Cold water splashed across Avelina's face like a slap from fate itself.
Her eyes flew open as she gasped, her thin blanket soaked, her skin prickling from the chill. Above her loomed her aunt, Madam Rhoswen, face twisted in irritation and eyes filled with disgust.
"You're from the low class, yet you sleep like a noble! Get up!" her aunt barked.
Avelina sat up quickly, wiping her wet face with the back of her hand. The darkness outside the cracked window told her it was barely 5 AM — still an hour before her chores were expected to begin. Not that it mattered. Time never seemed to protect her.
She barely had time to adjust before a bucket was thrown at her feet. "You know your duties. If this house isn't spotless by sunrise, you'll go without food. Again."
Madam Rhoswen stormed out, her heavy skirts sweeping like a warning behind her. Avelina swallowed her rising anger. She was used to it. Used to waking up to insults. Used to being treated like a ghost in the house she should have called home.
Her hands trembled as she reached for the mop, her breath fogging in the cold morning air. Her life had always been like this — the forgotten niece. The low-class orphan. The unwanted witch.
Except she wasn't really a witch.
She should have been. Her bloodline said she was. Her parents — whose faces she couldn't even remember — had been powerful. But not her.
No powers. No spells. No glow. Nothing.
"A failure of a witch," her cousin Iridessa always laughed. "No one even chose you. Not even magic."
Iridessa and her sister Calla never missed a chance to remind Avelina of her place. While they soaked in scented baths and practiced magic in the courtyard, Avelina was cleaning out fireplaces and washing floors until her knuckles bled. And yet, despite being from the middle class, they carried themselves like high-borns — dreaming of marrying into the prestigious High Class families. Especially him.
Deken.
He was no prince, but he didn't have to be. As one of the heirs of the three ruling High Class families, his name echoed through every alley and village square like thunder. Rich, powerful, dangerously beautiful... and terrifying.
He was the demon everyone wanted but feared.
And he was known to be looking for a bride.
Avelina wrung her mop into the bucket, her eyes hollow. What did it matter to her? She was nobody. No one chose her. Not family. Not fate. Not even herself. Not even her magic.
She looked up at the ceiling, whispered so softly only the cold air could hear her:
"Let someone choose me... even if it's a devil or a demon or something worse...I don't care. Even if it's anything at all. That's what I wish for."
Let something come... anything."
As the first light of dawn slipped through the window, painting the room gold, Avelina stood in silence, holding her mop like a sword she never learned to swing.
Unchosen.
Unwanted.
Unseen.
But something was already in motion.
Far beyond the walls of her aunt's house, a raven circled the skies — its wings laced with fire and shadow, its eyes sharp as blades. Clutched tightly in its clawed talons were ten sealed letters — each glowing faintly, each addressed to a different girl.
It screeched once, the sound dark and ancient… then vanished into the wind, heading toward the girl no one chose.