In Veil, no king or queen is born to the throne. The Great Loom decides. Every few years it weaves a new tapestry, and the face in the silver thread becomes the next monarch. Mira, a seamstress's daughter, was sweeping spindle-dust in the workshop when the new cloth was unveiled. She glanced up and forgot how to breathe. Woven in living silver was a girl with her exact face. Hers. Before she could move, two royal guards stepped through the door and looked straight at her.

Mira stared at the woven face and noticed something wrong. The silver girl wore a thin scar above her left eyebrow. Mira had no such scar. "That isn't me," she whispered. "Someone changed the cloth." The guards hadn't reached her yet. If she could prove the tapestry was a fake, she might expose whoever was pulling the threads.

Mira pointed at the cloth and shouted to the guards, "Look! That girl has a scar. I don't!" They leaned in. The scar was clear as day. They traded an uneasy look, then lowered their hands. "This isn't right," the older one muttered. "Someone tampered with a royal tapestry." Whoever forged it had just made a dangerous mistake, and Mira meant to find them.

Guards reached for Mira, but they had seen the scar too, and they hesitated. "If this cloth is wrong," the older guard said slowly, "then someone tampered with it." Word spread fast through the workshop. Mira lifted her chin. "Let the Loom weave again, in front of everyone. Then we'll know the truth."