The letter arrived folded into a square, stained at the corners with wax and dust. No name. No seal.

Ziya didn’t open it immediately.
She didn’t need to.

She sat alone in an abandoned tailor’s shop — walls torn by bayonet holes, shelves broken, the mirror cracked.

She stared at the mirror for a long time.

“Blood is a cage,” she whispered.
“It follows you. Even when you burn the key.”

Then, she opened the letter.

There were only two lines:

“The cat has royal blood.”
“But which side will she bleed for?”

Her hands trembled.

Outside, children played with a broken crown — spinning it like a wheel through the dirt.

Inside, Ziya remembered the scent of Versailles:
gold polish, roses, silence.

She had been five when they sent her away.
Too curious. Too watchful.
Too much like her mother — the one they erased from the tapestries.

She still heard the way the courtiers had whispered:

“That girl… the eyes…”
“She sees too much.”

Ziya closed her eyes.
For a moment, she was no longer the woman in the smoke.

She was a girl with dirty boots, standing in a palace too clean for her shadow.