I woke later than usual.
Not out of laziness. Perfection does not oversleep. It simply waits until the day is worthy of being seen.
The light had already begun its slow entrance, filtering through the lattice screens in pale, polite shafts. As if asking permission to exist in my presence. I allowed it.
I didn't stretch this time. I didn't sigh. I simply opened my eyes and existed.
My sister was already brushing my hair.
She did not speak. Good. There is something sacred about silence before reflection. The kind of hush reserved for glass museums and coronation mornings. Her hands moved with trained precision: twelve strokes down, one curve around the crown, pause, repeat.
Outside, the morning was being prepared.
I could feel it. The quiet movements of servants adjusting the garden paths, the last-minute floral alignments, the water temperature being calibrated for today's ceremony. It always took a hundred hands to make me appear effortless.
"Your posture is off," I said softly.
She adjusted behind me. No protest. No question. Just correction. I approved.
"Garden or balcony?" she asked after a moment.
I considered.
The balcony offered height. Majesty. But I'd been seen there too often lately. Routine breeds expectation. Expectation breeds equality. I disliked both.
"The pavilion," I said. "The East Garden. They've forgotten how grand I look beneath flowering arches."
"Yes, Brother."
She moved to the wardrobe without further prompt. Every robe in the chamber had been tailored along five aesthetic axes: season, symbolism, symmetry, shade, and silhouette. Today, she selected a soft ivory outer cloak with a narrow lilac border and silver-threaded embroidery in the shape of ascending vines.
It would make my throat look longer.
Excellent.
I stood and allowed her to dress me. I did not lift my arms. Dignity does not assist. She moved like a sculptor assembling a statue one layer at a time. Only when she stepped back did I glance at the full-length mirror.
I looked as I should.
"Have the tea prepared," I said. "And inform the guests I'll arrive precisely nine minutes late. Not more. Not less."
"Understood."
She bowed slightly and left without another word.
I stared at myself for three full breaths longer.
Then I smiled.
Not because I felt joy. But because I had decided the day would deserve it.
The Pavilion awaited me like a stage. Wide columns of pale blue marble held up a ceiling of latticed ivory, its edges braided with living silvervine and snowroses. The scent was engineered. Subtle, clean, aspirational. Not floral. Never floral. Floral was for followers.
At the center, a low circular table stood ready. Cushions flanked it in pairs. The center-most was mine, elevated by exactly seven centimeters. It wasn't for comfort. It was for clarity.
The guests were already seated. Good. They'd been taught well.
Three of them today. All minor branch nobles. Youths with polished manners and barely-developed affinities. Tokens of lineage, not threats.
One boy rose slightly at my approach. He attempted a bow mid-kneel. The motion was elegant enough, but his eyes lingered too long on my cloak. I noted it.
Another kept his head down the entire time. Hands folded on his lap like a shrine offering. Acceptable. Almost charming.
The girl did not move.
She was pretty in the way artificial things often are. Symmetry without soul. White robes, violet sash. Hair like dark silk. Her gaze followed me to my cushion and remained there.
And then she spoke.
"Isn't the air especially clear today?"
Not after being addressed. Not as a reply. Not even as a question.
Just spoken. Into existence. Uninvited.
My fingers paused above the rim of the teacup. Not visibly. But I felt the pause ripple through the moment like ink dropped in water.
Silence followed.
Not loud. Not charged. Just long enough for her to realize she had stepped into the wrong type of conversation.
I did not look at her. I let the moment hold.
Then: "Is it?"
She hesitated. "I… I only meant—"
"I heard what you meant," I said, finally meeting her gaze. "The Pavilion always grants clarity. It has never needed commentary."
Another pause.
The second boy coughed. Far too softly for it to be real.
I raised the teapot and poured.
Each motion was deliberate.
One. Two. Three concentric circles from pot to cup. The ritual spiral.
My sister had steeped the leaves to exact precision. Just below the bitterness curve. A personal formula. I had made her rewrite it twelve times last year until it no longer offended me.
I filled their cups last.
They did not drink.
Not yet.
I sipped first. Eyes half-lidded. The way portrait artists like to paint me. The taste was flawless. Naturally.
"You may proceed," I said.
They raised their cups like supplicants in a temple.
Only after the first sip did the girl lower her gaze.
Good.
I allowed the conversation to resume, carefully controlled. Questions were asked about the Affinity Ceremony, about court politics, about minor petitions from branch families. All were phrased with the correct distance, the correct reverence. I answered some. Others I let hang.
They didn't come here for dialogue. They came for proximity.
To sit beneath flowering arches and be seen basking in me.
By the end, all three were smiling the way people do when they've survived something dangerous and believe it made them stronger.
I stood.
They bowed. This time correctly.
The girl hesitated half a breath longer than the others, as if waiting for something more. Praise, a jest, a reprieve.
I offered none.
Mercy would've been a confession.
