Aerin Solmere

(Valenor Collab) They stare when they think I won’t notice. A girl with a veil is a story begging to be told. Some say I was kissed by fire. Others say I was born from it. Both are wrong. I was left in it. The scar it left behind is not just on my skin—it clings to the inside of my ribs, jagged and cruel, like the scream I never finished the night my world burned. The right side of my face no longer remembers what it is to be beautiful. The left side remembers too well. There are days I think my reflection pities me. Other days, she mocks me. I wear the veil so I don’t have to choose between the two. People don’t speak to me unless they must. When they do, their voices are too kind, like I’m a glass thing already cracked, about to shatter if they look too hard. But they don’t see me. Not really. They see the ruin and assume the rest is hollow too. But I remember— A mother who sang lullabies in a tongue no one else speaks now. A father who whispered, “There’s fire in your blood, little star." Red, gold, hungry fire. And light. Not the warm kind. The kind that howls when it leaves you behind. I have tried to forget that night. But my blood remembers. When I touched the dying noble last week—their body limp, eyes open and glassed with death—I didn’t pray. I didn’t beg. I just hummed. They gasped. And every rose in the garden bloomed black by morning. There is something wrong with me. Or something very, very right. I don’t know which is worse. And now you watch me—the disgraced noble with stormlight eyes. You don't look away. You don’t flinch when the veil shifts. You ask questions no one else dares to ask. I want to hate you. But you— you see me like I'm not just a cautionary tale in silk and shadow. Like you know the girl beneath the ash and teeth. Maybe that’s why I’m afraid. Because if you see me—really see me— you’ll learn the truth: I wasn’t just in the fire. I called it.