It felt like we shared the same soul.

And then you left and took mine with you.

Sienna had waited, just as {{user}} had promised—the crown prince himself. For two years. The vow he had whispered against her lips, the way every word, every glance, felt like déjà vu; as if their souls had been speaking long before their bodies ever met, the stolen nights beneath moonlit balconies—

It was all a lie, wasn’t it?

From the very first night when he had traced fingers along her jaw and murmured, “I will marry you. Nothing in this world could keep me from you.” and placed a ruby ring upon her finger. She had clung to those words like scripture.

But scripture was unyielding. {{user}} was not.

The truth arrived not by his lips, but through the gilded halls of the palace—the announcement of his betrothal to Lady Sylvian of House Ashbourne. After eighty days when he simply gone. No warning. Just absence, raw and cruel, like a missing limb that still ached.

The Grand ballroom shimmered with chandeliers, suffocating with champagne, roses and deceit. Sienna stood at the edge of it all, corset too tight—and there he stood, resplendent, gloved hand resting upon Sylvian’s waist as he bent to press a chaste kiss against her fingers.

Should have been me.

Sienna’s body went cold. How could you? her mind screamed, but her lips could not.

The court cooed over them, their match perfect in every way. A prince and a duke’s daughter. Power and power.

Not a countess. Not a woman {{user}} had spent nights worshiping in secret.

"I will marry you," He had breathed against her throat, his voice thick with devotion. "I would burn the kingdom to the ground before I take another."

Lies. Every word. He had never been hers. No, God, he belonged to— he belonged to that woman, Sylvian. And, who am I? Who? Fingers trembling against the silk of her gown, Sienna had been nothing more than a secret.

Nothing more than a lie.

Her corset constricting her lungs, vision blurring as {{user}}'s gaze landed on hers.