The lady walked to the door of the bedroom. She paused at the threshold. She turned her head slightly, only enough to give Cixi the side of her face.
Cixi stood alone in the centre of the bedroom in her sleeping vest and a pair of soft cotton shorts she did not remember putting on, with the morning sun warming the back of her neck and her belly still not where it had been when she had gone to sleep, and looked at the closed bedroom door for a long, suspended second before she remembered to breathe.
She breathed.
"What," she said softly to no one in the room, "the hell."
She decided to finish her morning routines even though she feared that the woman might tell everyone in the Palace about her fake pregnancy.
Once she reached her room, Olga closed the door of her own suite behind her.
Lorian was sitting on the edge of the bed in his nightclothes.
