IN THE WRONG SKIN

They promised us jobs.

That's how it always starts, right? A whisper in the street, a flyer passed hand to hand, a recruiter with a too-white smile. We were desperate-me, Malik, and three others. None of us had families worth going back to. We had hunger in our bellies and a dream stupid enough to believe that maybe, just maybe, someone out there would give us a chance.

The van was unmarked. Grey. Empty except for the stiff seats and the smell of cheap cigarettes and spilled gasoline. Still, we climbed in like good little lambs.

They didn't even wait until nightfall to lock the doors from the outside.

By the time we realized what was happening, we were already across the border. Every question we asked was met with silence or a gun barrel. Food came once a day. Water, twice if we were lucky. And the van just kept moving. Across towns, across cities. Until the names on the signs stopped making sense.

That's when we knew.

We weren't going to work. We were going to be sold.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. But I did neither. I sat there, staring out the cracked window, making a plan. We'd play along. Let them think we were obedient. Wait until we crossed into the next country-whatever it was-and run like hell.

The plan sounded better in my head than it did when reality hit.

It was already dark when we arrived-some massive city, metal towers scraping the clouds, and sirens howling like wolves in the distance. They herded us out like livestock and made us line up behind a warehouse. I remember Malik squeezing my hand. We'd grown up side by side. I couldn't imagine this world without him in it.

Then the shooting started.

I don't know who fired first, but I know who died last. Everyone but me.

I ran.

I didn't look back.

I didn't call out for Malik.

I ran like the city itself would swallow me whole.

By the time I realized I was still breathing, my shirt was soaked in someone else's blood, and I was standing in the middle of a street that looked too clean, too quiet, too...wrong.

I didn't know this place. Didn't know the curfew. Didn't know the way back.

And when the sirens returned-louder, closer-I thought it was them. The traffickers. The killers.

I bolted again.

That's how I ended up in the alley. That quiet, private street where the world shifted beneath my feet and never settled again. There'd been an ambush-a convoy wrecked, tires blown, bodies sprawled. I ducked behind a stack of crates, trying to find something-anything-to cover myself.

That's when I saw them.

Two men locked in a brutal fight, one clearly losing. The one on top had a knife. The other, slumped against a car door, was bleeding from his gut. I didn't think. I just grabbed the nearest thing-a jagged pipe-and hit the attacker from behind. Hard. Over and over until he stopped moving.

The one I tried to save... he looked at me.

Right into my eyes.

And then he died.

I panicked. I backed away, hands shaking, body screaming from the bruises I'd earned in the scuffle. But the sirens were almost on us. I had no choice. I grabbed the man's coat-some high-quality wool thing-and slipped it over my ruined shirt. Found a pair of dark glasses, a wide-brimmed hat in the wreckage. Anything to not look like the boy covered in blood.

I didn't know there was an ID in the coat pocket. I didn't know it belonged to him.

I was trying to leave when they caught me. Guns raised. Shouting in a language I barely understood.

I didn't run this time.

I was tired.

So I let them take me.

They dragged me to some polished station, locked me in a cold room, and questioned me. I said nothing. Not out of defiance-just... I didn't know what to say. I wasn't who they thought I was. I wasn't anyone, really.

An hour passed.

Then the shouting started.

Doors burst open.

And a man with silver hair and rage in his eyes stormed in. "Who authorized this?! Do you even know who this is?!"

He walked straight to me. Bent slightly.

And whispered, "Forgive them, Your Highness... We'll get you home soon, my prince."

Prince?

What prince?

Before I could ask, a group arrived-guards, maids, drivers, a woman in heels that could kill a man if she stepped wrong. She fell to her knees in front of me, pulled me into a hug so tight it hurt.

"My baby..." she sobbed. "You've returned to us..."

Her perfume made my head spin.

I didn't speak.

I didn't move.

I just let it happen.

And that's how I became Prince Elias Thorne Valmora.

The boy who should've died that night didn't.

He vanished.

And I took his place.