Chapter 1: The Child No One Wanted
The night the twins were born, the sky over the village of Oakhaven did not offer stars. Instead, a torrential downpour lashed against the wooden shutters of the small, modest estate belonging to the local merchant, Lord Alden. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of copper, sweat, and iron.
The midwife, an old woman named Griselda with hands like gnarled tree roots, delivered the first child into the world. A sharp, healthy wail echoed through the room.
“A girl, my Lord,” Griselda announced, wiping the blood from the infant’s pale, flawless skin. “Perfect. Like a drop of morning milk.”
Alden smiled, a greedy, ambitious gleam in his eyes. He already envisioned the alliances this perfect child could bring to his textile business. They named her Tania. But the labor was not over. An hour later, a second cry cut through the fading thunder. Griselda caught the second twin, but as she brought the child into the dim candlelight, the old woman gasped, nearly dropping the infant.
“What is it?” Alden demanded, stepping forward, his brow furrowing. “Is it a boy?”
“No, my Lord,” Griselda whispered, her voice trembling with a deep, ancestral fear.
“It is..”
Lying in the swaddling clothes was Tamara. Unlike her sister, her skin was not flawless. Sprawled across her right cheek, stretching from the edge of her jaw up to the corner of her eye, was a dark, ink-black birthmark. It was shaped perfectly like a crescent moon, stark and terrifying against her newborn flesh.
In the outer provinces, a dark mark at birth was an omen. It meant the child’s soul had been touched by the shadow beasts, a beacon for misfortune, ruined crops, and failed business. Alden recoiled as if he had been bitten by a viper. “Get it out of my sight,” he hissed, his face pale. “If the village learns a cursed child was born under my roof, my trade routes will be shunned. My reputation will be ruined.”
Tamara’s mother, exhausted and weak, simply turned her face to the wall, refusing to look at her second-born.
“My Lord,” Griselda said softly, her eyes flickering with pity as the dark-marked baby reached her tiny fingers into the cold air. “I live deep within the Whispering Woods, far from the whispers of superstitious men. If you provide me with seventy sol a month to cover the expenses of food and grain, I will take her. She will never trouble your house again.”
Alden didn’t hesitate. He thrust a pouch of coin into the old woman’s hands. “Take her. If she dies in the woods, do not bring her back. To the world, Tania is my only daughter.”
And so, before she could even open her eyes to see her father’s face, Tamara was carried away into the dense, unforgiving wilderness. She grew up in a small wooden cabin where the canopy of ancient trees blocked out the harsh glare of the sun.
Griselda was not a cruel woman, but she was old and distant. She taught Tamara how to survive. By the time Tamara was seven, she knew which roots could soothe a fever and which berries could stop a beating heart. She learned to track the migration of the deer and how to listen to the shifting language of the wind.
But she also learned to look at her reflection in the still surface of the forest creeks.
She would trace the dark, crescent moon on her cheek, feeling the slight contrast in texture against her otherwise smooth skin. She knew her family lived just beyond the tree line, wealthy, happy, and whole. She knew she had a sister who wore silks while she wore patched burlap.
Once, when she was twelve, Griselda asked why she never used the coins her father sent every month. The silver pieces sat in a dusty iron pot beneath the floorboards, untouched.
“Because..” Tamara had replied, her voice crackling like dry autumn leaves, “that money is not a gift. It is the price of my absence. If I spend it, I accept that my life has a price tag.”
Tamara never looked at the iron pot again. She chose dignity over comfort, earning her own way through foraging and trading herbs with the outermost border-dwellers. But the rejection left an invisible, bleeding wound in her heart.