The medical wing kept no official records past two years. That was the rule. "Dust breeds rot," the head clerk liked to say. "Best to sweep clean."
But I've seen how this palace hides the truth by burning the paper, not the sin.
So I didn't look in the archives. I looked in the laundry lists.
Old ones. Discarded ledgers in the back of the servant quarters. Pages that no one bothers to destroy, because they don't look like secrets.
But that's where I found it.
A line from five winters ago:
Room 7C. 3 sheets spoiled, bloodstained. 1 subject discharged to garden detail. 1 reassigned to the Empress's herbal wing. ID: HL-017.
I felt the chill before I reached the bottom of the page.
HL. My initials.
They'd disguised the names but I know what 7C was.
That was the underground testing chamber.
They didn't just erase me.
They split the others.
I searched for HL-017 in the apothecary records. Nothing. But in the herb inventory logs, I found a note in different handwriting:
"HL-017 requires glove handling. Still shows sensitivity to ginger-based oils. Do not allow near fire treatments."
The initials matched someone I'd seen in the Empress's private wing—an older maid with burn scars she always hid under sleeves.
She wasn't just a servant.
She was one of the test subjects.
They didn't dispose of us.
They absorbed us.
Turned us into tools.
That night, I drew a quiet chart on rice paper in my quarters.
Four initials circled in ink.
Three dates.
One faction name:
The Empress's Herbal Circle.
It wasn't just medicine they experimented with.
It was obedience.
And I-Subject HL-wasn't supposed to live long enough to remember that.