Bound By the Basilisk (Guardians of Vale Crossing #3)

Chapter 1

Liora

Liora learned early that the truth could be dangerous.

Not the ordinary kind of truth. The sort that slipped out in careless words or lingered in uncomfortable silences.

But the kind that lived beneath skin and memory, hidden in places no one expected a child to reach.

She learned it in the way her mother’s voice sharpened, in the way strangers recoiled, in the heavy quiet that followed whenever she spoke of things she was never meant to know.

When she was five, she still believed that what she saw was what everyone saw.

The world was full of moments that did not belong to her—flashes of laughter, sharp bursts of grief, the lingering warmth of a stranger’s happiness.

They came unbidden, blooming behind her eyes whenever someone stood too close.

A brush of sleeves at the market, a hand resting briefly on her shoulder, the passing shadow of a figure beside her, each touch opened a window.

She remembered the first time it caused alarm.

They had been waiting in line at the bakery, the air thick with sugar and yeast, when she reached for the woman standing beside her. The woman wore a blue scarf and smelled faintly of oranges. The moment their hands touched, the world dissolved.

Suddenly, Liora was somewhere else. A shoreline stretched before her, silver waves folding against sand. The woman, only younger, laughed as she ran toward the water, a man chasing her with easy affection. There was a ring in his hand, trembling with promise.

The vision ended as abruptly as it came.

Liora blinked, still holding the stranger’s fingers. “You said yes,” she told her, smiling with the simple delight of discovery. “By the ocean. He was shaking when he asked you.”

The woman’s expression crumpled.

Her hand tore free as if burned. Fear, raw and unguarded, flickered across her face. And beside Liora, her mother’s grip tightened like iron.

“Liora,” her mother whispered, voice thin with warning.

But Liora only frowned, confused by the sudden tension. “I just saw—”

“Enough.”

Her mother’s voice was sharp enough to cut the air. The stranger hurried away without her bread. And that night, Liora’s mother knelt before her with a severity she had never seen before.

“You must never tell people what you see,” she said.

No comfort softened the words, no explanation followed. Only fear lingered in her eyes, fear not of Liora, but of what the world might do to her. “People don’t understand things like that. They will think something is wrong with you.”

Something is wrong with you.

The words settled deep, heavy, and immovable.

Her mother had no magic, no language for the impossible. To her, the visions were a danger to be hidden, a secret to be buried beneath silence. Love made her harsh; fear made her rigid. And so Liora learned to swallow her truths, to bite down on the urge to speak when the memories came.

But it was her abuela who taught her that silence did not have to mean shame.

Her abuela did not recoil when Liora described the fragments she saw. She did not hush her or look away. Instead, she listened with steady eyes and knowing patience, as though the world Liora described was one she herself had once walked.

“Memories leave echoes,” her abuela told her gently, guiding her small hands between her own. “Some people feel them. Some people dream them. And some, like you, can see them.”

Under her abuela’s guidance, the visions became less like storms and more like doors that could be opened or closed.

She learned how to breathe through the sudden rush of others’ lives, how to anchor herself when the past threatened to pull her under.

She learned the careful art of touch without seeing, of walls built quietly behind her eyes.

Most important of all, she learned concealment.

“Power is a gift,” her abuela would say, brushing a strand of hair from Liora’s face, “but the world is not always kind to gifts it does not understand. You must choose when to reveal it, and when to let others remain blind.”

So Liora grew skilled at pretending. She smiled at strangers without reaching for their histories. She kept her hands to herself in crowded spaces. She learned to look at people without seeing them, to carry the weight of countless hidden moments without letting them show.

To the world, she was ordinary. But sometimes, when she forgot herself, when her guard slipped, and her fingers brushed against another life, the past still whispered through her veins, reminding her of who she truly was.

And she knew, with a certainty that lived in her bones, that some truths could never remain hidden forever.

But she was not alone in her secret. She had never been. She had her siblings.

Being a triplet meant sharing more than a birthday.

It meant shared glances across crowded rooms, conversations carried in silence, a closeness that made explanations unnecessary.

