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.