Fatemarked

They say a Fatemark does not cage you.
It only tells you who you already are.
On the morning you turn nineteen, the whole of Veyr gathers to watch the truth rise on your wrist. Most receive a path they can live with. A trade. A duty. A quiet future.
Eira Vale should have been one of them.
She grew up at the edge of the trees, a village girl with river-ice eyes and a habit of knowing things she was never taught. Deer let her close. Birds go silent in her shadow. She dreams of dying in a stranger's arms, and wakes with a castle on every scrap of paper she touches.
She tells herself the Marking will make her ordinary at last.
It does not.
The symbol that burns into her skin is older than the sermon, older than the village, older than the name she answers to. The elder goes pale. The square falls still.
That same night, the Crown sends for her.
Prince Rhen Draven does not want her mark studied.
He does not want her questioned.
He wants her dead-
before the mark can finish what it started