Anna’s Giving-Away#

Anna’s bridal suite overlooked the inner garden at Jade Garden, though little of the view was visible once Claudette began dressing her properly.

The morning had the hushed seriousness of a ritual everyone in the room already understood. Nothing felt hurried. That made it more intense. Each piece arrived in order, each fastening narrowing the day toward its true purpose.

Claudette started with Anna’s underlayers, then the corset.

The first tightening only gathered the garment around her. The second brought posture. The third brought the familiar changed breath, shallower and more careful, her ribs held, her waist drawn into line. Claudette adjusted the shoulder braces with small competent hands and stepped back for a second to study the result before tightening one side another fraction.

Anna held the dressing screen and breathed through it.

The pressure did not feel punitive this morning.

It felt ceremonial.

The Yoyah Sheengzoh came next under the dress, forcing the day into the body before the outer beauty had even appeared. Claudette lifted the heavy red fabric after that, settling the modernized hanfu over Anna with the kind of care that made dressing feel like consecration. Red with gold. Structured through the waist and shoulders, then falling in rich controlled lines that still allowed almost no heedless movement. The headscarf was pinned last, smooth over the hair Claudette had already braided and rolled away into disciplined neatness.

The white Jurenmuse waited on the vanity.

Anna looked at it while Claudette arranged the final folds of fabric at her wrists.

Today she would wear the severe one.

Not the painted face. Not the softer public prettiness of ordinary afternoons. This was the day she ceased to be her father’s Anna and offered herself formally into Julien’s care. The white porcelain felt right for that. Less decorative. More absolute.

Claudette brought the mouthpiece to her with the same calm professionalism she had brought to the corset laces.

Anna opened for it.

That still carried a pulse of humiliation, even now.

Not shame exactly. More the hot intimate knowledge of cooperation. She had to yield to the fitting. Had to let her own silence be arranged into place by another woman’s careful hands. Once the porcelain shell settled over it and the headscarf hid the fastenings, the mask completed the rest of the dressing in one decisive motion.

Anna looked up into the mirror.

There she was.

The bride, yes. But more than that. A ward prepared for transfer. Face quieted into porcelain stillness. Body held into elegant submission by silk, boning, and weight. No visible mouth. No careless expression. Only eyes, posture, and whatever truth could still move through the hands.

Claudette’s gaze met hers in the mirror.

Beautiful, she signed.

Praise while masked traveled differently. Deeper.

Anna bowed her head in thanks and signed back, For preparing me so well, thank you.

Claudette smiled and finished the last inspection at Anna’s sleeves and hem, then left her alone for a few minutes before Sonia arrived.

Alone, Anna stood before the mirror and let herself feel it fully.

The dress was heavy enough to remind her of every movement. The corset held her upright. The mouthpiece made each swallow a small act of awareness. None of it felt like adornment detached from meaning. The whole ensemble told her what kind of day this was, what kind of woman she had chosen to become inside it.

She sank carefully to her knees before the mirror.

Then she began the private ritual she had taken up in recent weeks, the one she meant to keep after marriage as part of morning discipline. Her hands rose and moved in the bright hush of the suite, the signs precise and almost tender.

Silence, I will honor.

The mask on her face turned the promise from abstraction into practice. Silence no longer meant merely speaking less. It meant accepting that composure, restraint, and visible modesty could be more beautiful than expression left loose.

In obedience, I will be graceful.

The corset pressed at her ribs while she signed it, and the pressure felt right. Not because discomfort was holy on its own, but because the body remembered more faithfully than intention ever did.

Guidance, I will meet with trust.

Julien’s face came into her mind then, not as an authority in the abstract, but as himself. Attentive. Calm. Firm where firmness steadied her. She felt the answer in her body before she finished the line.

Care, I will receive worthily.

That one always moved through her strangely. It contained humility, but not self-erasure. An obligation to receive well, to answer guidance beautifully, to make dependence something he could take pride in giving shape to.

When the sequence ended, Anna stayed kneeling another moment and looked at the bride in the mirror.

Peace was too small a word for what she felt.

The knock came softly.

Anna rose as carefully as the dress required and opened the door for Sonia.

Sonia came in masked as well, already dressed for the ceremony in proper public modesty, though even through the porcelain Anna could read tension in the set of her shoulders. Sonia removed her mask once the door was locked and set it on the dressing table with more force than was strictly necessary.

