Page 24 of Legacy

I’d wanted to grab onto those words that he’d uttered and drag them with me into reality, making it so by sheer force of will.

And being with my men, it had felt like it could actually be true, that I could actually have a life that was my own—a life withthem.

But now there was this.

There was the betrayal from my family.

There was their distrust and all their secrets.

There was Cassius, a True Celestial with specific orders from on high toguideme, to shape me into what I had to be in order to live up to a bargain that had been struck without my knowledge. Before I’d even been born.

One part of me wanted to lash out and rage, desiring to use my now liberated left hand to deliver a flattening blast to Cassius and force him away, force all of this away, as if I could erase it all.

But I was fighting with everything I had to focus on the strategic sense where all of this was concerned.

Cassius was here and he wasn’t going away. That was an indisputable fact.

A bargain had been made that burdened me with a duty, involving me becoming a servant to the Celestial Plane and the whims and wills of the True Celestials. Another fact.

Cassius had demonstrated extensive knowledge and his ability to impart a whole lot more, about the one thing I couldn’t learn myself—knowledge aboutmeand my true power. He’d managed to soothe me and stop a power eruption from me. There was much to be learned there. And after all these years of me winging it, and my family even having to do that when I was a child, there was now this fount of knowledge standing before me.

I couldn’t dismiss that.

Andmy family had made a bargain. If I refused to honor it on my end, I didn’t doubt that they could end up in the line of fire and pay for my rejection of it.

At the same time, I couldn’t just blindly trust in Cassius and the intentions that he’d stated. The True Celestials had manipulated things before—the bargain for my mom’s lifeandmine being very obvious proof of that. I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t happening again with his mission as myGuide.There could definitely be more to it than he was letting on.

The timing was particularly concerning as well, given that me and my men had just discovered that I’d been drawing a Rift Mark. Cassius could be that threat my subconscious—or whatever other part it might be of me with how complicated my nature was—had been warning about. Or the wholechampionthing he claimed he was preparing me for could be geared toward said threat that wasn’t even here yet.

A lot more research needed to be done.

And if I played it carefully, Cassius could actually become a resource for that.

“Okay,” I spoke. “I’ll comply.”

He arched an eyebrow, skeptical.

I wasn’t really surprised. Dad and Grandfather had already tried to break the bargain.

“If that is truly your intent, ensure that you make it clear to your familyandthose young men you were with earlier. I won’t tolerate any interference. I believe I aptly demonstrated the consequences of that on that mountaintop.”

I glared up at him. “Hurt them again and I’ll fight you every step of the way.”

“You may fornicate with whoever you wish. In fact, you will remain at Maven Academy also, as it is a comforting source of familiarity for you, as well as stability. You’ll need to draw on that in the early stages of my teachings.However,as I’vestated already, should they stand in the way of my role as yourGuide,I will not be the least bit accommodating, and a further demonstration of force will follow. Should they abide by that rule, then no harm will come to them from me. You have my solemn vow.”

“You’re more than meets the eye, after all, aren’t you? More than just a puppet whose strings are operated by everybody else. I thought you’d lost that ability long ago when we were kids.”

Kai’s words to me in the woods by my family home the day of my party came to mind, their relevance right now undeniable.

It hadn’t just been an observation. That wasn’t the way that Kai worked.

It had been a challengeanda hope that more of that would come to be, that I’d take a stand and work toward breaking those proverbial strings.

And Iwould.

Going backward wasn’t an option.

“Fine,” I spoke. “But I’ll need time to convey this and have it settle.”

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