Johana blinked, clearly startled. “Indulged?”
“She must be anchored,” he said softly. “Guided firmly. Held to the highest standards. If you spoil her, she will break. If you give her too much freedom, she will burn.”
He stepped closer, voice warm with false reassurance. “Children of destiny test boundaries,” he said. “Not from malice, but simply because their nature pushes against them.”
Johana’s fingers trembled at her sides.
“If you love her, you must not mistake gentleness for kindness. Firmness is her salvation. Structure, her safety.”
Willem nodded reverently, absorbing each word as if hearing divine instruction.
Johana swallowed, and Willem noticed, knowing her fear and love were knotting painfully together.
“You will think you are strict,” he finished, “but you will be saving her.”
Then, and only then, did he lift his hand toward the Grimoire. He didn’t touch the cover, but he came close enough that the iron clasp quivered.
“The Grimoire chose your bloodline,” he whispered. “But destiny must be shaped. Tended. Controlled.”
Inside the book, something shifted, so faint it could have been the settling of parchment. Or something waking. Outside, the portal flickered, just once, with a strange-colored light. A flaw barely noticeable, a fracture waiting to widen. The Traveler stepped back, expression serene.
“Remember what I’ve told you,” he said. “And raise your daughters well.”
The household retired, and at first light, he bowed deeply, slipping into the early mist without disturbing a single leaf. The visit ended quietly, and the Sinclairs believed they had welcomed a blessing. They did not feel the single thread that had been pulled from their fate; a thread that would, in time, unravel everything.
He left no obvious harm.
No blood.
No curse.
Nothing they could see.
Only words that would echo through their lineage and rot it from within.
Sinclair House, 1792
The beginning of the year Poppy turned ten, winter held onto the Sinclair estate with stubborn, icy fingers.
Frost webbed the windowpanes. Drafts slipped under the doors. The whole house felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with weather.
Servants guided her aside with firm hands.
Her parents spoke around her, never to her.
But Lysandra, nineteen, almost twenty, saw Poppy. Lysandra was warmth in human form. She braided Poppy’s hair every morning, stole sweet buns from the kitchen, and held her through the nights when the halls creaked too loudly. She was sister, guardian, conspirator, the one person who made the house feel less like a shrine.
Poppy believed her sister would always be there.
March 12 was her tenth birthday.
It should have been like any other winter morning, cold floors, gray sky, Lysandra humming while she braided her sister’s hair.
But by evening, everything changed.
Poppy remembered it in pieces, the way a frightened child remembers things too big to understand. A sharp shout. A tremor under her feet.
Then… light.
