Her Highness, By Mistake

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Ghost in the Mirror

The morning light filtered through the tall windows, casting golden shapes across the polished floor of the Valenhart estate. Eira sat motionless at her dressing table, the brush limp in her hand. Her reflection blinked back at her from the mirror—same tousled brown hair, same dark eyes—but something felt off. As if the glass held a version of her that lagged behind, or worse… watched.

She set the brush down slowly and leaned in. “Just me,” she murmured. “Only me.”

But the words rang hollow.

Behind her, the room was silent. Mira was off helping the house steward inventory dresses for the next court function, and Marion had been dispatched to pick up a tonic from the apothecary. The morning was hers—quiet and unsettlingly long.

Eira rubbed her arms, though the room wasn’t cold. Her thoughts drifted to the strange sensation she’d had since awakening in this new world—a buzzing presence in her chest, like a second heartbeat pulsing out of sync. At first, she’d assumed it was fear. Now she wasn’t so sure.

She stood, pacing to the window. Beyond the courtyard, Velandria’s capital stretched out in soft greens and silver rooftops. Soldiers trained in the distance near the keep. Somewhere in that chaos of marble and steel was Prince Alric—the one who held the power to choose a bride at the Selection. The one she’d yet to meet.

And yet…

“Why do I feel like he already knows me?” she whispered to the glass.

It was irrational, but the thought had kept her up last night. Rumors swirled through the manor like fog—of the prince’s icy composure, of his unmatched swordsmanship, of his calculating gaze. One maid claimed he could spot a lie before it was even spoken. Another insisted his eyes were gold because the gods themselves marked him at birth.

Eira pressed her forehead to the window. “I don’t care about his eyes. Or his mark. Or his throne.”

But even she didn’t believe that.

She was trapped in a noblewoman’s body, destined to be paraded in front of a prince as a potential bride. And yet the part of her that had once been Eira Vaughn—stubborn, sarcastic, painfully modern—was beginning to fray at the edges. Each day, it was harder to draw the line between herself and the girl whose name she’d inherited.

Selis.

The name stuck like a splinter in her throat.

It wasn’t just the diary she’d found in the drawer beneath her bed, scrawled with lines of poetry and ominous half-thoughts. It wasn’t the embroidered handkerchiefs with the initials S.V. or the faint perfume that clung to every gown in her wardrobe.

It was the way the mirror sometimes blinked when she didn’t.

Eira turned back to the dressing table, suddenly unwilling to look again.

Later that day, while Mira helped her dress for their afternoon call to the temple gardens, Eira struggled to shake the unease clinging to her bones.

“Are you alright, my lady?” Mira asked gently, pinning up a loose curl. “You look pale.”

“I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep much.”

Mira gave her a skeptical glance in the mirror. “You’ve been restless since the night of the Oracle’s visit.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Eira said with a forced laugh. “She practically accused me of... I don’t know, stealing someone’s fate.”

The words echoed, heavier than she’d meant. She expected Mira to laugh. She didn’t.

“She said the path you walk was meant for another,” Mira murmured. “But if the stars have shifted, then maybe the gods did too.”

Eira turned to her. “Do you believe in all that?”

Mira hesitated. “I believe that fate has many faces. And not all of them are kind.”

That night, Eira locked her door and refused her evening tea. She sat with her knees pulled to her chest on the wide four-poster bed, diary open beside her. The ink was faded, but the last few entries had been scribbled with a kind of desperation. Some in Common Script, some in archaic Valen, but a few words kept reappearing.

The fire speaks.

I see her in my dreams.

She wants what’s mine.

Eira’s throat tightened.

She reached for her pillow—and froze.

It was upside-down.

She hadn’t turned it.

Her heart stuttered. Slowly, carefully, she lifted the pillow again. There, faint against the white linen, was the shape of a handprint. Small. Delicate. But there.

Her own hand hovered above it. It didn’t match.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m not imagining this.”

She spun around, eyes scanning the room. Curtains still. Candles unlit. No breeze. No footsteps. No sound but her shallow breathing and the low groan of wood as the house settled.

She pulled the diary close, as if it might offer answers.

But the mirror caught her eye again.

The candlelight she hadn’t lit danced along its surface—except there were no candles burning.

And for a brief, breathless moment, Eira saw someone else in the glass.

Not a trick of light. Not imagination.

A woman. Her face half-shadowed, eyes burning like coals, hair cascading like ink down her shoulders. She stood behind Eira’s reflection, unmoving.

Eira whipped around.

Empty.

She turned back, heart hammering—

Nothing. Only her own pale face staring back at her.

She couldn’t sleep.

By morning, she was exhausted, dark circles beneath her eyes and nerves frayed thin. Mira said nothing as she prepared Eira for their visit to the High Garden—a royal gathering where, she’d been informed, Prince Alric would make a public appearance. Not formally, not for the Selection yet, but still present.

“He’ll be watching,” Mira had said simply.

That alone was enough to knot Eira’s stomach. She’d spent days trying to avoid the idea of him, and now their paths would finally cross. She wasn’t ready.

As they rode toward the capital grounds, Eira clenched the edge of the carriage seat, her gaze fixed out the window. She tried to ground herself in facts: she was pretending to be Lady Selis Valenhart, a noblewoman with every right to attend. Her goal was simple—stay unnoticed, unremarkable. Get through this without fainting or screaming about ghosts in mirrors.

But deep down, beneath the layers of her stolen name and embroidered gown, something else simmered.

A pull.

Like her path had already curved toward Prince Alric, long before this day. Like meeting him wasn’t a choice.

It was fate.

And as they passed beneath the arched gate into the temple’s flowering court, Eira’s breath caught.

Because even before she saw him, she felt him.

The air shifted. The hum in her chest grew louder.

And the fire in her blood whispered a name that wasn’t hers.