CROWNED BY BLOOD
't knock or announce herself. She never does when the situation is truly serious, when protocol must be abandoned for urgency. She glides into my private observatory, "Something old is leaking through the barriers," she says without preamble, “The seals are failing." I turn slowly from where I've been standing at the balcony window, still gripping the cold stone. "You've said something similar before. You've warned me about ancient things stirring." "Not like this," she says, and the flatness in her tone makes my stomach drop. "Never like this." She raises her hand with deliberate precision and draws an intricate rune in the air between us. The silver dust hovers impossibly, defying gravity,