Hooves clacked outside, wheels thumped. The pup that had fallen asleep on her lap jolted off of her bracing and growling itself into it’s true larger adult form. The house shook with spirit agitation.

  It was not the right day, not the right time, which meant something was of kilter.

  Azale walked to the window the pup keeping up with her. Azale looked out only barely able to see the two imperial carriage clatter to the front, accented in the family reds and whites.

  Two men exited the front Carriage as Aunt Penolina exited the one behind running holding her skirts to meet the first carriage. Her mouth was moving and Azale could make out a sharp tone but not the words. Slowly Azale creaked the window open just a bit in time to see the image of the face imprinted on the coins on her desk. Though in person he radiated an intensity that had her bristling. He glowed with the power of the bloodlines that had one bound themselves to the veil gifting them a boarding the powers of concepts and constructs like her and her sisters.

  “Really Mallen do you really have to?” Her Aunt who shared a glow not as intense but still present pleaded. The Emperor looked at her with calculating patience.

  “Penolina, why do you care so much for this manor?” He asked. Aunt Penolina glanced at the house as if searching for a an answer to quell all suspicion.

  So this was Emperor Mallen Devrosita, of course he had a longer name that she was not, in this life, fortunate enough to have been told, while in previous lives it never was information she needed.

  They all looked a group though. She thought. All ash white hair, dressed in a deep Imperial blood red, said to match their eyes.

  Azale didn’t have red eyes. She was always strictly forbidden from owning the color red at one point they’d tried to tear out ever last bit of red from the manor leaving the last bit of the emblem the only bit of red left. Azale hadn’t minded all that much. Every was mostly geared toward the black, grey and silver she’d always preferred, matched with a lovely shade of muted mauve. She’d never been one for boldness preferring subtle.

  Which was why she adored how she looked in this life, hair the color of warning clouds before a reckoning storm her eyes a very dark grey with a sharp glint like metal.

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  From the torn portrait in the main room she knew she’d been given her eyes from her birth mother. Though the woman in the portrait had hair the color of bronzed leaves. The portrait was lovely if menacing like the poisoned flowers etched into the various decore of the house.

  The king, her aunt and who she could only assume were two Princes. One she knew had to be a prince when he turned and though he looked older more formidable his face was ever etched into her memory. He stood like stone not blocking the argument between siblings but observing it.

  Azale gripped the window frame staying absolutely still as they came closer and closer. She would stay silent and just watch. Hopefully everything they needed to know would happen before they could set foot in the house let alone find her.

  Azale could feel the room filling more and more with the spirits who helped her keep the house afloat and herself alive. The anxiety grew from all angles the closer they walked.

  If they did come inside she’d send all of her friends away, and if they found her? Well most likely they would kill her. What was another short life in her never-ending list of them? Really that was always her fate wasn’t it? To not even live past the age of thirteen and really that record was only set in her last life.

  The other man who looked younger then the one who’d killed her looked as thought this was the very last place he wanted to be. She froze when his flickering eyes set on her. He paused blinked and nudged Drenit.

  “There’s a kid.” He stated. She watched her Aunt’s face pale, whipping around looking for Azale before finding her at the window. In the same moment the Emperors eyes locked with hers. He stared at her.

  “Who are you?” His voice boomed. Azale stepped back and shut the window. She turned and with a calm that did not match the raging pulse in her chest she opened a portal not as large as she would have preferred but would work. She ushered all of her spirits who reluctantly followed her insistence that they go. The last of them disappeared as she heard the crack of the front door being either violently opened of fully broken.

  Azale scuttled through the maze of rooms until she found one where she’d found a hidden space under the floor bords where it seemed her mother had hidden things she wanted no one else to find. She ducked into it and huddled.

  Azale let out little huffs of breath. She could say all she wanted that she didn’t care if she died but it would always be a lie. Even with a huge amount of memories, magic and knowledge. Even knowing she could manage a household as a child who hand to stand on her tip toes to reach some of the door knobs in the house. Even after dying maybe hundreds of thousands of times.

  She was always a child. Always too tiny, too alone, it was always hopeless.

  She heard the calls and the shouts and more they came the more she hunched and just wished for them to go away. To pretend they never saw her. To let her live quiet and unnoticed. Her heart felt like it would break from her chest, her magic wanted to reach out but she kept pushing it down.