When I turned twenty-one, a Daxia airship carried me across continents to the empire of my father's birth. I was to be adopted by the emperor as a "royal ward." A polite term for what I truly was: A genetic asset. A diplomatic weapon. A womb to be protected or fought over. I studied at the Daxia Academy, where the princes lived and studied. Some treated me like a precious gem; others like a threat. All of them feared my bloodline even as they coveted what it could offer. I lived there for two years. By twenty-three, the four rival kingdoms learned of my existence. all four kingdoms demanded I be shared among them like breeding stock. Like a resource. I refused. That sealed my fate.
