The coven threw Hiss into the swamp the night she hatched, and someday she would take their throne for it. For now she was small. Her green and gold scales held no warmth. Two horn-nubs capped her head, and her tail dragged a thin line through the mud. The mud was the problem. Night was coming, and the mud at night belonged to the things that hunted. She needed a den. Hatchlings without dens did not see morning. She had watched a lizard vanish into a burrow at dusk and tried to copy it, digging with both hands. Water filled every hole she scraped. The swamp would not hold a tunnel. She needed walls already standing. She followed higher ground away from the reek of the water. Her legs shook. Something heavy moved through the reeds behind her, slow and patient, matching her pace. She did not look back. She climbed a slope of wet roots and came out on firmer earth. A cottage stood there. Purple flowers wrapped the whole of it, vines thick as her arm, spilling over the roof and crowding every window. A stone wall held up the lower floor. The flowers had grown so dense they made a second skin over the wood. Light showed in one round window high under the roof. Someone lived here. That should have turned her back. The coven had taught her one lesson well: everything larger than you wants you dead. But the thing in the reeds was closer now. She heard it breathe. Hiss looked at the vines. They tangled across the stone wall in knots and loops, leaving gaps behind them. Near the ground, where the flowers piled thickest, the tangle pulled away from the wall and left a hollow. A pocket of dry dark, roofed in leaves and roots, hidden from the path. She forced herself into it. The vines scratched her scales and snapped back shut behind her. Inside, the air was still and dry. The stone at her back held the day's warmth. She pressed flat against it and went silent. The heavy thing reached the clearing. She watched its shape pass the gap in the leaves—wide, low, dragging a belly through the grass. It stopped near her hiding place. It tasted the air. Then it turned and slid back down toward the water. Hiss stayed frozen until the breathing faded. Her heart slowed. She touched the warm stone and the leaves above her and understood that she had found walls after all. Not dug, not built. Stolen from the flowers and the house they covered. She would live. But the light still burned in the window above her, and the floor over her head creaked once as someone walked across it. The den was not empty. She had crawled under the home of a stranger, and in the morning the stranger would still be there.