Chapter One

DALILAH ISABELA LUDWICK CASPIEN (born Nicholai), my twin sister, who I thought was the only one I never wished to harm. The only one I thought I cared about in my whole life. Who I helped and killed to protect.

I used everyone and did everything in my power to make her the 3rd Imperial Prince Christopher's fiancée, so no one would dare to harm her and she would have a lot of power. She's the one who was born with the magic that made her able to brainwash and manipulate others' minds, between us two. The Saintess, guarded by the Goddess herself.

Then how could she do this to me?

I gazed at her blankly and she laughed at my face. Finally showing her true colors.

"I don't know how such a naive and stupid person could be my twin sister! Seriously, it's pitiful. Do you even imagine since when I've had my magical strings in your little mind, dear Natasha?" Tears appeared in my empty eyes and I let them fall. "Since we were about to turn fourteen!" She said with a snake-ish smile that only I could see.

As if doing that to me was something to be proud of. Making everything hurt more than before. If that was even possible.

"You were such a beautiful child... way more beautiful than me! With your long and wavy glossy hair inherited from our father when my own was simply straight. And those golden eyes that glowed like the sun, identical to our father, that made me hate you even more. So more clever and selfless than me. It was disgusting, honestly. You loved and cared for me way more than I did for you, poor thing," I've never seen such a vicious expression on her face. Never.

'Then why? Why did you do all of that to me?' I wanted to ask her, but I couldn't after becoming tongue-less for all the lies I've told.

"But you always had a deadly flaw, Natasha... You weren't born with any kind of magic power, but I was! And as you already know, sis, magic in our world is like the air you breathe so you can live. It's beyond necessary. The ones who don't have it will never grow in life and will die like a good-for-nothing. And that's your case here, darling. Having such a pitiful death as being executed in public. It's a disgrace that you're my sister, the daughter of the late-late Grand Duke Nicholai."

She couldn't be more wrong about the magic.

The thing is, I was born with magic! Not only one but two types of it. I remember it as if it was yesterday. Telepathy and ice magic. I was born to be as powerful as Dalilah, or even more than her, and someone stole it from me when I was a little kid.

But they'd never believed me when I told them the truth, and I couldn't remember who did it either, which didn't help me at all. Everyone acts as if they've never seen me using ice magic when I was very little, pretending as if their memories of it had been erased, which is absurd! Always saying, repeatedly, that I didn't have magic at all, that this thought of my, was just a mechanism that I had created as a way to accept my unlucky situation and to digest the fact that my twin sister had magical powers and I didn't.

Bullshit!

"That's why you never had anything you could call yours. No matter how beautiful, skilled and smart you were, you would never have what I had. That's why everyone always favored me, but you didn't care about this, right, Natasha?" the resentment in her voice was undeniable.

And I did care about it actually, I just didn't show it. It wouldn't change anything if I had shown, would it?

"But this wasn't enough for me. I couldn't let the opportunity pass, so I manipulated your mind and I made you selfish, evil, and arrogant. So I could make everyone deeply hate you," she has completely lost her mind. "Not only that, of course. The goal was to make everyone hate you and to get you killed at the end, but why stop there when you could be so useful to me? And indeed, the fact that I smartly used you is what made it possible for me to be where I am now."

How could I be such a fool? Sir Thorin Meelany, the one who thought me how to use a sword and fight with it, always told me not to be fooled and not to trust people even if they were family. I should have heard him. But, no! I had a weak mind and that made me an easy target for Dalilah.

"I made you steal, lie, betray, and kill," yeah, you made me break all of my principles forcibly, no need to keep reminding me of that. "You were so clueless before... Naive enough to think that I would never try to harm you. What a joke!" Dalilah laughed once again, dryly.

That hurt, because she's right.

Although I don't remember myself being good like she's saying anymore. 'Good' and 'Natasha' don't seem to fit in the same sentence anymore, in my mind. Maybe she shattered my naive self 'till it was impossible to recover, with her manipulations.