Livia danced before the shrine while her tribe sang around her. In three days she would face the trial of fangs. Win it, and she would become high priestess of her scattered people. The snake coiled on her shoulders tightened once, a warning she had learned to trust. Then a scream tore through the music. She ran from the temple into the night. A woman lay crumpled on the stone steps, her leg swollen black. An elder knelt beside her. "The venom sickness," he said. "Three in the camp already. No bite marks. No snakes." The crowd behind Livia went silent. Everyone looked at her. If she could not stop this, they would never trust her at the trial. Livia pressed two fingers to the woman's throat. The pulse raced. The black crept toward her knee. The snake on Livia's shoulders hissed low, and the meaning came to her clear as speech. This was no ordinary poison. It carried malice. Someone had made it. She had seen the healers try herbs and fail. Her tribe owned older remedies than herbs. Livia lifted the sick woman in her arms and carried her inside, to the sacred shrine where the goddess figure sat wreathed in living serpents. She laid the woman at its base and knelt. "Seraphina Coilheart," she prayed. "Goddess of healing. I offer myself if you will spare her." The air grew warm. The painted serpents stirred. From behind the stone goddess slid a being half woman and half snake, her scales rose gold, her hair the pink of dawn. She was the goddess herself, come in answer. Livia had prayed to her all her life and never once seen her move. "You ask for another before yourself," Seraphina said. Her voice was soft and amused. "Few do. I will teach you the cure. But know the sickness is no accident. A jealous woman brews it in the dark." She bent and touched the swollen leg. "My healing lives in the venom of my own serpents. Draw it. Press it to the wound. Poison undoes poison." Livia's hands shook, but she obeyed. She coaxed a green serpent from the shrine, pressed its fangs to the woman's leg, and let it strike. For a breath nothing changed. Then the black began to fade. The swelling sank. The woman gasped and opened her eyes. The tribe surged forward, cheering. Livia filled a clay vessel with the serpents' venom to carry to the camp. She had saved one life and held the cure for the rest. Her standing was secure. Seraphina caught her wrist before she left. "The one who made this will not stop. She wants your place, Livia. Guard your trial." The goddess sank back into stone. Livia stared at the vessel in her hands. She had won the people. Now she had a hidden enemy, and only three days until the fangs.

The afflicted woman slept now, healed. Livia carried the cure to the camp and returned at dawn to the shrine. Three days until the trial of fangs. She knelt before the goddess figure wreathed in serpents and admitted the truth. She did not know what the trial would demand. No one living had told her. She did not know how to train for a test she could not name. She searched the shrine for answers. Dust coated the old carvings along the steps. Her snake tightened once on her shoulders, then loosened, pulling her gaze down. At the base of the stairs sat a carved stone serpent, its hood raised, its coils worn smooth by generations of hands. She had passed it a thousand times. She had never truly looked. Livia knelt and brushed the grime from its scales. Faint lines ran beneath the dirt. Not decoration. Marks. She traced them with her thumb. The old picture-script her grandmother once taught her, half remembered. She read slowly, guessing at the worn parts. "The fangs ask three," she whispered. The snake on her shoulders lifted its head, listening. "The first asks what you carry. The second asks what you hide. The third asks what you will give." Her stomach dropped. The trial would not test her strength or her dancing. It would strip her bare. The carvings named no sword, no herb, no prayer she could rehearse. The test demanded she face the thing she had buried. She thought of the night her sacred ground was breached. The person she had trusted to guard it. The person she still would not name a traitor, only gone. Her snake went still against her skin. Not tight. Not afraid. Still. The stillness that came when she herself was the problem she had not yet seen. Livia pressed her forehead to the cold stone serpent. "I left them to receive my honors," she said aloud. The words hurt. "I chose the ceremony. I let the gate stand open." She had carried that guilt for years and called it grief. The second question would ask it of her, and she had no false answer ready. She stood. Her hands shook, but her mind was clear. She could not train her body for this trial. She could only tell herself the truth before the fangs forced it. Three days. She would spend them not practicing strength, but naming what she carried, what she hid, what she would give. The stone serpent's blue eyes caught the lamplight. Livia met its gaze without looking away. For the first time she understood what she walked toward. The relief lasted only a breath. If the trial revealed hidden things, then her rival would enter it too. Whatever that woman had buried would surface in the pit beside her. Livia now knew the shape of the test. She did not yet know which of them it would break.

