Casey Anderson isn't expecting much from her Mark - but when her soulmate turns out to be Prince August, the boy next in line for the throne, everything changes.
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In a world much like our own, Casey Anderson is trying to navigate her senior...
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I was seventeen when the magic came.
Slipping through cracks into our world, winding through cities and forests. Changing the laws of physics and the way we understood the universe.
The Marks came first. Suddenly, all over the world, everyone over the age of eighteen had one. Like a tattoo, the Marks were inky black and appeared just under the surface of the skin.
Unlike a tattoo, these marks lead you to your soulmate. Someone else in the world with a Mark exactly the same as yours. That's how they got their name. Soulmarks. Or Marks, for short.
I'm not sure what genius came up with that. Some poor overworked soul in PR, no doubt, trying to figure out how to stop a good portion of the world's population from panicking.
As you can imagine, it was chaos at first. No one knew what the marks meant, or how they had gotten there; at first, it was thought that maybe they were some sort of disease.
And then days passed, and no one got sick. No one died.
I'm sure there are specifics of these days that I've forgotten. I remember going to school, though: the strange, half emptiness of the classes, as many of my classmates stayed home. The absence of any 12th graders who were already eighteen. The strange, dreamlike looks on many of the teachers' faces, who all wore long sleeves.
The fear. The confusion.
I do, however, remember when the age limit was discovered. I remember sitting in the living room with my parents, as the news broadcaster announced that Marks appear - down to the second - on one's eighteenth birthday.
I remember the countdown starting in my head.
My name is Casey Anderson, and I turn eighteen tomorrow.
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Taylor Swift plays quietly in the background, overlaid by sounds of people talking and cups clinking. The rain and wind have driven people in from the cold, and Starbucks is full to the brim with disgruntled shoppers, stressed students, and Halloween decorations.
Given the fact that it's the start of October, I suppose I can let that slide, except I'm sure they've been up for at least a month already.
As usual, Delaney's up at the till, flirting outrageously with the Starbucks barista. Her curly hair spills out of her ponytail as she leans over the counter, her glowing brown skin still managing to look amazing, even in the gray, rainy-for-months weather we tend to get here on the "wet" West Coast of Canada.
Unlike my complexion, which has managed to lose any hint of a summer tan.
It's a good five minutes longer than necessary before Del returns, flushed and glowing, to our table, bearing our drinks: a pumpkin spice latte for her, and a peppermint hot chocolate with a mountain of whipped cream for me.
