The Wrong Soul

Nova had been dead for exactly four months when the Queen of Solaria asked to adopt her. She knew, with the certainty of a woman who had already died once, that it wasn't because she was lovable. It began with cold cobblestones and a hunger that felt like a second heartbeat. The last thing she could remember were headlights from a speeding car, on a wet road, as she screamed, paralyzed while looking at the car, before the car eventually bumped her, killing her on the spot. My name was Evelyn Vance. I was twenty and was a Sociology major, which I had an exam on Thursday, two days after that incident. She lifted her hand and went still. It was a child's hand, all bruised up and pale, with a thin red scar across the palm that she had never owned. "Oh. Thank goodness you're alive." A boy crouched beside her, ten at most, gap-toothed, swallowed by a coat three sizes too big. He held half a heel of bread like a treasure he had found. "Thought you'd gone stiff in the night. Almost took your boots." He glanced down. "No boots, though." "Where am I?" Her voice scraped like gravel. "Lower Vessel Row. Solaria's finest gutter." He pressed the bread into her hand. "Eat it slowly, Nova, or you might vomit it." “Nova.” The name settled over her like a coat that didn't fit. "Why are you giving me this?" "You gave me your blanket last winter." He said it plainly, like a fact of the season they were in. "Don't you remember?" She couldn't. The girl who had owned this body had shared her only blanket with a stranger's child and died of the cold for it. Her eyes burned. "No. I'm sorry, Tam." "Doesn't matter." He shrugged, but his chin wobbled. "You're here." She never told him the truth: that the girl he loved was gone and a stranger wore her face. Over the next months she learned which bakers tossed out day-old loaves and which guards could be bought with gossip. At night, under their collapsed awning, she told Tam about glass towers and glowing boxes that talked. "One day," he'd whisper, "you'll take me to see one." "One day," she promised, and meant it more than anything she had ever said. The carriage came on a morning of brittle frost. Black lacquer was on the carriage, four white horses, a golden sunburst on the door. The street went silent. Mothers snatched children out of the road. "Royal," Tam breathed, clutching her sleeve. "Hide. They never stop for the likes of us." The carriage stopped in front of Nova. The woman who stepped out wore a gown of gold of molten metal and a circlet of sunstones. She crossed the filth as though it didn't exist. Everyone dropped to their knees except Nova, who was too stunned to remember how. "Queen Valeria," someone whispered. Her eyes were the pale gray of old coins, and they swept over Nova with a hunger she couldn't name. "There you are," the Queen said softly. Nova's blood chilled. “There you are.” Not “Who are you.” People only spoke that way when they found something they'd lost. "Your Majesty." Nova bowed her head. "You've mistaken me for someone else." "Have I?" A gloved finger tilted up her chin. "Give me your hand, child." "Don't," Tam hissed. "Nova, please don't." A few soldiers stood behind the Queen. First rule of survival: when you can't fight, listen. Nova held out her scarred palm. Valeria's glove brushed it, and the air hummed. Silver light bloomed beneath Nova's skin, tracing the scar like lightning caught in a vein. The crowd gasped. The horses screamed. She wrenched her hand back, horrified. "Exactly as the Vizier promised," Valeria said, happily. "She is adopted into the House of Solaria as of this hour. My daughter." "Why would a queen want a street rat?" Nova whispered. "Because you are rare, little one." The Queen's voice dropped, meant for her alone. "And I hate to see rare things go to waste in the cold." It sounded like kindness and also felt like a hand closing around her throat. Soldiers lifted her toward the carriage. She twisted and found Tam, knocked flat by a boot from one of the soldiers and was scrambling up. "Nova!" Tears ran down his face. "You promised! You said you wouldn't leave me!" "Tam! Please, he's my brother, he's all I have..." "A gutter child," the Queen said without turning. "But a daughter of mine may keep one pet. Feed the boy. Keep him in the kitchens." It was mercy. It was also leverage, and Nova understood that the instant the door shut. As she approached a room, she saw silk sheets, silk curtains, silk slippers beside a bed bigger than her old awning. Royal tutors came at dawn. Dressmakers pinned her into corsets that squeezed her