Two days before the trial, Livia left the shrine to find quiet. She followed a worn path and came upon a temple she had never entered. Serpent carvings coiled up its gold walls. Inside, the air smelled of smoke and old stone. She needed one thing from this place: a way to say her secret out loud before the fangs tore it from her. She had named it to a cold statue. She had not yet named it to a living thing that could judge her. A woman sat on the temple steps, still as the carvings. Snakes moved in her hair, slow and green. Livia's own snake went flat against her skin, afraid, and did not lift its head. The woman did not turn. "Do not look at my eyes," she said. "I am Medusa. Men have become stone for less." Livia stopped and fixed her gaze on the woman's hands. "I came to pray, not to fight." "You came to practice," Medusa said. "You carry a confession you cannot hold any longer. I can hear it in your breathing." Livia's throat tightened. She had told no one. But the woman's calm pulled the words loose. "I left my people unguarded," Livia said. "The night of my ceremony. I chose my honors. Someone I trusted stood watch, and the gate opened, and my tribe scattered. I let it happen." The snakes in Medusa's hair stilled. "You think naming it will shame you before them." "It will." "I once begged to be believed," Medusa said. "A man came to my temple with no prayer. I warned the others. No one came. Then a goddess cursed me without one question." She turned her head a fraction, eyes still shut. "Shame is what they put on you. Guilt is what you did. Do not trade one for the other." Livia looked up before she could stop herself. She met the shut lids, then the lashes lifting. For one breath she saw green eyes. Her feet did not harden. Her blood did not slow. She stood whole, holding the gaze she had feared. "You did not look away," Medusa said. "Most do." "I'm done looking away." Livia's voice came steady now. "At the trial I will say it plain. I left them. I will not dress it as grief." "Then you have already passed the second fang," Medusa said. She closed her eyes and faced the wall. "The subject is finished. Go." Livia walked out into the light. Her snake lifted from her shoulders at last and tasted the air. The secret was no longer buried. She had spoken it and remained standing. But speaking the truth had sharpened a new fear. Her rival would stand in that pit too, and whatever that woman hid was still unknown. Livia knew her own secret now. She did not know the one that would be used against her.

Trial morning came, and so did a new wave of sickness. Livia walked among her gathered people and counted the fallen. Twelve lay on mats now, not three. Their skin burned. No bites marked them, only the hidden poison she had learned to fight. She had venom for four, maybe five. The horn would call her to the pit by midday. She could not cure them all and reach the trial in time. Her snake lay flat against her neck, afraid. She milked the venom she had, drop by drop, into cups of water. Five people drank. Their breathing eased. The rest moaned on their mats. She had nothing left. Her hands shook. If she stayed, she lost her place as high priestess. If she left, the sick might die. A man knelt beside a fevered child at the edge of camp. Livia had seen him twice before, selling herbs between villages. His name was Fuego. An ouroboros marked his bare chest. He pressed a cloth to the boy's head and looked up at her with steady brown eyes. "You're out," he said. Not a question. "I'm out." She hated saying it. "Then we find more." He stood. "Your snake. It isn't the only one." He led her past the mats to a low stone shelf behind the shrine. A serpent lay coiled there, dark green, its scales marked with glowing signs. It watched them without fear. Livia knew it at once. The sacred serpent of her tribe. She had not seen it since the scattering. It had come back on the one morning she needed it most. "I can't take from a god's creature," she said. "You won't take." Fuego crouched and held out his open hand. "You'll ask." Livia knelt. She bowed her head and spoke the first half of the old harvest prayer, the only half her grandmother had taught her before she died. The words ran out. She fell silent, ashamed. The serpent lifted its head. It held her gaze. She held it back, the way she had learned not to look away. Then it lowered its fangs to the rim of her cup and gave its venom freely. She worked fast. Cup after cup. Fuego carried them to the mats while she milked more. One by one the sick drank. Their fevers broke. The boy sat up and asked for water. By the time the horn sounded across the camp, every mat held a living, breathing person. Livia stood. Her outfit was stained now, her hands raw. The serpent slid back into the shrine's shadow and was gone. Fuego watched her, saying nothing, his jaw tight with something he would not name. "The trial," he said at last. "Go." She went. She had saved her people and kept her place. But the sickness had struck twice now. Her rival was still out there, still hidden, and would be waiting in the pit.