The East Garden curved gently downhill. Paved in veined stone and flanked by trees that had been trained since saplinghood to lean at reverent angles. The entire courtyard had been sculpted to imply motion. Each pathway drawing the eye inward, toward me.
The attendants followed at a respectful distance. My sister walked three paces behind. Hands folded. Head tilted slightly toward the sound of my footsteps. I could always tell when she was listening too closely.
I didn't speak. I was still thinking about the girl.
Not because her comment had wounded me. Please.
But because I'd forgotten to punish her properly.
That lapse disturbed me.
It was the kind of thing lesser men did. Overlook an insult in favor of social ease. But I was not lesser. I was not even equal. And yet, in the moment, I had chosen not to respond.
Had I felt pity?
No. That was impossible. I didn't do pity.
I paused at the edge of the central path, watching the gardeners prune the creeping bloomshade from the western trellises. They worked silently, in formation. Even their shears were aesthetically aligned. Lacquered white handles. Sharpened to decorative sharpness.
One of them moved wrong.
He stepped outside the permitted pruning arc. Just a few centimeters. But I saw it.
"You're walking like a dog with bad lineage," I called.
He froze.
Then bowed. "Apologies, Your Radiance."
"Don't apologize. Just move beautifully."
He did. Better, this time.
I moved on.
The silvervine trees rustled as I passed. Not with wind. There was no wind today. They moved like dancers trained to react to proximity. A good feature. Someone had programmed that. I made a note to compliment the arbiter of landscaping aesthetics. Eventually.
And then I saw it.
Beneath the third tree on the eastern line. A single leaf let go.
Not dramatically. Not poetically.
It simply detached.
That wasn't unusual. Leaves fall. Even here. Even in perfection.
But this one did not fall.
It hung in the air.
Still.
Perfectly still.
Not drifting. Not rotating. Just suspended in open space. Halfway between branch and ground.
I stopped walking.
My sister nearly stepped too close. I didn't speak. She adjusted silently.
The leaf didn't move.
My first thought: clever engineering. A floating sculpture. Perhaps a sensor test. But no. The leaf wasn't crafted. I could see the slight tear on the left vein. The natural asymmetry of a living object.
And it was not floating on air. It was paused. Like something in the world had hiccupped mid-render.
I stepped closer.
Still, it did not fall.
For a moment, I considered reaching for it. But the act felt beneath me. Curiosity was not a trait I wore often. And yet—
The leaf twitched.
Not wind. Not touch.
A twitch. A stutter.
And then it rose.
Up.
It lifted not with grace, not with purpose, but like someone hit undo. It reattached itself to the branch.
No seam. No glitch. Just gone. As if it had never fallen in the first place.
I stood very still.
Behind me, my sister didn't speak. I could feel her watching.
I said nothing.
Because there was nothing to say.
Because if I acknowledged it aloud, I would have to believe it happened.
And I didn't like what that implied.
I did not rush back to my chambers.
That would have been vulgar.
Instead, I walked the spiral garden path with deliberate calm. The kind of calm that needs to be witnessed. My robe swayed precisely once every three steps. The birds knew better than to chirp.
My sister followed. Silent. Unreadable. Not too close. Not too far.
Exactly as I required.
The hovering leaf did not follow me. Of course it didn't. It had never been real. It was simply an artistic error. Some curator's oversight. A singular deviation in an otherwise immaculate system.
It had nothing to do with me.
Which is why I couldn't stop thinking about it.
By the time I entered my chambers, the attendants had reset everything. The tea tray was gone. The drapes had been adjusted to let in a softer, later light. The robe I'd worn that morning now hung on its frame. Cleaned. Steamed. Bowed slightly at the shoulders like it remembered my posture.
But something was off.
A pillow had moved.
Only slightly. But I never misalign pillows. I don't even touch them. That's what lesser hands are for.
And the mirror—
The mirror had been angled.
Two degrees. Maybe less. But it no longer faced the center of the room directly. It now tilted left. As if observing something else. Someone else.
I didn't speak.
I simply reached out and repositioned it. The moment I did, I caught my reflection mid-motion. Arm outstretched. Fingers curled.
And for a blink.
Just a blink.
My reflection wasn't moving.
It stood there, staring.
Eyes open. Head slightly tilted. No smile. No gesture.
Then it caught up.
A seamless transition. Fluid. Natural. As if nothing had happened.
Except it had.
My hand remained in the air a moment longer. Not frozen. Thinking. That was worse.
Behind me, the curtain twitched. Not from wind. There was no wind.
I dropped my hand and turned back to the center of the room.
"Have someone adjust the light," I said to no one in particular. "It's being presumptuous again."
No reply. Good. The room understood when to shut up.
I sat in front of the mirror and practiced a look I hadn't used in weeks. Quiet contemplation with undertones of divine fatigue.
It worked well.
Maybe too well.
The reflection stared back. Obedient as ever.
But I noticed, this time, that it blinked just before I did.