The Ruined Heiress's Deal With The Regent

“Elara carried a dormant second self-Sloane, forged from a year of border warfare after cousin Lydia sold her into slavery. Rescued and amnesiac, Elara forgot it all-until Lydia's poison shattered her gentle host, unleashing the soldier. But she barely had time to reclaim her dark instincts before a grimy groundskeeper lunged at her in the dark woods. Her sweet, smiling cousin Lydia hadn't just poisoned her with the deadly Scarlet Heat toxin. Lydia had paid this man to defile her, wanting Elara's reputation completely annihilated before the poison finally stopped her heart. As the agonizing heat threatened to cook Sloane's brain, Lydia burst into the clearing with a crowd of royal guards and exquisitely dressed nobles. "Oh, Elara! How could you? With a common servant. Have you no shame?" Lydia played the horrified sister perfectly, weeping and screaming about Elara's unimaginable depravity. In the eyes of the disgusted onlookers, Elara's already-tarnished reputation was dead and buried. She was meant to die an agonizing death as a ruined pariah, while Lydia stepped over her corpse to take her place as the Prince Regent's fiancée. It was a flawless, vicious trap designed to destroy a helpless noble girl. But Lydia didn't know that the soul inside Elara's body was a battle-hardened soldier. And she certainly didn't know that the "common servant" Sloane had just desperately kissed to survive the poison wasn't the groundskeeper. The crowd's whispers died instantly as the man in the shadows stepped forward, his glacial eyes sweeping over them. It was Damian Sinclair, the terrifying Prince Regent himself, whom Lydia had just accused of being a lowly servant engaged in filth. Sloane crossed her arms, a cold, mocking smile touching her lips as she watched her cousin collapse in terror. The real show was just beginning.”