. I have died once already. I will not be buried in this place. I need a way out. A way up. Not into the spotlight, not yet. I need a quiet place. A place with information. With secrets.
The Palace Archives. The thought arrives with the clarity of a lightning strike.
But a laundry maid cannot simply walk into the archives. I need a patron. Someone with influence, but someone overlooked by Valerius and his circle. Someone who would see a clever, helpful girl as an asset, not a threat.
The Empress Dowager, Aurelia.
Valerius’s stepmother. The late Emperor’s second wife. A woman of quiet dignity, now relegated to her secluded wing of the palace, her days consumed by chronic, agonizing pain in her joints. In my first life, the court physicians tried everything. Nothing worked, not until a visiting herbalist from the Summer Isles suggested a rare poultice, years from now. But I remember something else. A whisper from a lady-in-waiting. She spoke of a fluke discovery, a tea that eased the Dowager’s suffering for a few precious months before the supply ran out, its source a mystery.
I know that source. I remember walking with my own physician through the palace grounds, shortly after I became Empress. He pointed to a small, pale flower growing in the cracks of a crumbling fountain in the abandoned Sunstone Conservatory. A Ghost Orchid, he’d called it. He said ancient texts claimed it could “cool fire in the bones,” but that it was incredibly rare, almost a myth. I had filed the information away as a curiosity. Now, it is the key.
“What are you smiling at?” Lena asks, eyeing me with suspicion. “Did you get into the cooking sherry?”
“Just thinking,” I say, my smile turning into a mask of placid obedience. “Thinking that this cloak is finally clean.”
My chance comes two days later. I am tasked with hauling away spoiled rushes from the Dowager’s wing. It is near the Sunstone Conservatory, a place no one has entered for decades, ever since a section of the glass roof collapsed in a storm.
I find an excuse, telling the guard I need to relieve myself in the gardens. He waves me on without a second look. I am Anya. I am nothing.
The conservatory doors are rotted and locked, but a large pane of glass is missing near the ground. I slip through the opening, my rough dress catching on a shard. The air inside is thick with the smell of damp earth and decay. Greenery runs wild, vines strangling statues of forgotten nymphs. Sunlight streams through the broken roof, illuminating a world left to die.
And there, just as I remember, is the fountain. It’s covered in moss, the water long since dried up. But growing from a fissure in the marble basin are three small, delicate flowers. They are a translucent, ghostly white, with a single, deep purple spot at their heart. The Ghost Orchid.
I carefully pluck two of them, wrapping the precious stems in a spare handkerchief. I have the cure. Now I need the physician.
Physician Alaric is an old man, kind and competent, but utterly conventional. In my past life, I knew him to be perpetually frustrated by his inability to help the Empress Dowager. I also know he takes a constitutional walk through the lesser rose gardens every afternoon after his consultations, a creature of absolute habit.
I wait for him near the path, my heart a steady, cold drum in my chest. I hold one of the orchids in my hand. When he approaches, his brow furrowed in thought, I step forward and drop into a deep curtsy, forcing my expression into one of timid awe.
“Physician Alaric,” I say, my voice a soft murmur.
He stops, startled. He squints down at me, his eyes clouded by age. “Do I know you, child?”
“No, sir. I am Anya. From the laundry service.” I keep my gaze fixed on the gravel path. “Forgive my boldness. But I… I found this. In the old gardens. My grandmother, she was a village healer. She used to say a flower like this was a gift from the gods for those with fire in their bones.”
I hold out the single, pale bloom. It’s a calculated risk. The story is simple, rustic, and just plausible enough.
Alaric’s gaze shifts from me to the flower. His expression is dismissive at first, the look of a learned man confronted with folk nonsense. “Child, the palace has dozens of gardeners and herbalists. We do not rely on old wives’ tales.”
“Of course, sir. I am foolish.” I make to pull my hand back, a picture of shame. “I will not bother you again.”
“Wait.” His voice is sharp. He takes a step closer, his eyes narrowing as he truly looks at the flower for the first time. His professional curiosity overrides his skepticism. “Let me see that.”
He takes the orchid from my hand, his fingers surprisingly gentle. He holds it up to the light, turning it over and over. A flicker of something, recognition or just deep thought, crosses his face.
“Fire in the bones,” he mutters to himself. “There was a passage in one of Elspeth’s ancient herbals… considered a myth. Never seen a proper specimen.” He looks at me, his gaze suddenly intense. “Where did you say you found this?”
“In the old Sunstone place, sir. By the broken fountain.” I am careful to keep my voice small, my answers simple. “I was not supposed to be there.”
He ignores my confession. His mind is clearly racing elsewhere. “Extraordinary. The conditions would be… yes, it’s possible.” He looks from the flower back to me, a new respect in his eyes. “You say your grandmother used this?”
“She made a tea, sir. Just with the petals. For the old folks when the winter damp settled into their joints.” It’s a lie, but a good one.
