Chapter 1

The Crown Prince, Wyatt Evans, was four years old when he noticed my body was missing a piece of his. He decided he'd cut off his own and give me half.

The palace staff found him with his pants bunched around his knees and a pair of scissors raised above his head.

That was the year I almost died at four years old, and he almost lost his manhood.

Twenty-two years later, I was the head maid in his household, and he was still the most ridiculous heir the kingdom had ever seen.

Then the Imperial Consort Delilah's people showed up with a letter.

It had seven words on it. [Sarah Perez. The truth about her birth.]

I held the paper to the candle and watched it burn to ash.

When I turned around, Wyatt was leaning against the doorframe. He had that crooked smile on his face.

"Sarah," he said. "I've kept your secret for twenty-two years. Time to pay up, don't you think?"

*****

The day Wyatt raised those scissors over his head, I was sitting on the floor crying.

His pants were bunched around his knees. He looked at me with total seriousness and asked, "Do you want the left side or the right side?"

Twenty years later, that scene still shows up in my dreams. Every time I wake up, I have to touch my face to make sure I'm not crying or laughing.

I thought about it again today because Wyatt was sprawled across the couch. He asked me out of nowhere, "Sarah, you remember where we put those scissors?"

I was on my knees, scrubbing the floor. My hand paused on the rag for a second.

"You're remembering wrong," I said. "I didn't enter the palace until I was four. I never saw any scissors."

He smiled that lazy smile of his. "You always blink your left eye an extra time when you're lying," he said.

I didn't look up. I kept scrubbing. "You must be mistaken. I have an old injury in my left eye."

Wyatt went quiet. I heard him flipping through reports, one sheet after another. The rustle of paper filled the study.

I remember what happened twenty-two years ago better than anyone.

I was four years old. They'd just brought me to the eastern palace. I didn't understand anything back then. Wyatt was also four, but he was already a menace.

That day he cornered me in the side hall and told me to take off my pants.

I refused. So he did it himself.

Afterward, he stared for a long time. His little brow furrowed. "Why are you missing a piece?"

I said I didn't know.

He started undoing his belt. "Then I'll give you half of mine."

The scissors came from a sewing basket. They were rusty, the kind used for snipping thread.

When he raised them up, the sunlight through the window caught the blade. I couldn't keep my eyes open.

I genuinely thought I was going to die.

I can still hear the screams from the palace staff. The sheer terror in their voices. They burst in just as Wyatt's scissors were about to touch skin.

After that, the whole palace whispered about it. They said the crown prince had something wrong with his head and couldn't even tell boys from girls at four years old.

The King didn't say a word. Delilah came by, though. She scooped Wyatt up and called him her precious darling.

On her way out, she glanced at me. That look still makes the back of my neck prickle.

"Sarah."

Wyatt's voice pulled me back. I looked up. He was staring at me. The reports were set aside.

"Come here," he said.

I stood and walked to the couch. He grabbed my chin and forced my head up. He'd done that move a thousand times. It always had the same interrogator's edge to it.

"You burned the letter?" he asked.

My heart clenched.

Someone from Delilah's faction had come by this morning. Ruby knelt outside the curtain and said they'd found the midwife from my birth.

She said my mother was a disgraced servant who'd been thrown out of the palace twenty years ago.

She left an envelope behind. [Sarah Perez. The truth about her birth.]

I burned that letter. I watched it turn to ash.

"What letter?" I asked.

Wyatt watched my left eye. He counted three blinks.

"Three," he said. He let go of my chin and leaned back against the couch. "Sarah, you do know you blink your left eye three times every time you lie."

I stood still.

He smiled, but it was colder this time. "You thought burning it would make them stop? That letter was a test."

"Test me for what?" I asked.

"To see if you would burn it," he said. He picked up his cup and blew on the surface.

"You burned it. That means you know what's inside is true. If you'd opened it and read it, that would've been the fake one," he said.

I gripped my sleeves. My nails dug into my palms.

"What are you trying to say?" I asked.