Then she looked at Anna.

Really looked.

The shock on her face was small and immediate and impossible for Anna to miss.

“You chose the white one.”

Anna signed because she preferred the precision of it while masked.

Yes.

Sonia’s mouth tightened for the fraction of a second it took her to remember herself. She answered in hand-dancing too, less fluid than Anna but still clear.

In this, you look almost ready to disappear.

Anna felt the truth in that and smiled behind the porcelain.

No. In this, I look properly finished.

Sonia flinched at the phrasing as if Anna had meant it as provocation.

She had not.

Anna turned back to the mirror and began rehearsing the key vows again, not because she feared forgetting them, but because the repetition settled her. Sonia stood beside the dressing table and watched.

Anna’s hands moved with ceremony now rather than conversation.

For my father’s care, his guidance, and the house in which he raised me, I give thanks.

Before him, I come in gratitude and obedience, ready to be released from his authority with honor.

To my new guardian, I go willingly, with loyalty, trust, and a clean heart.

Then the second sequence, the one for Julien:

Sir, if willing, take me into your care.

To you, I offer loyalty, obedience, and faithful conduct.

Your guidance, I will honor, and your house, I will uphold with diligence and grace.

The room felt smaller by the time she finished.

Sonia had gone very still.

“You say all that so calmly,” she said. She had reverted to voice in the privacy of the suite, as she often did when emotion made hand-dancing feel too exact for comfort.

Anna turned.

She wanted to answer in hand-dancing because the truth deserved the clean line of it. Sonia made a frustrated little gesture and switched back herself, perhaps because she knew that too.

I am calm.

Sonia’s hands sharpened.

Your father is about to release you, and before guests, tea, flowers, and all this beauty, another man will take you into his care. And you are calm.

Anna held her gaze.

Yes.

Not because she did not understand the imbalance. Because she did.

Sonia looked away first.

On the dressing table beside her mask lay the little ceremonial gifts, hairpins, folded cloth, perfume, and a small lacquer tray Claudette had left ready. Sonia’s eyes moved over all of it and then back to Anna.

Do you ever hear how much of this sounds like surrender?

Anna answered without softening the truth for her.

It is surrender.

That halted Sonia’s next reply.

Anna stepped closer, the dress making the approach slow and stately whether she intended it or not.

But this is not annihilation. Father cared for me and guided me. Today he releases me with honor. After that, Julien will take me in and answer for me. I am not being cast off. I am being transferred with love.

Sonia’s face did something complicated then, grief and disbelief and affection fighting in public for only half a second before discipline covered them.

And that makes you happy.

Anna’s hands softened.

Yes.

Sonia’s gaze dropped to the line of the dress, the severe white mask, the narrow controlled waist, everything in Anna’s appearance designed to make the answer visible before she signed it.

Then, because it was there between them whether they named it or not, Sonia signed:

I still have the vial.

The suite seemed to quiet further around them.

Anna did not look pleased. She did not look disappointed either. Only attentive.

I know.

I haven’t touched it.

I know.

Sonia’s fingers slowed.

And on today of all days, you make giving in look like the easiest thing in the world.

Anna felt that in her throat, behind the mouthpiece, where speech would have failed her anyway.

It is not easy, she signed. It is deep. That is different.

Sonia closed her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them again, she signed more carefully.

For you, I do not know whether to feel horror or jealousy.

Anna moved before thinking too much about it and took Sonia’s hand in both of hers.

The gesture looked strange against gloves and silk and porcelain, but the intimacy of it remained.

Today, you do not have to choose.

Sonia gave a short, silent laugh.

Convenient, since it’s your ceremony.

Anna’s eyes smiled above the mask.

Yes.

There was a knock then, firmer this time. Claudette returning. The ceremony drawing closer.

Sonia released Anna’s hand first and reached for her own mask.

Before she put it on, she looked at Anna one last time with her bare face exposed.

“I do want you to be happy,” she said quietly.

Anna could not answer aloud, so she lifted her hands.

I know. Thank you.

Sonia remasked. The porcelain restored distance at once. She signed a final wish for a beautiful ceremony, then left to join the guests.

Anna stood alone for one last breath in the bridal suite, fully dressed, fully masked, no longer daughter in waiting but not yet Julien Moreau’s Anna.

Then Claudette came in to escort her downstairs.