Chapter 1: Kidnapped

  I don't know how I got here. I don't even know where "here" is. One minute I was walking to my car after another intense day of training soldiers in hand-to-hand combat at Fort Bragg, my Army uniform damp with sweat from demonstrating takedown techniques. The last thing I remember was reaching for my water bottle, and then... darkness. Did I die? The thought jolts through me like electricity.

  My head throbs as I wake, curled up like a child, my muscles screaming in protest. "No, that can't be right. I can't be dead." The words come out as a whisper, my throat dry as sandpaper. Everything is pitch black, but there's fabric against my face – a hood, rough and scratchy. My hands are bound in front of me, the rope digging into my wrists with military precision. Six years of Army training kicks in, fighting against the panic rising in my chest. Stay calm. Assess. Survive.

  My training officer's voice echoes in my head: "Death isn't the worst thing that can happen to a soldier, Santos." At the time, I thought he was being dramatic. Now, bound and blind in God-knows-where, I'm starting to understand what he meant. The not knowing – that's what gets you. That's what breaks people.

  The space around me is tight, metallic. My fingers trace the ridged surface beneath me, and the realization hits: I'm in the trunk of a car. The vibrations tell me we're moving fast, probably on a back road. I start counting seconds, like we did during field exercises. One Mississippi, two Mississippi... The rhythm keeps me sane as my mind races through possibilities.

  "What do people do when they get kidnapped?" I mutter to myself, a habit I picked up during basic training that earned me more than a few strange looks. "Is this something people can google?" A hysterical laugh threatens to bubble up, but I force it down. Focus, Kali. Focus.

  Who would want to kidnap a 27-year-old Army sergeant whose most exciting duty lately has been processing transfer paperwork? I'm still in my uniform – they must have grabbed me right from my car. But how? I'm trained in hand-to-hand combat, I carry a sidearm, and I'm always aware of my surroundings. My brother Korbin made sure of that, drilling situational awareness into me since we were kids.

  It was Korbin who found me, or so the story goes. A toddler wandering alone in Boston Common, babbling in what the police report called "an unknown language." No parents, no ID, just a strange medallion around my neck that disappeared from the evidence locker before anyone could properly document it. He was only six, but he refused to let social services separate us. "She's my sister," he'd insisted, with a certainty that made even the hardened social workers pause. "I promised to protect her."

  Some days, I wonder if he knew something even then. If he somehow sensed there was more to protect me from than just the foster system.

  The memory of Korbin's last lecture floods back. We were sitting in his garage, him cleaning his service weapon while I complained about desk duty. "The most dangerous moments are the ones where you feel safe," he'd said, not looking up from his work. "That's when they get you." I'd rolled my eyes then. Not anymore.

  "Don't be stupid, Kali. Maybe it's aliens," I snicker, then immediately want to slap myself. "Right, because aliens need cars. They probably left their UFO at the mechanic." The laughter that follows is definitely edging toward unhinged.

  Something about the trunk feels off. Despite the summer heat, the air around me is cool, almost crisp. And there's a smell – not the expected gasoline and rubber, but something wild and green, like forest after rain. My rational mind says it's impossible, but my nose insists otherwise.

  The car jerks to a stop, and I freeze. We've been moving for roughly two hours, though anxiety has made time stretch like taffy. A deep voice, rich as aged bourbon, speaks near the trunk: "Take her straight to the Princess."

  Princess? Before I can process that bizarre detail, I hear a key in the lock. My muscles tense, ready for a fight. Years of combatives training flash through my mind – the weak points, the vital strikes, the escape techniques. But what happens next throws me completely off balance. The hands that lift me are gentle, almost reverent. These have to be the most polite kidnappers in history.

  I stay quiet, mapping our path in my head. Twenty steps forward. Left turn. Thirty steps. Right turn. The military brat in me catalogs every detail, preparing for escape. My brother's voice echoes in my memory: "Always have an exit strategy, squirt."

  The air changes as we move, becoming thicker, charged somehow. Static electricity prickles across my skin beneath the uniform. My boots click against what sounds like stone, each step echoing strangely, as if the space around us is much larger than it should be.