The trial was done for the day. Livia had held her place in the pit, but her rival still wore a face she could not name. Now night pressed on the forest of Nepenthe. She sat alone by a small fire she had built from stacked logs. The embers glowed red between them. She leaned toward the flame and warmed her hands. But her mind drifted. She kept seeing Fuego at the mats that morning, carrying cups without a word. His steady brown eyes. The way his jaw had tightened when the serpent gave its venom. She told herself to stop. She could not. Her snake went still against her neck. Not afraid. Still, the way it went when she was the problem she had not seen. Livia frowned and looked up. Fuego stepped out of the dark trees. He carried a cloth bundle under one arm. He had tracked her by the smoke. He crouched across the fire and set the bundle down. "You left the camp," he said. "Dangerous, alone." "I needed to think." She did not say about what. He pulled the cloth open. Dried roots, a few stems, a flat gray stone for grinding. He worked without looking at her. "Your hands," he said. "They're raw from the milking. This stops the cracking." She held them out. He took her wrist and spread a paste across her palm. His fingers were warm and careful. For a moment neither of them spoke. The fire snapped. Livia watched his face in the light and felt her chest tighten. Her snake did not move. "Why did you help me this morning?" she asked. "You don't know my people." Fuego stopped. He looked at the ouroboros marked on his chest, then at her. "My grandfather wore this. He told me something was taken from our people long ago. He asked me to bring it back." He let go of her hand. "I don't know what it is. But when your serpent gave its venom, I felt it. Close. Like I'd found a thread." Livia went cold. "You think your people and mine are one." "I think our paths cross for a reason." He wrapped the stone back in the cloth. He would not look at her now. "That's all I'll say." She understood then why her snake had gone still. The problem was not her rival tonight. It was this. She had let a stranger into the one grief she guarded. She had warmed to him when she should be hunting the one who poisoned her tribe. Fuego stood. "Keep the paste. Sleep. The trial takes more tomorrow." He turned toward the trees. "Fuego." He paused. "What was taken from your people. Do you think I have it?" He looked back at her over the fire. "I think you are it." Then he was gone into the dark. Livia sat alone. The embers dimmed. She had come here to clear her head. Instead she carried a new question now, heavier than the last.

Fuego walked back to his own camp with Livia's question still in his chest. He built a fire from stacked logs and sat before it. The embers glowed red at the base. He told himself to plan tomorrow's trial, to think of herbs, of the serpent, of the thing his grandfather sent him to find. Instead he saw her eyes. He let his mind slip into the old trance his grandmother taught him. In the vision Livia sat across the same fire. She smiled at him. They spoke like old friends, easy, unhurried. She laughed, a bright, warm sound, and tipped her head back. He watched the firelight move across her face and did not want to leave. For once the search felt small and the woman felt large. A branch snapped in the dark. Fuego came back to himself at once. His hand went to the knife at his belt. He stood and faced the trees. Voracia stepped into the light. She had curly hair and brown eyes, and she walked like she already owned the ground. She was the other woman in the pit, the rival who had poisoned Livia's tribe before the trial. Fuego had seen her watch Livia too closely all day. He did not lower the knife. "The herbalist," Voracia said. "You treat her hands. You track her through the woods." She looked at the fire, then at him. "You care for her." "Say what you came to say." "I know what you look for." She let the words sit. "Something taken from your people. You think it runs through her serpent." Fuego's jaw tightened. He had told that to Livia alone. "How." "I read things others guard. Years ago. A prophecy with her name in it." Voracia stepped closer. "I can give you the thing you want. The truth of what was stolen. Help me end her in the pit tomorrow, and it is yours." Fuego looked at her a long moment. He thought of the vision. The laugh. The warmth he had not felt in years. "No," he said. Voracia's face did not change. "Then you lose both. Her and your answer." "I'll find my answer without selling her for it." He kept the knife up. "Leave my fire." She studied him, as if filing the refusal away. Then she turned and walked back into the dark without another word. Fuego sat down slow. The choice was made now, and it could not be taken back. He had wanted to stay apart, a searcher passing through. That was gone. He had picked a side, and the side was Livia. Tomorrow Voracia would know it. So would the trial. He fed a log to the fire and watched the sparks climb. The vision would not be enough anymore. He would have to warn her.

