The second request was more complicated than the first.
Seraphina sent for me on a Thursday, which was already different from her usual method of sending notes, because this time she sent a person. A junior attendant of hers, a quiet girl who delivered the message with the practiced neutrality of someone accustomed to carrying communications whose contents she was not supposed to know and whose existence she was not supposed to reference afterward. The message itself was an invitation to visit Seraphina's private sitting room at the seventh hour of the evening.
Not a note. Not a business request filtered through household procedure. An invitation. Personal and deliberately informal.
I went.
