Amber.
Sometimes I wish I didn’t have a life at all.
Because I never truly had one to begin with.
Not with my father. Not with my sister.
My father treated me in ways a father should never treat his daughter—ways I still couldn’t name without my chest locking tight. And Skyla, my younger sister, never saw me as the eldest. To her, I was just a space that needed erasing. A mistake that should be replaced with something better. Something cleaner.
And now here I was—Zeden’s prisoner. Or maid. Or whatever name fit his mood.
But never a slut.
Never that.
Even if the word brushed my lips in anger or despair, I refused to wear it. Before all of this, I had a life. A real one. Dreams. A future. And my father had cut it off with his own hands and sold what remained.
My mother’s face flash
