Chapter 181: Chapter-181

“What is my aunt doing?” she asked.

The servant hesitated for precisely half a second — the hesitation of someone who knew the answer and was calculating whether delivering it was survivable.

“Your Majesty,” he said carefully, “the Duchess is currently… sleeping.”

Heena’s eye twitched.

“She’s ’sleeping.’”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“The patriarchs of four ducal houses arrived at my palace at five in the morning,” Heena said, with the calm of a woman holding something very explosive very gently, “and my aunt is ’sleeping.’”

“I did inform her, Your Majesty,” the servant said quickly, clearly sensing what was coming. “She was awake. I told her the patriarchs had arrived.”

“And what,” Heena said slowly, “did she say?”

The servant looked at the floor.

“Your Majesty…”

“What did she say.”

A pause.

“She said,” the servant reported, in the tone of someone reading their own execution order, “that I should go wake up the grizzly bear instead of disturbing her beauty sleep.”

The silence that followed had texture.

System 427 materialized near the ceiling, looked at Heena’s face, and immediately made himself very small and very quiet.

Heena took a breath.

Then another.

“Fine,” she said, with sudden, crystalline calm. “Go tell the five consorts that their fathers have arrived. Personally. Wake them up if you have to.”

The servant brightened slightly at having a clear task.

“Yes, Your Majesty—”

“Also,” Heena continued, “have my formal suit prepared. The sharp one. And—” she fixed him with a look, “—brew me the strongest coffee this palace kitchen is capable of producing. Not sweet. Not bitter. ’Perfect.’ If it is not perfect, whoever made it will be reassigned to the northern grain census.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The servant turned to go.

“And you—” she caught him before he left, “—what about my husband? Has anyone informed him?”

The servant paused, mouth opening, then closing.

He had, in fact, completely forgotten about the new consort in the chaos.

Heena looked at him.

“…I will inform him immediately, Your Majesty,” the servant said, bowing rapidly and escaping through the door.

Heena watched him go.

Then she turned, stretched her arms above her head — another ’pop’ from somewhere in her upper back — and looked at the stack of completed documents on her desk with something approaching grim satisfaction.

Done. All of it, done.

She looked around her office.

Three years she’d spent in this room. Working through nights like this one, managing crises, signing documents, running an empire from a desk that was slightly too tall for comfortable posture.

And then, in the quiet of her own mind, a thought surfaced that she hadn’t quite planned:

’What kind of newlywed spends her wedding night in an office?’

She pushed the thought aside immediately. She was an Empress. Empresses did not take honeymoons. Empresses had patriarchs showing up at dawn and grain taxation records and—

’And’, a more practical corner of her mind observed, ’a walk back to the bedroom after every late night that takes six minutes across three corridors.’

She paused.

Looked at the south wall.

Then at her desk.

Then at the south wall again.

The thought that formed was logical. Entirely practical. Nothing sentimental about it whatsoever.

She looked around the room, and a passing servant — arriving with a fresh water pitcher — almost collided with her gaze.

“You,” Heena said.

The servant froze.

“Call the butler. Tell him I want to see him.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The servant set the pitcher down and bolted.

’’’

The butler arrived in under ten minutes, which told Heena he had run at least part of the way. You could tell by the very slight elevation of his breathing, the micro-adjustment of his collar as he walked in — but his expression was composed, his bow perfectly executed.

Thirty years of service. The man was a professional.

“You called, Your Majesty?” he said.

Heena pointed at the south wall.

“Break that,” she said. “Connect it to the storage room next door. I want one door between them — here.” She marked an approximate point with her finger. “Block the storage room’s original entrance from the outside. The only access should be through this room.”

The butler looked at the wall.

Then he looked at Heena.

Then he looked at the wall again.

His face went through several things very quickly — confusion, comprehension, and then something that was carefully not showing itself but was clearly causing him internal difficulty.

Because the south wall was not just a wall.

It was ’the’ wall — the one Emperor Auren the Third had commissioned in the forty-second year of his reign, worked by the master craftsman Sorel, inlaid with gold leaf and jade detail, depicting the founding rivers of the empire in a style that had not been replicated since. Every visiting dignitary was shown this wall. Every art scholar who came to the palace requested to see this wall.

It was, without question, the single most historically precious object in this office.

“Your Majesty,” the butler said, his voice admirably steady, “are you… certain?”

Heena looked at him flatly. “I said what I said.”

“Of course.” A breath. “It is simply that — this particular wall—”

“Is a wall,” Heena said. “That I am telling you to break. By the time I return from the reception hall, I want it connected.”

She fixed her collar, swept toward the door, and was gone.

The butler stood alone in the office.

He looked at the wall.

The phoenixes looked back at him, mid-flight, wings spread in carved gold, utterly unaware of their imminent fate.

The butler was, in his private life, a man of considerable emotional restraint. He had served through three imperial transitions. He had packed the belongings of fallen nobles without comment. He had witnessed things that would make lesser men weep and had maintained perfect professional composure throughout.

He was not maintaining perfect professional composure right now.

A single tear tracked down his left cheek.

He did not wipe it.

He simply stood there, looking at forty years of irreplaceable imperial artistry, and tried to find the will to lift a hammer against it.

“…Excuse me.”

The butler turned.

Larus stood in the doorway, holding a small breakfast tray — tea, a bread roll, an egg — looking first at the butler’s face, then at the south wall, then back at the butler’s face.

He set the tray down on the desk slowly.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Your Highness,” the butler said, with the dignity of a man absolutely not crying, “Her Majesty has instructed me to demolish the south wall.”

Larus looked at the south wall properly for the first time.

A long moment passed.

“…That wall?” he said.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Larus walked toward it. He stood close, studying the carved relief — the mountain ranges, the river valleys, the phoenixes. He found the craftsman’s mark near the lower left corner, small and deliberate.

He was quiet for a moment.

“What time did she give this order?” he asked.

“Just now, Your Highness. She has been working through the night. I believe she slept perhaps—”

“One hour,” Larus said. “Maybe less.”

The butler said nothing.

Larus turned to look at him — the tear on the man’s cheek, the rigid professional composure barely holding.

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