Chapter 1

Thea’s POV

My family wouldn't remember that tomorrow was my eighteenth birthday.

Or maybe they would. They just wouldn't care.

I woke at six in the basement. I had a list in my head before my feet touched the floor. Sweep, mop, laundry, breakfast. All of it finished before Aunt Margot and Darcy came downstairs.

That was the rule. Not a spoken rule, just what happened when you lived in someone else's house and they wanted to forget you existed.

Eighteen years ago, my father vanished. According to Aunt Margot, he was the kind of man who ran. He abandoned my pregnant mother without looking back. She died bringing me into the world, and Margot collected what was left: the insurance payout, the monthly foster stipend, and me.

The money she wanted. Me, she tolerated.

The basement was mine because no one else wanted it. A bed with a rusted frame, a desk I'd dragged home from a yard sale for three dollars, and a closet full of clothes my aunt and cousin had thrown out.

And every morning, I woke before dawn to earn the right to exist under their roof.

"Not everyone would take in a bastard," Margot liked to say. She never whispered the word. She said it the way you'd say a fact about the weather — flat, obvious, settled.

By seven, I had the table set. Eggs scrambled, toast cut diagonally the way Margot demanded, orange juice poured into her tall glass.

By the time everything was plated, I heard the floorboards creak overhead. Margot first, heavy and slow. Then Darcy, lighter, quicker.

Margot came into the kitchen without looking at me. Picked up the remote. Turned on the TV and dropped into her chair the way she always did — like the house was her throne room and I was something that came with the furniture.

I rinsed the pan and listened.

"...billionaire Magnus Wolfhart has intensified his search for his long-lost granddaughter." The anchor's voice was bright with the thrill of someone else's tragedy. "Eighteen years ago, Wolfhart's only son passed away under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a daughter. The mother's identity has never been confirmed. Wolfhart is offering a one-million-dollar reward for any information leading to the discovery of his granddaughter."

Wolfhart. I paused with the sponge in my hand. That was a strange last name. I'd never heard it anywhere before.

"Sources suggest the girl may be in this school district," the anchor continued. "Members of the prominent Solvane family have arrived to assist in the search..."

"Don't even think about it."

Aunt Margot's voice cut across the kitchen. She was watching me over the rim of her mug.

"I wasn't—"

"You were staring at that screen with your mouth open." She set the mug down hard. "Let me save you the embarrassment, Thea. You are not some billionaire's lost princess. You're a bastard who can barely keep her grades up."

My grades were a 3.8 GPA. I didn't correct her.

"And don't think I'm paying for college," she added. "I've fed you and housed you for eighteen years. That's more than you deserved."

"She probably can't even get in anywhere." Darcy examined a piece of toast like it had personally offended her. She looked me over — up and down, slow and satisfied. Her new blouse. My threadbare flannel. "No offense."

My grip tightened on the skillet handle.

"I'm applying to Veritas University," I said.

Darcy laughed. The sound bounced off the kitchen tiles. "Veritas? Nobody from our school has gotten into Veritas in, like, ten years."

Then I'll be the first.

Veritas University sat on the other side of the country. Three thousand miles from this kitchen. Three thousand miles from the basement, the hand-me-downs, and the woman who called me a bastard when she thought I couldn't hear.

Six months until graduation. I just had to last six more months, get the acceptance letter, and I would never come back to this house again.

That was the only plan I had. It was the only one I needed.

I set the skillet on the drying rack and went downstairs to change. Darcy's old jeans with the knees worn thin, and a gray hoodie I'd bought at a thrift store with my own money. The hoodie was the one thing in my closet that was actually mine.

I grabbed my bag and walked out the front door before Margot could add anything else.

At school, the billionaire's face was everywhere. Missing-person posters with WOLFHART REWARD printed in red ink were stapled to every bulletin board, taped inside the bathroom stalls, slapped onto the vending machine outside the cafeteria. The old man in the photo had white hair, a rigid jaw, and the kind of stare that said he was used to getting what he wanted.

A hand tapped my shoulder.

"Happy birthday, Thea." Juno was already grinning, her dark curls pulled back with a yellow clip that matched her sneakers. She threw her arms around me right there in the hallway.

She was the only person in my life who remembered.

"Tomorrow, technically," I said. "But thank you."

Juno had been my best friend since second grade. She knew about the basement. She knew about Margot, about the hand-me-downs, about all of it. Some mornings she left granola bars in my locker when she thought I wasn't looking.

"So," she said, linking her arm through mine. "Birthday wish. Go."

"Fine." I pointed at one of the Wolfhart flyers taped to the wall. "I wish you were his granddaughter. Then you could collect the reward and give me ten thousand dollars. That's all I need for tuition."

"Ten thousand? Out of a million?" She pressed a hand to her heart. "You are the cheapest best friend on the planet."

"I'm practical."

"You're insane." She bumped her hip against mine and we laughed, dodging a group of freshmen clustered around another flyer. Half the school was buzzing about Wolfhart's reward. Girls were joking about DNA tests and long-lost relatives.

Then Juno stopped walking. Her eyebrows pulled together — the face she made when she was working through a problem.

"Hold on," she said. "Wolfhart's son. He died eighteen years ago."

"That's what the news said."

"Your dad vanished eighteen years ago."

I looked at her.

"Same year, Thea." Juno grabbed my arm. "The exact same year."