Livia sat alone in the forest before the next trial day. Her snake lay draped across her shoulders. Fuego carried a warning for her, she did not know it yet. He had refused Voracia and chosen Livia, and now he meant to reach her. But the trees stretched wide and dark between them. Livia had no way to know he was coming. She closed her eyes to meditate and search for the answers the trial would demand. The air changed. It pressed against her skin like a hand. A single fly circled her head, slow and wrong. Her snake stirred, then went still. Livia breathed through the strangeness and tried to hold her focus. What she carried. What she hid. What she would give. She turned the three questions over and waited for them to open. Far off, Voracia stood inside a sanctuary of black stone. Vines twisted down its dark walls. She had left Fuego's fire with his refusal still fresh. Now her anger had grown teeth. She pressed her hands flat against the cold stone and reached out with her mind. First she found Fuego, sleeping by his embers. She poured false dreams into him, tangled shapes that bent his path and slowed his feet. Then she turned the same force on Livia. The attack landed behind Livia's eyes. Pain bloomed sharp and sudden. Her thoughts scattered. The questions slipped from her grip. She pressed her palms to her temples and bent forward. The fly buzzed louder. Her snake lay flat against her skin, afraid. Livia could not hold her meditation. The headache drove her down. "Not now," she whispered. But her body would not obey. She lay back on the forest floor and shut her eyes against the hammering in her skull. The strangeness in the air wrapped around her like smoke. She fought it, then stopped fighting, because fighting made it worse. She let herself sink. Sleep took her fast. In the dream she stood in a gray place with no walls. A shadow rose before her, tall and faceless. It moved when she moved. It wore her shape but not her face. The shadow reached for her snake, and the snake would not strike. Livia understood, in the deep way of dreams, that the shadow had come from outside her. Someone had sent it. Someone was in her mind right now, reaching. She woke in the dark. The headache had dulled. The fly was gone. Her snake lifted its head and tightened once around her neck, a warning she now believed. Livia sat up slowly. She had not found the answers she came for. The meditation was ruined. But she had learned something the attack never meant to teach her. Her rival had reached across the forest to break her. That meant her rival feared her enough to try. Livia stood. She knew now she was being hunted in her sleep, and she would not rest easy again.

