I remember that day like it was yesterday.

  The slums stank of rot and heat. Ash swept through the air, choking on an unseen fire. A crow watched me from the roof of a crumbling house, its black eyes drilling through the dust and hunger. The house, like everything else in the slums, was dead. Just bones and rusted nails holding it up.

  The kid at my feet was about my age. Eight, maybe nine. We’d fought over a pile of trash—desperate, hoping for a scrap of moldy bread, a half-ripe fruit, anything. But it turned out to be just that—trash. Plastic, broken glass, a forgotten wire. I don’t even remember how it happened. A brick, maybe. A bottle. It doesn’t matter now.

  He bled quick.

  I slumped against the wall, my legs too weak to hold me up. My stomach howled—two days empty. My hand was slick—his blood, my blood, it didn’t matter. It melted into the filth. The sun beat down, harsh and relentless. The crow cawed once—sharp, mocking—before it flew off, leaving me alone with the body, the heat, and the hunger.

  I looked down at him, my lips curling. I didn’t want to. I told myself that. I hated the taste of it.

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  But I was so hungry.

  I picked apart the body, tearing off bits of flesh, chewing slowly. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.

  And that’s when I felt her watching.

  I hadn’t heard her. That should have scared me more than it did. But there she was—a crone. Old, crooked, her hunched back swathed in robes dark as night, feathers woven into the fabric. Her eyes glittered beneath a shawl, and when she stepped forward, the shadows bent like they were moving aside for her.

  She didn’t speak at first. She crouched beside me, looked at the body, then at me.

  “You don’t like the taste,” she said. Her voice was dry silk. “But you still eat.”

  I nodded, a grimace tugging at my lips.

  “You’d rather die than be weak. Good.”

  She stood, and I followed. I didn’t know why, but I did.

  ---

  Her manor was hidden. Cloaked in thorns and spellwork, it smelled like honey, blood, and firewood. I remember stepping inside, the air thick with something I couldn’t name—something ancient, like it had been waiting for me.

  She had a human servant—mute, enchanted to never speak of me. I was kept secret. Safe.

  That night, she stripped me down and bathed me herself. Her gnarled fingers worked through the pinfeathers on my scalp, plucking them away, revealing smooth black feathers beneath. “You are a changeling,” she said, “but no less a child of the moon.”

  She fed me—real food. Stew, bread, milk that didn’t taste sour. I nearly choked on it, unused to kindness.

  She gave me a bed—soft, thick, too warm. But in the morning, she found me curled on the cold floor.

  “The floor is harder,” I said, my voice cracked and hoarse.

  She smiled, nodding. “You’ll grow used to softness. One day, you’ll wear it like armor.”

  And so began the shaping.

  She dressed me in black feathers and silks, telling me the old stories of witches, moons, and blood passed down through claw and bone. She showed me how to carve spells into iron, how to speak the old names under my breath, how to let the moonlight teach me. She trained me with a blade in one hand and a curse on my tongue.

  And always—always—she gave me what I’d never had:

  a mother’s gaze, sharp and proud.

  And I needed it.