The Seventh Life Of The Soulbound Villainess
The frontrunner, by general consensus among both the servants and the candidates themselves, was the daughter of Duke Velmere of the northern provinces: Seraphina Velmere, twenty years old, Second Rank highest tier, Aura cultivation at an early but measurable stage, the kind of classical beauty that looked painted onto a surface rather than alive beneath it, with the controlled grace of someone who had been told since childhood that she was destined for exactly this.
She was, I noted with the precision of someone doing an inventory I did not want to be doing, everything the selection was designed to find.
I was watching from the outer gallery during the third-week garden social — the afterno