  A heavy door groans open, and I'm led twenty more steps before being pressed to my knees. The hood comes off, and I find myself staring into eyes that can't possibly be real – they're the color of arctic ice, with hints of aurora borealis swirling in their depths.

  The woman before me is otherworldly. I'm not short for an Asian woman, but she towers over me like some Norse goddess stepped straight out of mythology. Her skin has the luminous quality of moonlight on snow, and her hair... God, her hair cascades like liquid starlight to the floor. She wears what looks like armor made of living crystal, each piece flowing into the next like frozen water.

  The absurdity of the situation hits me, and before I can stop myself, I giggle. "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair." The words slip out, and I immediately want to crawl into a hole and die. Real smooth, Santos. Real smooth.

  "Interesting." Her voice carries the lilt of Irish hills and ancient forests. "She's shorter than I expected." She turns to my escorts – two women built like Amazonian warriors, all muscle and grace. "Is your team sure you grabbed the right one?"

  Now that the hood's off, I can see my captors clearly. They're dressed in what looks like tactical gear, but something's off about it. The material shifts colors like oil on water, and where there should be ammunition pouches, there are crystals and vines. Their movements are too fluid, too perfect – like predators in human form.

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  "Yes, your Highness, we are positive she is the one." The first Amazon responds. I stare at them, my tactical mind noting how they carried me effortlessly, despite my intentional dead weight. These women aren't normal soldiers – they're something else entirely.

  Finding my voice, I channel every ounce of sergeant authority I possess. "Look, Snow White and her two Amazon dwarves, I'm Sergeant Kali Santos, U.S. Army. You've got the wrong person. Let me go, and I'll give you a day's head start before I bring hell down on you."

  The Princess's smile is both beautiful and terrifying. "Let you go? No, little sister. I'm bringing you home."

  Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. "Little sister? Lady, I've got one sibling, and his name is Korbin. Unless he's been hiding some seriously impressive drag skills..." I trail off, a new thought striking me. "Wait, is this one of his pranks? My birthday's next week, and he always..."

  The Amazon's hand forces me back to my knees before I can finish. "You rise only when the Princess allows it," she growls. Her grip is iron-strong but strangely cold, like being held by a statue.

  That's when something inside me snaps. Six years of taking orders, of being the good soldier, of following protocol – it all goes out the window. I meet the Princess's impossible eyes with a glare that would make my drill sergeant proud.

  "I've been patient. I've been quiet. But I'm done playing whatever game this is." My voice comes out low and dangerous. "Let. Me. Go. Now. I don't care if you're my brother's friend or the Queen of England – this stopped being funny about two hours ago."

  The Princess – áine, the name floats through my mind like smoke, there and gone before I can grasp it – steps closer. The air around her shimmers like heat waves off hot asphalt, but it's cold, so cold. "Oh, little flame," she whispers, "you really don't remember, do you?"

  The glow starts at the edges of my vision, a soft shimmer like heat waves rising from summer asphalt. At first, I think I'm hallucinating – stress and dehydration can do that to you. But then the light intensifies, pulsing with a rhythm that feels oddly familiar, like a half-remembered lullaby.

  "What the actual—" The floor beneath me dissolves into mist, and my stomach lurches as if I'm falling. The Princess reaches out, her fingers brushing my forehead. The touch sends electricity racing through my body, and suddenly I'm drowning in fragments of... something. Images flash through my mind like a broken film reel: sunlight catching on something crystalline, the echo of laughter that sounds almost like wind chimes, the sensation of running through halls that smell of starlight and summer.

  My head spins as the fragments keep coming, each one slipping away before I can fully grasp it. There's a feeling of movement, of dancing maybe, but the partners are shadows. Colors swirl at the edge of my vision – blues deeper than any ocean, purples that pulse like living things – but when I try to focus on them, they scatter like startled birds.

  The world around us shifts and blurs, reality seeming to peel away at the edges. The stark room transforms into something vast and strange, but my mind can't quite process what I'm seeing. The walls seem to be made of... light? Music? The thought slips away before I can catch it. Vines of impossible colors twist up columns that my eyes refuse to focus on, as if my brain can't quite accept what it's seeing.

