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's first thought was simple: run. She dropped the broom, ducked under the loom, and bolted out the back door into the crowded market. The guards shouted behind her. If the Loom really wove her face, the whole kingdom would soon be hunting her, and she wanted answers before she let anyone put a crown on her head.

Mira squeezed through the market crowd and slipped into the old dyers' alley. An old woman with ink-stained hands grabbed her sleeve. "You're the new face," the woman hissed. "I weave for the palace. The Loom doesn't lie, but people do. Come, before they catch you." She pulled Mira toward a low blue door.

Inside the blue door, the old weaver showed Mira a hidden book of past tapestries. "Every true face has a tiny flaw the Loom always adds," she said. "A crooked stitch behind the ear. If your woven face has it, you're real. If not, it's a fake meant to control you." Mira's heart pounded. She had to see her own cloth up close.

Mira snuck back to the workshop and held a candle close to the woven face. Behind the silver ear, she found it: the tiny crooked stitch, the Loom's true mark. The cloth was real after all. The Loom had chosen her. The next morning she walked into the palace and claimed the crown on her own terms, a seamstress's daughter no one could push around.