Where others might have questioned or feared what she could do, Elian and Zara simply accepted it as another part of who she was, like the sound of her laugh or the way she always hummed when thinking.

They had been the first she told willingly. Her siblings had not recoiled. They had listened.

They had asked questions, curiosity shining where others showed fear.

They treated her visions not as something broken, but as something extraordinary, something that simply was.

With them, she never had to pretend she saw nothing when memories pressed against her mind.

With them, she could speak freely, sharing the strange fragments of lives that brushed against her own.

That bond had made it easier, later, to trust her parents with the truth.

Her mother’s fear had never fully disappeared, but understanding had softened its edges. Her papa, steady and quiet, had listened more than he spoke, his acceptance arriving in small gestures rather than grand declarations. The silence no longer carried shame.

Still, acceptance in the Upperworld had always come with conditions.

Careful, Liora. Be discreet. Do not draw attention.

Magic was something whispered about, regulated, and restrained. Something to be hidden behind ordinary faces and mundane explanations. Power was controlled. Creatures of legend existed only in secrecy or exile. The world demanded normalcy, even from those who could never truly be normal.

Vale Crossing was nothing like that.

Now, standing at the heart of its winding streets, she allowed herself a slow, steady breath. She was surrounded by basilisks.

They moved through the restaurant with quiet authority, towering figures whose upper bodies bore the shape of humans while their lower halves coiled in powerful serpentine tails.

Their scales caught the lantern light with subtle iridescence—emerald, obsidian, and burnished gold glinting like living armor.

Their eyes, slit-pupiled and ancient, missed nothing.

In the Upperworld, their existence would have been denied outright.

Here, they haggled over produce, argued about prices, and drank brews scented with herbs as if such things were ordinary, because here, they were.

The air itself felt different in Vale Crossing.

Thicker with magic. Alive with it. The streets pulsed with energies long suppressed elsewhere, humming beneath the surface of every conversation and every step.

Strange creatures passed openly beside her, beings of horn and claw, of shadow and flame, of forms that shifted at the edges of vision. No one stared. No one hid.

No one pretended.

For the first time in years, Liora did not need to hold herself so tightly.

Her guard loosened without her permission. The careful walls her abuela had taught her to build remained in place, but they no longer felt like a prison. Here, power was not a danger to conceal; it was simply a fact of existence.

A small, disbelieving smile touched her lips.

Here, she could exist without apology among monsters and magic and beings the Upperworld refused to acknowledge. She felt something unfamiliar unfurl in her chest, something warm and expansive, something dangerously close to relief.

She could be herself. Far from the rigid order of the Upperworld, in the wild heart of Vale Crossing, where monsters lived openly, and magic flowed freely. She was no longer a girl hiding a dangerous secret. She was simply another soul among many, carrying her power like breath.

“Liora.”

Her brother’s voice came gently, careful not to startle her.

Elian leaned forward across the table, his gaze fixed on her with quiet concern.

The lantern light caught in his familiar brown eyes, making them shine with that same steady protectiveness he had carried since childhood.

Dark hair fell loosely across his forehead, and ink curled along his forearms in intricate patterns, lines and symbols that shifted subtly when he moved.

“Are you seeing a memory?” he asked softly. He always noticed and knew when something tugged at her mind.

She met his gaze and felt warmth settle in her chest at the familiar sight of him. Of all the strange things in Vale Crossing, her brother remained an anchor.

She shook her head, a small smile touching her lips. “No,” she said quietly. “This time…it’s my memories.”

Understanding softened his expression. “Good, I prefer the ones that belong to you.”

There was a teasing note beneath the words, but concern still threaded through his voice. He leaned back in his chair, though his attention never truly left her, watchful in the way only someone who shared her beginning could be.

She let her gaze drift past him, taking in their surroundings. Being surrounded by basilisks should’ve been unsettling. Instead, it felt strangely comforting.

No one stared at the triplets. No one questioned their presence or the quiet hum of magic that surrounded them. In Solkaris, the basilisk quarter of Vale Crossing, they were simply patrons like any other.