The Glass Cage

The Pavilion of Glass did not smell of flowers. It smelled of bleach, cold stone, and the sickly-sweet incense used to mask the scent of rotting virtue.

Yara sat on a stool in the center of the dressing room, her body rigid. Two handmaidens, their faces obscured by white veils, were scrubbing her skin with pumice stones. They scoured her until she was raw, until every trace of the cellar’s dampness was erased, leaving her pale enough to pass for *Her*.

"Be still, Shadow," one handmaiden hissed, dragging a comb through Yara’s hair. "You must look perfect. You must look like the Saintess."

Yara didn't flinch. Pain was a language she had learned before she learned to speak. She stared into the bronze mirror, looking at a face that wasn't hers. It belonged to Liling.

Liling, the Saintess. The Golden Daughter. The one who sat in the sun while Yara rotted in the dark, fed scraps and kept alive only so that if an assassin struck, there would be a body to burn that wasn't valuable.

But today, the assassin wasn't coming to the Pavilion. The Pavilion was sending the target away.

"Why are you crying?" Yara asked, her voice raspy from disuse.

In the corner of the room, the real Saintess Liling was weeping into a silk handkerchief. She looked exactly like Yara, save for the softness in her eyes—the softness of a creature that had never known hunger.

"It is too cruel," Liling sobbed. "To send you to the Demon Prince... Xeron will eat you alive. They say he drinks the blood of virgins from a skull goblet."

Yara looked at the weeping girl with a cold, reptile detachment. "Better me than you, isn't that what the Elders decided?"

The door opened. Elder Jian swept in, his white robes billowing like a cloud of self-righteousness. He held a cup of tea.

"It is time," Jian said. He didn't look at Yara’s eyes; he looked at her utility. "Drink this. It will calm your nerves for the journey."

Yara knew it wasn't tea. It was *Dream-Haze*, a sedative strong enough to knock out a cultivator. They needed her pliable. They needed her to walk into the carriage without screaming.

She took the cup. She didn't hesitate. She drank it down in one gulp, maintaining eye contact with the Elder.

"Excellent," Jian smoothed his beard. "Remember your duty, Shadow. You are Liling now. You will marry the Demon Prince Xeron. You will secure the peace treaty for the Righteous Sect. And if you are discovered..."

"I die," Yara finished. "I know."

She felt the drug hitting her blood, a warm numbness spreading from her stomach. But her mind remained sharp, honed by years of hatred.

* I won't die,* she thought as the world began to blur. *I'm not going there to make peace. I'm going to kill him.*

Hidden in the sleeve of the red bridal gown was a hairpin. It was delicate, gold, and tipped with *Widow’s Kiss*, a neurotoxin she had spent three years distilling from the poisonous fungi that grew in her cellar.

As the darkness took her, Yara smiled. It was a jagged, ugly thing that Liling would never wear.

* Let the monsters eat each other.*