  "Welcome back to Tír na nóg and the Summer Court, Kaliana." The Princess's voice echoes with power, and the name she uses rings in my head like a bell – familiar and foreign all at once. "The mortal realm has dulled your shine, but we can fix that."

  "This isn't..." I try to stand, but my legs feel like jelly. "This can't be real. I'm hallucinating. Or dreaming. Or maybe that coffee was laced with something, and I'm tripping balls in the Fort Bragg parking lot."

  A laugh like wind chimes fills the air, and suddenly there are others around us – beings of impossible beauty and terrible grace. Some have wings that seem made of stained glass, others sport antlers wrapped in flowering vines. All of them are staring at me with the same expression: recognition.

  My military training struggles against what I'm seeing. I try to catalog threats, identify weapons, plan escape routes. But how do you apply combat tactics to creatures that look like they stepped out of a fairy tale? My sergeant's stripes feel ridiculous now, like a child's costume in the face of something ancient and vast.

  The irony isn't lost on me. All those years of Korbin teaching me to trust my instincts, to notice when something felt wrong – and now my instincts are screaming that everything is wrong, while something deeper, something that feels ancient and familiar, whispers that this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. The dissonance makes my head spin.

  My hand drifts to my chest, where my dog tags should be. They're gone, replaced by a warmth that pulses in time with the strange lights around us. A part of me wants to fall back on my training, to treat this like any other hostile situation. But what's the protocol for when your kidnappers turn out to be fairy tale creatures? I don't remember covering that in basic.

  "Your glamour is fading," the Princess says, and I watch in horror as my hands begin to glow from within, my skin turning translucent like a paper lantern. "The magic that bound you to human form is breaking. Look."

  She waves her hand, and a mirror of what looks like liquid sunlight appears before me. The face that stares back is mine, but not mine. My eyes, usually a boring brown, now swirl with gold like honey in sunlight, with flecks of amber dancing in their depths like falling leaves. The transformation ripples across my face like water, each change more startling than the last. My black hair, once held in a tight bun, now moves with a life of its own, threads of starlight weaving through the strands like a living constellation.

  But it's my skin that makes me gasp. Oh god, my skin looks like it's been dusted with diamonds, no – more than that. It's as if someone took stardust and morning dew and somehow fused them together. Tiny points of light shift and move beneath the surface, following the flow of what must be magic in my veins. When I move, my skin catches the light like frost on autumn leaves, creating rainbow refractions that shimmer and dance. My familiar Asian features are still there, but they've been refined, sharpened, as if someone took everything human about me and elevated it to something ethereal.

  The Army uniform I'm wearing suddenly looks absurd against this otherworldly transformation, like trying to contain starlight in a mason jar. As I watch, even my fingertips begin to glow with an inner light, each nail becoming opalescent, shifting colors like mother-of-pearl in sunlight.

  "This is impossible," I whisper, but even as I say it, memories keep flooding back – memories of a childhood spent running through eternal sunshine, of lessons in magic instead of math, of a sister who taught me to dance on air. "I'm Sergeant Kali Santos. I was born in Boston. I grew up in an orphanage with my brother..."

  But I can't finish the sentence because I suddenly can't remember his face. They're blurring in my mind, like photographs left out in the rain. In their place, other images surface: a woman with autumn leaves for hair, a man whose eyes held galaxies. My parents? The thought makes me dizzy.

  The Princess – my sister, a voice whispers in my mind – kneels beside me, her touch gentler now. "The human memories were a gift, little flame. A protection while you grew strong enough to return. But it's time to remember who you really are."

  "And who," I ask, my voice shaking, "am I supposed to be?"

  Her smile is radiant and terrible. "You, my dear sister, are the lost Princess of the Summer Court, and we have a war to win."

  The words echo through the chamber, and with them comes a rush of power that feels like summer winds and blooming flowers, like golden sunlight and the first warm days of spring. It feels like coming home.

  And that terrifies me more than anything else.