Chapter 1

My mother made me promise to stay ugly until my twentieth birthday.

Today was that exact day.

And downstairs, my beautiful stepsister was about to marry the richest man in the city.

I stood in front of the cracked vanity mirror, my fingers hovering over the makeup remover.

For many years, I had played the illiterate outcast in the attic.

"Promise me, Elowen. Just stay hidden," my mother had wept on her deathbed.

Before my fingers could unscrew the lid, the wood splintered with a deafening crack.

Maren, my stepmother's maid, marched into the room, her nose tilted high.

She strode directly to my vanity and swept her arm across the surface.

The glass jar of makeup remover shattered against the floor.

With her boot, she deliberately kicked my bag.

A single bag of cat food spilled across the floor.

"Still wasting your pocket money feeding those filthy alley cats, Elowen?" Maren sneered, grinding her heel directly into the kibble, crushing it to dust.

"Move it. Go change into something that won't make the master look like a laughingstock."

Cian Ember was signing his life away to Paloma Jove today.

The upper circles had been buzzing about it for months.

"I'll be down in a moment," I said flatly.

Maren spat near my boot, turned on her heel, and stormed out.

I slowly knelt on the floor, my fingers trembling slightly as I gathered the cat food back into the bag.

I looked at the shattered glass on the floor, then back at my reflection.

I didn't cry. Instead, a quiet smile curled the corners of my lips.

I bypassed the ill-fitting rags my stepmother had bought to mock my figure.

And I pulled on a white T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and pinned my tangled brown wig securely to my scalp.

I walked out of the attic, the distant swell of classical music vibrating through the floorboards as I descended the grand staircase.

The air in the mansion was thick with the scent of white roses and expensive champagne.

As my sneakers hit the marble floor outside the double doors of the grand hall, the music suddenly cut out.

A heavy wave of applause erupted from inside the room.

Over the clapping, a man's voice boomed through the speakers, echoing right through the doors:

"Ladies and gentlemen... the bride is here!"

I reached out and pushed the doors open.

The grand hall of the Jove estate had been transformed into a cathedral of greed.

At the center of the raised dais stood my stepsister, Paloma.

She was draped in a hundred-million-dollar gown laced with imported diamonds and pearls.

She looked flawless—a pristine princess waiting to claim her crown.

And then there was me.

My sneakers squeaked loudly against the polished white marble as I walked down the aisle.

The gray camouflage paste on my cheeks was heavy and dull under the crystal chandeliers.

I looked like a stray dog that had wandered into a royal banquet.

"What is that doing here?" my stepmother, Kaelin, hissed.

She snapped her fan shut so hard it cracked.

Darien turned and took three strides toward me, his hand reaching out to wrap around my arm.

"You absolute disgrace," he snarled under his breath, lunging to drag me into the corridor.

"Get the hell out of here before I have the guards throw you into the gutter!"