Chapter 88: Santina
I was born beneath a ceiling of living leaves, in a house that sang when the wind passed through it.
In Nazaria, we build our homes out of patient magic: coaxing boughs to arch, persuading roots to lift, teaching branches to braid into rafters. It is a long craft, measured in seasons, not days. My mother used to say a house you grow knows the secrets of your bones. It holds you, even when you do not deserve to be held.
I was Santina of House Caroline — dark-elven blood, violet-eyed and dusk-skinned, firstborn to a line that served the royal court in counsel and watch. Not a princess in the way the bards sing it, no dragon-glass tiara or procession of lilies. But noble. Expected to be useful. Expected to be good.
As a child, I did not speak much. Illusions came easie
