Pati ac Dolor. My sister.
She is three years older than me, a fact I've known my entire life. But what I never understood was why she was always treated as if she were made of gold while I was merely silver. We received the same education and the same dresses, yet she always seemed to have more. I spent years wondering why Father looked at her with such gravity and at me with such... nothingness.
Then, I learned the truth.
Pati was the one who told me first. She told me I wasn't the Duke's daughter—that not a single drop of his blood ran through my veins. I told myself she was lying, that she was just being the "villainess" everyone said she was.
But the truth was far more bitter. An old maid finally confessed the story: My real father had been the Duke's younger brother, a man with a weak body and a wandering heart. He had abandoned his title and his name to live in a remote village with a common woman.
My mother died giving birth to me, and my father followed shortly after, leaving me on the Duke's doorstep like a discarded package.
How could he do that to me? I am not an Ellington. I am a nameless girl living in a stolen house. That was the day I decided: If I wasn't born to this life, I would take it. I would take everything from Pati until she knew what it felt like to have nothing.
At first, I thought it would be easy. She was soft and gentle when we were children. But I was wrong. She grew sharp—sharper than anyone in the dukedom. To this day, the mere sight of a beetle makes my skin crawl, a reminder of the day she locked me in that room.
I have spent every moment since then trying to strip her of her status. When the Duke announced the engagements—me to the Crown Prince and her to the First Prince—I felt a surge of triumph so powerful I nearly wept. It was proof! The Duke favored me! Why else would he give me the future King while his "real" daughter was shoved off onto the psycho?
Seeing her face in the office that day, looking as if she wanted to kill me, was the happiest moment of my life.
I was practically dying with joy when I heard she had been kidnapped. I didn't care if she died; if she vanished, everything she owned would become mine by default. But then she was found. When Father said he was going to visit her, I couldn't let the opportunity pass. I had to see her broken.
I expected to find her in a dusty guest room, neglected and pale. Instead? I found her in the Prince's own chambers. In his own bed. He had protected her, cherished her, and looked at her with a hunger that the Crown Prince has never shown me. Ceres doesn't even look at me.
Why does she get the treatment I deserve?
I tried to ruin her reputation, whispering those rumors to put her in a difficult position, but she just brushed them off like dust. Even at the training grounds, when I screamed for the Princes to stop, they ignored me. But when she gave a tiny, mocking giggle? They stopped instantly. They looked at her as if she were the only beautiful creature in existence.
It doesn't matter. Today is the engagement. I will shine like a queen would be.