Chapter 1

When I was three, I lay in my mother’s arms and suddenly sank my teeth into her shoulder, nearly tearing away a piece of flesh.

It was not the first time. My bites had already left scars all over her body. That last attack exhausted what courage she had left, and she never dared hold me again.

I was handed to a nursemaid who was not a good woman. Whenever no one could see, she cursed me and tried to beat me. I answered by driving a small blade I had hidden into her belly.

Fortunately, I was tiny and the blade was short. Her wound was not serious. She complained to my father’s principal wife, who soothed her with extra money.

After discovering what I could do, the nursemaid stopped insulting me to my face. Instead, she devised something fouler. She ordered her eight-year-old grandson to pull down my trousers.

Shoving the humiliated boy toward me, she urged, “This is a noble young lady. You’ll never touch one again in your life. Hurry up and feel her while you can.”

I did not cry. I watched him with eyes like knives, waiting for him to come close enough for me to tear out his throat with my teeth.

The boy met my gaze, burst into terrified sobs, and fled.

His grandmother shouted after him that he was worthless and destined to remain a servant forever.

While she was distracted, I wrapped myself around her leg and bit down with all my strength.

She kicked wildly in pain and flung me across the room. I struck the floor with a heavy thud. Afraid she had killed me, she hurried over.

I raised my head. Blood covered my face. I did not cry. I only smiled coldly.

The sight frightened her so badly that she fell backward.

Because I had been injured, she was dismissed. My father’s wife found another nursemaid, an honest one, but I hurt her too. Several replacements came and went until no woman in the capital was willing to care for me.

My mother and my father’s wife were at their wits’ end. My father had lost all hope in me and left me to survive or perish as I pleased. Besides my sister and me, he later had two sons, both born to his principal wife. He had no reason, in his mind, to spare me any attention.

With no other solution, his wife locked me in a room and forbade me to leave. Someone brought food at mealtimes. That was all.

No one taught me, watched me, or spoke to me. I grew wilder by the year, almost like a feral child.

By six, I hardly seemed human. I attacked anyone who came near and had such unnatural strength that two matrons were needed to restrain me. The maid assigned to deliver my meals trembled every time she approached, afraid the mad Second Young Lady would kill her.

So she often did not bring food at all. The masters had abandoned their little lunatic, she reasoned. Perhaps they even hoped I would die.

I went hungry so often that I became skin and bone. None of my elders visited, which made the maid fearless in her neglect.

I did not hate them. I expected nothing from them, and without expectation, where could hatred come from?

I could have escaped at night. I chose not to. I did not know what I would do outside and felt no longing at all for freedom.

Only one person remembered me: my legitimate elder sister. Though strictly forbidden to approach, she often came to my window in secret, talking to me and slipping delicate pastries through the opening.

She knew the maid starved me and complained to our elders. Each time, she was scolded for coming near me, and nothing else changed.

Her food kept me alive until I was fourteen and she reached her coming-of-age ceremony.

Soon afterward, the heir of a marquis sent a matchmaker to ask for her hand. My father and her mother accepted in delight. The marquis’s family was a powerful house with a century of history. For my sister, it was an exceptional marriage.

But after she married, no one would be left to feed me.