ribs. Everyone called her “Princess”, and no one met her eyes. Except one. "You're counting the exits," said the maid who laid out her gown on the third evening. She had brown braids and eyes that were wary and clever. "I did the same, my first day. I'm Mirella." "Is that a warning?" "A courtesy." Mirella lowered her voice. "The Queen gives nothing without taking something. The last girl who lived in this wing..." She went pale. "I've said too much." "What happened to her?" Mirella curtsied and fled. But at the door she glanced back, just once, and the look on her face wasn't fear. It was a calculation. By midnight Nova was pacing. Beneath the palace's creaks ran a low hum, the same one she'd felt when the Queen touched her hand. It came from behind the wardrobe. She shoved the furniture aside. A seam in the stone. A latch. A spiral staircase wound down into darkness. “Turn back,” the sensible part of her told her in her mind. But the silver light in her palm pulled downward like a compass needle, and she followed. At the bottom, there was a chamber of black stone, ringed with candles burned down to pools of wax. At its center stood an altar carved with sigils, and in its surface a single hand-shaped hollow, worn smooth. “By how many palms?” The runes brightened as she approached. Against her will, she laid her scarred hand into the hollow. It fits perfectly. The altar flared white. Heat and vertigo slammed through her, and the carvings unwound into a language she had no business understanding. She understood it anyway, because it wasn't the language of Solaria. It was English. “WELCOME, EVELYN VANCE.” Her knees nearly gave out. No one in this world knew that name. “No one here should know this.” The letters kept shifting. “YOUR SOUL BEARS NO MARK OF THIS REALM.” “THAT IS WHY SHE CHOSE YOU.” “THAT IS WHY SHE WILL SELL YOU.” "No," Nova whispered. "No, she adopted me because..." Because what? Because she was kind? Nova had stopped believing in kindness the day she woke up in the gutter, and the Queen had never once asked her name. “She knew exactly what I was before she touched my hand.” Footsteps echoed far above, and she wrenched her palm free. The glow died. She fled up the stairs, shoved the wardrobe back, and was under the silk sheets with her heart punching her ribs when the bedroom door creaked open. Mirella slipped in and stood in the dark, watching her, not the door. "You found it, didn't you?" she said quietly. Nova's breath stopped. "Found what?" "Don't." Mirella's voice cracked, and for the first time it sounded like a girl's. "Please don't lie to me. I've lost one mistress to that room already." She knelt beside the bed, trembling. "The Queen means to send you away. Tomorrow. And when she does, I need you to remember one thing: I never wanted to be her spy. I wanted to be your friend." "Her spy?" "I'm sorry." Tears slid down Mirella's face. "I've already told her you were awake." At dawn came trumpets, filling all the palace with melody. As Nova was dragged into the throne room in a gown the color of dried blood, flanked by guards. Queen Valeria waited on the dais, serene. Beside her stood Orlo, the Grand Vizier, his fingers stained black to the knuckle. And in the center of the hall, under banners of a black wolf on iron-gray, stood three strangers in the uniforms of Aethelgard. The tallest wore silver-blonde hair and ceremonial military black. His icy eyes found Nova's, assessed her, and dismissed her feelings in a single glance. "Crown Prince Cassian of Aethelgard," the herald announced. "With Prince Julian, High Chancellor. And Prince Kaelen, Vanguard Commander." The slender one in silks smiled. The scarred one with wild reddish-gold hair didn't bother. "By the ancient treaty between our realms," Cassian said, "the prophecy demands a bride whose aura matches the lost treasure of Aethelgard. Our seers say she stands before us." "And I accept on my daughter's behalf," Valeria said sweetly. "Aethelgard may court her, gentlemen. All three of you." "I haven't agreed to anything," Nova said. Nobody answered. Nobody even turned. That was when she understood. They weren't looking at her the way suitors look at a bride. They were looking at her the way thieves look at a vault. The slender prince, Julian, drifted past her as the court dispersed, close enough that she smelled sandalwood. His warm amber eyes were smiling. His voice was not. "Don't trust the Queen, Princess," he murmured. "Don't trust my brothers. And whatever you do, don't trust the maid." He paused. "Tell me, Nova. What was your name before the gutter?"