Patricia's mind conjured four distinct contradictions in rapid succession and, with impressive inefficiency, failed to reconcile even one of them.
Maddie's court had bypassed every established rung of the hierarchy; her plan had had vaulted clean over Jade, Natasha, and the remaining Princesses, as Maddie cut through every calculated social checkpoint Patricia's institutional experience had taught her to anticipate when it came to Legacy families — and landed squarely, without ceremony, at the feet of the Heavenchild twins. Immediates:
The very bloodline whose heir had been unceremoniously extracted from the Empyrean Dining Hall that very morning, leaving a glistening trail across the marble that the internet was still annotating with a level of creative malice that would have made even Shakespeare pause for stronger wine.
If any bad blood existed on Hell's Paradise Island tonight, it pooled between Marcus Heavenchild's fractured lineage and the dragon's table.
