Roxanne’s green eyes darted frantically around the room, drinking in the Void-Ice shroud that cocooned them, the frost-kissed walls glittering with impossible colors no mortal tongue could na, the absolute darkness that had sealed every possible escape route from reality itself.
Her chest heaved, pendulous breasts straining heavily against the champagne silk with each panicked breath, the deep shadowed valley between them rising and falling like a storm-tossed tide of pure terror.
"The room is safe," Phei said, voice low and steady, almost amused at how easily he had turned her daughter’s bedroom into an impenetrable tomb. "No one can see you. No one can hear you. Not even the monsters you’re running from."
She nodded—slowly, carefully, as if any sudden movent might shatter the fragile sanctuary he had casually conjured.
"How do you do this?" The question tumbled from her trembling lips before she could cage it, her gaze locked on the crystalline patterns of Void-Ice adorning the ceiling like frozen lightning captured mid-strike.
"I know you have powers—I shouldn’t be surprised after everything—but you’re not Legacy. And even if you were, the ti it would take to develop abilities of this magnitude isn’t—"
"Legacy families aren’t the only powerful beings in this world."
The words severed her rambling cleanly as a simple, inarguable fact.
Roxanne stared at him for a suspended mont, her full, kiss-bruised lips parted, chest still heaving beneath the thin silk. Then she nodded—slowly, as if pieces of a puzzle she had been assembling in secret for months were finally clicking into a terrible, inevitable shape.
"I figured that much," she breathed. "The day you walked on air at the basketball ga. The way you moved—like gravity was nothing more than a polite suggestion. The things you did that shouldn’t have been possible by any asure I understand."
Her hands twisted in her lap, knuckles bleaching bone-white. "That’s exactly why I thought you might be able to help her, please. Because of your powers."
"Go on."
"At first I was skeptical." The words ca faster now, tumbling over each other like floodwaters finally breaching a dam. "Even after what I witnessed—I thought it still wasn’t enough. The scale of what I’m facing, the forces involved... I thought no one could possibly—"
She choked. Swallowed hard. Forced herself onward. "But I was glad. Glad that Sierra had found soone who wasn’t normal. Soone who could protect her. Perhaps not from everything, but enough to—"
"What’s going on, Roxanne?" The question cut through her spiraling panic like a blade through silk.
She didn’t answer imdiately. Her eyes had glazed, staring into so middle distance between his face and the glittering Void-Ice walls—replaying mories, calculating risks, summoning courage for a truth that had been rotting inside her for far too long.
Then her gaze snapped back to him, raw and desperate.
"First...I owe lissa an apology," she said, voice cracking with genuine sha. "What I said to her tonight—at dinner—was unforgivable. I know it’s not a good enough excuse, but I had to put on an act for Jonathan. I had to play the perfect, outraged wife in front of him. You’ll understand why I had to after you hear what I have to say. Please... tell her I’m sorry. I never ant those words. Not really."
Phei remained silent, letting her words hang in the frozen air. The Void-Ice continued its quiet, hungry song around them—tendrils of absolute darkness still faintly crackling with primordial power, frost patterns shifting like living constellations on every surface.
Roxanne’s hands found his forearms... she gripped him tightly, manicured nails—usually weapons of polite social warfare—digging into his flesh with raw, desperate strength.
"Phei, the night," she continued, voice dropping to a broken whisper, "you attacked the Maxton Mansion, beat Harold and left the entire estate in ruins."
Her lush body leaned closer. The jasmine-and-terror scent of her enveloped him completely—expensive perfu mixed with the sharp, animal musk of barely contained panic.
Her heavy breasts brushed against his chest as she clung to him, nipples still stiff and prominent beneath the gossar silk, the soft weight of her trembling with every shallow breath.
"All the other families locked themselves in their residences for days afterward," she went on, voice trembling. "The Heavenchilds. The Ashfords. The Roth-Fairchilds. Everyone. Cowering behind their walls like children who suddenly realized the dark they’d always pretended to command was real—and it had teeth."
"That’s when I knew you could help ." Her voice cracked like brittle glass. "When you attacked Harold... the pulses from each blow — the shockwaves that rippled through all of Main Paradise like the heartbeat of an angry god — I felt them from my bedroom. Everyone felt them."
Her grip tightened on his forearms until he could feel bruises already blooming beneath her desperate fingers, nails digging deep enough to draw pinpricks of blood.
"Phei, you have to help ."
Her entire body leaned toward him now, closing the last inches between them. She was shaking violently — not the delicate tremble of earlier, but full, uncontrollable convulsions that made her fra jerk beneath the champagne silk.
Her teeth chattered despite the feverish heat rolling off her skin.
Her tear-bright green eyes locked onto his with the wild, singular focus of a woman who had just bet her life, her daughter’s life, and everything she had ever built on this single mont.
"You said Sierra is your woman, right?" Her voice rose, thin and jagged. "Your won are your priority?"
He nodded.
One simple motion. No theatrical speeches or grand declarations of protection or vengeance.
Just a single, quiet nod — and Roxanne knew, staring into those ancient athyst depths that had witnessed horrors no seventeen-year-old should ever comprehend, that the nod carried more weight than a thousand sworn oaths.
The power she had felt radiating from him at the basketball ga. The casual devastation he had unleashed on the Maxton Mansion. The way even the mightiest Legacy families had cowered behind their walls like prey animals that had finally slled the apex predator in their midst.
That single nod was enough.
Roxanne opened her mouth.
Her whole body seized.
Not trembling anymore — shaking. Violent, wrenching convulsions that made her voluptuous fra jerk and shudder beneath the thin silk robe. Her teeth chattered audibly. Her chest heaved in ragged, desperate bursts. Sweat beaded and slid down her temples, her neck, disappearing into the deep valley between her breasts.
Her manicured hands clutched his arms with bone-grinding strength, knuckles white, fingers trembling so hard they looked ready to snap.
She tried to speak. The words fought her, clawing their way up a throat that had spent years keeping them buried.
Then they tore free.
Four words.
Four words that hit Phei like a blade of ice colder than anything the Void had ever conjured — colder than the lightless gulfs between dying stars, colder than the entropy that waited at the end of all things.
"Sierra’s going to die."
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