“A tea,” he repeats, stroking his chin. He looks at me for a long moment, a silent debate happening behind his eyes. He is weighing the risk of using an unknown remedy against the certainty of the Dowager’s continued suffering. “And you have more of this?”
I nod, reaching into my pocket and producing the second flower, still carefully wrapped. “Only one other, sir.”
He takes it without a word. “Your name is Anya?”
“Yes, Physician.”
“Wait here.” He turns and walks briskly back toward the palace, the two pale flowers clutched in his hand like a lifeline.
I do as I’m told. I wait. An hour passes. The sun begins to dip below the palace walls, casting long shadows across the garden. Every passing guard makes my stomach clench. I could be flogged for speaking to a court physician, for being in this garden, for making up stories. But fear is a luxury I discarded in the fire.
Finally, a page in the Dowager’s livery approaches me. “You are Anya?”
I nod, my throat suddenly dry.
“The Empress Dowager requests your presence.”
I am led through corridors I have only ever scrubbed, into a wing of the palace I have never seen. The air here is warm, smelling of cinnamon and beeswax, not lye. I am brought before the Dowager’s private sitting room. Physician Alaric is there, standing by the side of a large, cushioned chair. In the chair sits a woman who looks a decade older than her fifty years, her face etched with lines of chronic pain. Her knuckles are swollen, her posture rigid.
Empress Dowager Aurelia. She fixes me with sharp, intelligent grey eyes.
“You are the girl,” she says, her voice thin but clear. “You found the flower.”
I sink into the lowest curtsy my body can manage. “I did, Your Majesty.”
“Physician Alaric prepared a tea from the petals,” she continues, her gaze unwavering. “For the first time in a year, the fire in my hands has cooled to embers.”
She flexes her fingers slightly, a small movement that is clearly a monumental victory.
Physician Alaric beams. “The effects are remarkable, Your Majesty. Truly a one in a million discovery.”
“Indeed,” the Dowager says, her eyes still on me. “A laundry maid with the eyes of a master herbalist. What a curious thing.”
My heart pounds. This is the moment. She is testing me.
“I am not smart, Your Majesty,” I say, keeping my eyes downcast. “I am just… observant. The flower was beautiful, and it reminded me of home. I feel only luck that it could bring you a moment’s peace.”
Humble. Lucky. Not threatening.
The Dowager is silent for a long time. The only sound is the crackling of the fire in the hearth.
“Luck should be rewarded,” she says at last. “A girl with such sharp eyes is wasted scrubbing floors. Tell me, Anya. What is it you desire? Gold? A position as a lady’s maid? Speak freely.”
This is it. The door is opening. I must choose the right one.
“Your Majesty is too kind,” I whisper, as if overwhelmed. “I am not worthy of such things. I… I am simple. But… I like the quiet. I like to read. The letters, the stories in old books. It is a foolish wish, I know.”
I let my voice trail off, planting the idea in her mind. Let her think it is her own.
“Reading?” A faint, amused smile touches her lips. “An unusual request. Most girls in your position would ask for silks and jewels.”
“I would not know what to do with such things, Your Majesty.”
She studies me again, her gaze penetrating. She sees a plain, earnest girl asking for a pittance. A quiet place with books. It is a request so modest it cannot possibly be a threat.
“Very well,” she says, making her decision. “Lord Valerius has little use for it, but the Palace Archives are still maintained. The Head Archivist is an old man who could use an assistant to fetch and carry. A quiet place for a quiet girl. Physician Alaric, see to it. She will be transferred in the morning.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I breathe, bowing so low my forehead nearly touches the floor. Relief, cold and sharp, washes through me. It worked.
“Do not thank me,” the Dowager says, a new, almost gentle tone in her voice. “Just keep your sharp eyes open for any more of those little white flowers.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
I am dismissed. As I walk out of the warm, cinnamon-scented room and back into the cold reality of the servant’s corridors, a real smile touches my lips for the first time in this new life. Lena thinks we are born to buckets and bleach. She is wrong.
The next morning, I trade my rough grey dress for a simple but clean dark blue one. I walk past the steaming laundry courtyard without a glance. I am led to a towering oak door at the base of the western tower. The Head Archivist, a man named Master Elian with skin like parchment, looks me over with disinterest.
“The Dowager sent you,” he says, his voice dry as dust. “Don’t touch anything unless I tell you to. Your job is to dust the shelves, fetch my meals, and bring me the scrolls I ask for. Nothing more. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master Elian,” I say with perfect humility.
He grunts and gestures for me to enter. I step across the threshold. The air is cool, filled with the intoxicating scent of old paper, leather, and ink. Rows upon rows of towering shelves stretch up into the shadows, each one packed with scrolls, ledgers, and leather-bound books. Histories of every noble family. Military campaign logs. Census data. Tax records. Grain storage manifests.
This is not a dusty room full of forgotten papers. It is an armory.
They have given me the keys to all their secrets. They think I am here to dust the shelves. They have no idea I am here to build a scaffold.
