Not the calculated stillness he usually wore like armorâthe careful composure of a boy who had learned to hide every weakness from predators who circled constantly, waiting for the slightest flicker of vulnerability.
"Itâsâ"
He stopped. Tried again. "Itâsâ"
Bloodlines that devoured one another. Children who died screaming as their own heritage ripped them apart from the inside out. Generations of meticulous breeding engineered to safeguard supernatural dynasties that had ruled from the shadows since before history was written.
Roxanne shook her head slowly. Her hair swayed with the motion, catching the frost-light that
gleamed
off the Void-Ice shroud still sealing them in crystalline isolation. Her voluptuous frame trembled beneath the champagne silk of her robeânot from cold, but from the crushing weight of secrets she had carried for two decades, secrets that now demanded to be released.
She drew a steadying breath of the pure terror coiled deep in her marrow.
Her hands twisted in her lap, knuckles bleaching white against the silk pooled around her trembling thighs.
She met his eyes and held them with the desperate intensity of a woman finally unburdening a truth that had been crushing her for years.
Pheiâs mind raced, threading connections he hadnât known existed.
She leaned forward. Her lush curves shifted beneath the champagne silk, the shadowed valley between her breasts catching the frost-light as she closed the distance between them.
Understanding bloomed cold and sharp in Pheiâs chest, like frost flowers spreading across glass.
They were not merely the next link in ancient chains of succession.
"When the Destined Day comes," he said slowly, testing the shape of the revelation against everything he already knew, "the entire families will
awaken
their powers. Their bloodlines. The dormant heritage thatâs been accumulating for generations."
"But the
heirs
of this generationâthe
last generation
born when the Destined Day is destined to be happening... when these kids awakenâthey wonât just receive the same powers as everyone else from their families. Theyâll be..." He searched for the word. "More purer and stronger. Three times stronger. Five times. The most
potent
concentrated, strongest of their bloodline that has ever existed. And that gap would only widen as they go on."
Phei now understood why the intermarriage ban had been absolute for this generation.
And in a world transformed by the Destined Dayâwhere every Legacy would awaken into a supernatural forceâlosing your
strongest heir
to another bloodline meant being consumed by the families who had kept theirs.
No wonder every patriarch of the previous generation had married
outside Paradise
. No wonder they had chosen
non-Legacy
spouses with the cold precision of generals selecting battlegrounds.
It was
survival.
Pure, brutal, and absolute.
The girls.
The sole daughters. The only children. The princesses born alone into families that had prayed for sons and received instead a single fragile vessel to carry every last hope.
But he still could not see what would
kill them
.
What am I missing?
"I can see youâre still confused."
She straightened on the edge of Sierraâs bed. Her voluptuous frame drew taut beneath the champagne silk, her trembling stilled by the sheer force of will it took to speak what came next.
"Let me explain about the real meaning of
Legacy families
."
"Let me tell you why these families cannot afford female last-generation heirs."