When Severine had been searching for relevant information about the Phoenix bloodline, she had noticed a peculiar phenomenon—something the researchers had called "the disease of the ruler."
Anyone who became the ruler ended up going crazy, killing their own soldiers in a spurt of madness. They would not spare their loved ones either.
That wasn't all.
Even when they didn't take the throne, they would still achieve grand success, only to end in the same miserable state. There were rumors that one should never marry into that royal family—the mad kings.
Over time, that family perished.
No one even remembered what their last name was, only that they carried the curse of reaching the heights of their power and then being destroyed by it.
They would become unhinged and unable to distinguish between enemy and friend.
Severine felt that she was truly foolish. How had she not connected Killian to the same bloodline?
