“Father?” I ask softly, though my heart is racing with trepidation. The returning cold silence makes all the hairs on my body rise. I know this feeling. I know that the serpents of his court my father isn’t happy with sometimes don’t return to their families. I begin to tremble. According to the most ancient laws of our kind, on the day you become a man or woman, your parents take you to see the oracle. It’s supposed to be a day of celebration, a day of revelation, and there was going to be a grand party in my honour. Rosalina and I had been planning it for months.