Livia dared not sleep in the forest again. She returned to the temple instead, where stone serpents watched over the goddess, and she lay down on the cool floor. She meant only to rest her eyes. But her body was spent from the attack, and sleep pulled her under. In the dream she stood inside a wide hall. People filled it, their faces turned toward her. She opened her mouth and began to sing. The song was not hers, but it rose anyway. One by one the people stopped moving. Their skin hardened. Their eyes dulled to gray. She sang, and the whole hall turned to stone around her. Livia woke with a gasp. Her snake tightened once, then eased. The dream still clung to her. She knew whose hall that was. She rose and walked out to the orchard behind the shrine, where one tree bore golden fruit beside rich orange persimmons. She reached up, picked a persimmon, and bit into it. The sweetness spread through her. Her headache loosened. Strength returned to her legs. She breathed easier than she had in two days. "I should pay her another visit," Livia said. She found Medusa among her own stillness, serpents shifting slow through her green hair. Medusa had once served at a temple and been punished for a crime done to her, not by her. Now her gaze turned men to stone, and few sought her out. Livia did. "My rival strikes me when I meditate," Livia said. "She reached into my mind across the whole forest. I cannot shield myself. I will walk into the trial with nothing left." Medusa did not look away. Her serpents went quiet. "She enters through the door you open," Medusa said. "You sit down, you empty yourself, you invite her in." "Then I stop meditating." "No. You stop going alone." Medusa lifted one hand toward the snake at Livia's neck. "That one wakes when danger comes. It woke for me the first time you came. Let it keep the door while your mind works." Livia touched the snake. It held her gaze and did not shrink. "Do not reach outward," Medusa said. "Reach down. Hold one true thing and close your fist on it. She cannot pour into a mind that is already full." She paused. "You already carry the weight she wants to use. Carry it on purpose." Livia understood. She had been meditating with her guard down, emptied and open. She would do it the other way now. She sat beside Medusa and shut her eyes. She did not empty herself. She held her guilt, her tribe, the gate she left open, and she let the snake watch the dark. The pressure came, searching. It found a full mind and no way in. Livia opened her eyes. The exhaustion was gone. For the first time since the attacks began, her thoughts were her own. She could enter the trial rested, and shielded.

Livia walked to the trial pit at dawn with her mind her own again. But rest was not proof. The second question of the trial of fangs waited for her: what she hid. She would have to name Voracia as the one who poisoned her people. She had the cure. She had no evidence. Without it, her accusation would sound like a loser's excuse before the judges. She needed Fuego. He had refused Voracia once already, and he knew the forest paths better than anyone. If anyone could find a thread of proof, it was him. She followed the game trail toward his usual fire. Instead, she found him on the ground, fighting. Thick green vines wrapped his arms and chest. They pulled tighter the harder he strained. Fuego did not call out. He only clamped his jaw and twisted. The ouroboros tattoo on his chest showed between the coils. Livia dropped to her knees beside him and grabbed a vine. It bit into her palm. Light flared above them. A small winged woman hovered close, her wings flecked with glowing embers. She raised one hand and spoke three sharp words. The vines shuddered, loosened, then crumbled to ash. Fuego sat up, breathing hard. "Thank you," Livia told the fairy. The fairy drifted lower. Her light fell across the dead vines. "I have seen these before," she said. Fuego got to his feet. "Where?" "A black stone sanctuary. Old. Vines and thorns cover it. On the far side of the forest, where no one goes." She studied the ash. "A cloaked figure enters at night and leaves before light. I have heard chanting inside." Livia's snake tightened hard around her neck. It did that near a threat. Voracia used dark magic. Voracia summoned creeping things to do her work. The vines that had just caught Fuego were her craft, and now Livia knew where she worked it. "That is her," Livia said. "That is where she makes the poison." Fuego wiped ash from his arms. "Then that is where the proof is." The fairy nodded once and rose into the branches. Her ember light shrank to a spark, then vanished. Livia stood. The trial would call for her answer by midday. She could not reach the sanctuary and return in time. She would have to walk into the pit and face the second question without the thing hidden in those walls. "I will go," Fuego said. He read her face. "You cannot. The horn calls you. I can." He unsheathed his blade. Livia gripped his wrist. "If she catches you there alone—" "She won't." One flat line, and he was done with it. She let go. For the first time, she knew where Voracia hid her crime. She had a name to speak at the trial, and now a place to point to. But the proof sat behind thorns across the whole forest, and she had to answer the judges before Fuego could reach it. In the meantime, Voracia was hiding in the temple trying to locate where Livia was through her mirror. She stared into it intensely and still couldn’t pinpoint where she was. She then decided to send her obnoxious flies out to look for her but by that time, Livia was at the serpent goddesses temple. The serpent Goddess gave Livia a cloak of her own and she draped it over her body. And handed her an anointing oil to mask her scent.