I woke up wrong.
That's the only way to describe it. My body registered the difference before my brain caught up; the bed was ridiculous like sleeping on a cloud made of silk and money. The air smelled like lavender, but not the harsh chemical lavender my mother sprayed on everything. This was real. Soft. Mixed with something cold and clean, like snow that hadn't melted yet.
And the light. The sunlight coming through the curtains was different, warmer golden in a way that felt intentional, like even the sun here was trying to be beautiful.
I opened my eyes.
The ceiling was not my ceiling. My ceiling had a water stain shaped like a sad face and a crack I'd memorized so well I could draw it blindfolded. This ceiling was painted with murals white birds flying across a pale blue sky, so detailed I could count the feathers.
I sat up too fast. My head spun, but my body felt light and strong, like someone had taken my old aching, sleep-deprived frame and replaced it with something that actually worked.
"No," I whispered.
I swung my legs off the bed. My feet hit the cold stone floor. I was wearing a thin white nightgown that felt like it cost more than my entire wardrobe. My legs were longer than I remembered. My skin was so pale I could see faint blue veins running beneath it like rivers on a map.
"No, no, no"
I found the mirror across the room by practically falling into it. And I screamed.
The sound that came out of my mouth wasn't mine. It was higher, clearer, like a bell struck in an empty cathedral. But I didn't care about the sound because of the face.
Dark hair. Tired eyes. That was what I expected. That was me.
What I saw was a girl with waist-length white hair, every single strand ending in jagged black, like someone had dipped the tips in ink. Skin paper-white and translucent. Sky blue eyes that looked like cracked ice, wide and panicked and not mine.
A face so sharp and ethereal it didn't look real it looked like someone had carved a goddess out of porcelain and then given her nightmares.
It was breathtaking.
I was also having a full-blown panic attack.
My hand flew to my throat, and my fingers hit a metal like something. A necklace. It was a blue gem, silver chain.
The necklace from the book. The one the King gave Rayi the night before she left for the…. Then I realized.
"Oh God."
I spun around the room, the murals, the silk sheets. The stone floor. I pressed my back against the mirror and scanned everything the heavy velvet curtains, the antique furniture, the faint glow coming from enchanted candles that had no flames but produced light anyway.
Where was the book?
I stumbled to the nightstand there was nothing. I dropped to my knees and checked under the bed cold stone, no dust, no book. I tore through a small wardrobe against the wall. There was only white dresses, white cloaks, white everything. No leather. No warmth. No hum.
It was gone.
"This isn't real," I said out loud, because saying things out loud makes them less real, except it didn't work because my voice still wasn't my voice and the floor was still stone and the candles were still burning without fire.
Then there was a knock on the door. It was Soft and quick.
I froze.
The door opened, and a young woman in a grey uniform stepped in carrying a silver tray. She was human-looking, she had brown hair, brown eyes, her hands seemed nervous, but she moved with the careful precision of someone who knew she was expendable.
"Princess? I heard a scream. Are you…. "
She stopped and looked at me on the floor, with my nightgown rumpled, my eyes wild.
"…Are you alright?"
I am not alright. I am not the princess. I am a seventeen-year-old girl from a beige town who skipped school to read a magic book and now I'm inside it and I don't know how to curtsy or rule or fight with a staff member and I'm going to die.
"I'm fine," I said. My voice came out steadily. Shockingly steady. "Just a nightmare."
The maid nodded, relieved, and set the tray down. She curtsied and left.
I stared at the closed door.
Then another knock. Heavier this time. No waiting for permission.
The door opened and the room's temperature dropped by ten degrees.
The King walked in.
He looked exactly like the book described tall, gaunt, white hair streaked with grey and pulled back severely. His eyes were a washed-out blue, the color of something that had been left in the sun too long. He didn't look at me like a father. He looked at me like a general inspecting a soldier before battle.
Behind him, peeking around his leg with wide watery eyes, was the smallest girl I had ever seen.
Lara.
She had wispy white hair and a worn-out doll clutched to her chest and she was looking at me like I was the entire world.
"Are you ready?" the King asked. Not "how did you sleep." Not "are you nervous." Just are you ready. Like I was a package being shipped.
"The carriage leaves in an hour," he continued. "You will represent this kingdom. You will not shame us."
I wanted to say something sharp. Something about how maybe if he talked to his daughter like a human being she wouldn't look so dead inside. But I wasn't Iyar right now. Iyar could afford to be rebellious in her head because nothing mattered. Here, everything mattered.
"I'm ready," I said.
Lara broke free from behind her father and crashed into me, wrapping her tiny arms around my waist. She smelled like milk and flowers and innocence.
"Come back," she whispered into my nightgown. "Promise you'll come back."
Something cracked in my chest. Not the book-hum kind. The humankind.
"I promise," I said.
I didn't know if I could keep it. But looking down at this tiny girl who had no idea her sister had been replaced by a stranger from another world, I knew one thing with absolute, terrifying certainty.
I had to do it. Not for the kingdom. Not for the King.
For her, at least finally I was doing something for someone who actually cared, even though I just meet her recently.