Prologue Chapter I
Title: “Where the Sea First Took Her”
(Standalone Childhood Chapter 1)
The salt burned before she understood its name.
She remembered only the roar, not the storm—the ship that brought her was no grand galleon, but a low, creaking hull that reeked of fish, rope, and tears. They didn’t call her Mira then. She was something smaller. Something less.
The child had arrived to the port-city known only as Vharos, sold off in a whisper between men who never said her mother’s name.
The House that took her in was not a brothel. Not exactly. It was a training hall veiled behind incense, music, and smoke, where women of every origin were taught to move like dancers and speak like nobility—but never own their lives. She was only six when she first learned silence could protect her.
The Mistress of the House—Lady Alia Vhess—was silk-cloaked and sweet-voiced, but Mira would come to fear her more than the sea.
It was Alia who gave her the name Mira.
“It means mirror,” the Mistress told her, brushing her hair as she stared into a silver hand-glass. “Because you’ll reflect whatever they want. That is your beauty. And your curse.”
By age nine, Mira was already the fastest at weaving her hands through fan dances.
By eleven, she had memorized the history of the fourteen noble Houses of Vharos—who to flatter, who to fear.
At night, she’d sit by the small window in the upper halls, tracing the stars with her fingers, making stories only she could see. A sailor who lost his eyes but found truth in darkness. A runaway girl who grew scales and swam back to burn the ships that carried her away.
Stories were the only thing they hadn’t yet stolen from her.
One day, in a forgotten storeroom beneath the House, Mira discovered an old iron hook—half-rusted, a fisherman’s tool long discarded. She didn’t take it to hurt anyone. Not yet. But she hid it under a floorboard. She’d need it someday.
She always knew someday was coming.