CHAPTER I

SISTER

When I was a child, the serpent came to me.

Not in a dream—not in a story. She came slithering out of the thorns behind the orchard—where the brambles grew so thick they strangled the trees, where even the sun got snagged and bled gold. I’d gone too far from the cottage, barefoot and wild, my dress stained with plum juice, the taste of summer still sticky on my tongue.

And there she was.

Scaled. Silent. Watching.

I didn’t run—not at first.

She was beautiful in the way teeth are beautiful right before they bite. More shimmer than creature—her body was a living ribbon of black and gold, long as a river bend. Her eyes glinted like they already knew the end of my story.

She curled toward me through the moss like a question. A dare. I should’ve screamed. I felt the scream rise—but it never came. I just stood there—breath shallow, skin prickling with the kind of fear that hasn’t found its name yet.

Just a tingle beneath the ribs. Like being watched by the future.

And then—she changed.

She rose.

Unfolding like smoke pulled from the belly of the earth, and when I blinked, the serpent was gone. In her place stood a woman.

A maiden, maybe nineteen at most—barefoot like I was, but the ground didn’t dare touch her. Fire licked her calves like it was in love with her. Her hair was f lame, her gown molten silk stitched with embers, and on her head—gods help me—was a crown of coals, glowing as if she wore a furnace heart of the world itself.

I couldn’t move. I didn’t breathe.

She danced toward me, hips swaying like secrets, arms outstretched like invitation or invocation—I couldn’t tell which. The forest became her ballroom, and I her only audience. She moved like heat—slow, sinuous, impossible to ignore.

The kind of beauty that doesn’t want to be worshipped. Just obeyed.

My mother had warned me of the Wild Dancers.

“If you see fire in the woods,” she’d said.

“You turn around. You don’t look back. You run.”

But I didn’t run.

I watched.

I watched until her eyes caught mine—amber lit with ancient knowing—and something behind my ribs—shifted.

She smiled then. Sharp and sweet, like honey drizzled over glass. And gods forgive me, I smiled back.

Her hands reached out—not soft, not demanding, just there. I didn’t take them. I froze. Her fingers brushed mine—like silk soaked in sunlight. I let her pull me forward.

And then she hissed.

Not like a snake.

Like a prophecy.

Like truth finally boiling through skin.

“Oh, my dear sister,” she said, her voice a melody threaded with venom and velvet.

“Rejoice in your youth. For they will take your crown, your skin, and your pride.

And on that day, you will have no place to hide.”