Prologue
I should have known the forest would remember me.
Even before I stepped past the last marker stone, I felt it watching—ancient eyes behind every leaf, every shadow. The air was too still, too heavy, as if the whole world was holding its breath. I told myself it was only the fading warmth of the harvest bonfires, only the lingering echo of the music from the village square. I told myself a lot of things.
But the truth is, I knew I was crossing a threshold that wouldn’t let me go back.
The child’s footprints were easy enough to follow at first, pressed deep into the damp earth. He’d wandered off during the festival, chasing the drifting glow of something no one else had seen. I’d promised his mother I’d bring him home. And that was the only reason I kept walking deeper, even when the trees grew close enough to touch both my shoulders at once, even when the scent of flowers grew thick and strange in my lungs.
I found him at the edge of a clearing I’d never seen before. Moonlight pooled like silver water between the roots of ancient trees, and the air shimmered with drifting white blossoms. The child stood still, gazing at them as if under a spell. I almost called his name—but the flowers all opened at once.
The world inhaled.
The Glade bloomed around me in a slow, deliberate breath, petals unfolding like pale hands reaching out. The trees bent toward me. Somewhere deeper in the shadows, something moved—a figure, tall and still, golden eyes fixed on me. Another figure watched from the opposite side, eyes like shards of ice, hair a flicker of flame against the dark.
Neither spoke, yet I felt the pull of both. One was warmth wrapped in thorns. The other was fire held barely in check.
And standing there, caught between them, I knew the stories had never been warnings. They had been invitations.
