Prologue
Prologue: The End That Wasn’t
2025 – Chicago
Rain etched blurred veins down the window, smearing the neon haze of the city into something soft and bleeding. Eira Vaughn leaned her forehead against the cool bus glass, earbuds drowning out the mechanical whir of late-night transit. The streets outside, once familiar, felt like an oil painting scraped too many times—a portrait of a life she didn’t want anymore.
Home. She hated that word.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, a ghostly reminder of the message still waiting:
“It’s your mother’s death anniversary. You could at least pretend to care.”
Eira’s jaw tightened. She did care. Just not in the way he demanded—wax candles, dressed in black, her grief paraded like a show dog. Her mother had hated pretense. Eira mourned her in silence, in solitude, in all the things her father couldn’t understand.
She shoved the phone deeper into her coat. Her stop was next.
When she stepped off the bus, the world met her like a slap—rain turning to sleet, slicing at her cheeks, soaking through her jeans. She tugged her hood up and crossed the street. The wind carried the scent of diesel and something faintly sweet, like burned sugar.
Then—silence.
Not the absence of sound. A presence. Like the world had drawn in a breath and forgotten to exhale.
Her footsteps slowed. The air changed—too still, too heavy.
A low growl of tires.
A horn.
Light. Blinding. White.
Her body flung sideways, then nothing at all.
She didn’t even scream.
________________
Somewhere Else — The Awakening
She awoke in a darkness that breathed.
No beeping machines. No fluorescent light. Just a hush that pressed on her chest like a held secret. Then sound—faint, disjointed: a crackling hearth, silk rustling, the unmistakable sob of a woman far away.
Eira opened her eyes.
Above her, a vaulted ceiling unfurled in twilight blue, trimmed in curling gold leaf. The walls shimmered faintly, like they’d been dusted in magic or memory. She tried to sit up—but her limbs resisted. Her bones felt… heavier. Her chest—narrower. Her heartbeat—off. Too slow. Too calm.
A face loomed into view. Not a doctor, not a paramedic. A girl—young, wide-eyed, dressed in layers of linen and velvet.
“My lady?” the girl whispered. “You’re awake?”
Eira blinked. “What…?”
Her voice was wrong. Too smooth, too refined. She tried again—her own throat betraying her.
The girl gasped. “Shall I fetch the duke? Or the healer? Gods, please forgive me—I didn’t mean to cry, I just—”
“Wait,” Eira croaked. “Where am I?”
But her own words felt foreign, as though spoken in someone else’s rhythm. Panic began to coil. She tore the blankets away from her arms.
Not hers.
Her hands—slim, elegant, ivory-pale—wore rings she’d never owned. Her wrists were inked with faint silvery patterns that pulsed faintly under the firelight. She stumbled out of bed, nearly collapsing. Her reflection awaited her across the room in a mirror framed by vines of silver and pearl.
She staggered to it.
The girl in the glass wasn’t Eira Vaughn. She was taller. Her skin nearly luminous. Hair the color of dark wine spilled down her back. And her eyes—amber-gold, familiar and alien all at once—held centuries in them.
“No,” she whispered. “This isn’t me.”
Behind her, the maid murmured, “You’re Lady Elyanora Valenhart, heir of Thornecourt. You’ve been… asleep.”
Eira’s breath hitched. The air around her hummed, warm and cold and watching.
Then—just for a moment—something in the mirror shifted.
Not her face.
Another.
A flash of violet eyes. A voice like ice slicing through velvet:
“Thief.”
Eira stumbled back from the mirror, heart slamming.
“What’s happening to me?” she whispered.
The maid said nothing.
But the fire crackled like a warning.
And somewhere deep in her borrowed bones, a soul not her own began to stir.
