Seraphine’s POV
“Don’t stand near the windows.”
My mother’s voice cut sharply through the room before she grabbed my wrist and pulled me away from the curtains.
I was seven.
Old enough to be irritated. Too young to understand why my existence needed hiding.
“Can they see me from outside?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then why does it matter?”
“Because people notice things.”
That answer meant nothing to me back then. Everything in that house confused me. The hidden rooms. The servants avoided eye contact. The way my mother only allowed me outside after dark.
Even as a child, I understood one thing clearly, we lived like secrets. And my mother hated it.
I saw it every day in the way she carried herself through those small rooms behind the eastern estate quarters.
She spoke like someone impor
