Page 9

But despite my best efforts, it surged dangerously.

Painful sparks shot through me, all fucking over, much like being electrocuted over and over and over.

I screamed as my left wrist burned, feeling like it was searing down to the bone.

I heard a crack.

I started through the pain and swirling intensity as I realized the resistance around my left wrist was gone, and I brought it around in front of me to see that I’d somehow broken that cuff.

Cassius was there in the next moment, grasping my hand, his eyes wide. His know-it-all disposition was momentarily disrupted as he bore witness to what I’d accidentally done.

He didn’t speak to it, though, and instead he surprised me as he started stroking my palm, tracing soft and slow circles over and over with his magic.

It was almost hypnotic, watching his white glow draw a soothing path around and around.

The painful sparks subsided.

The turmoil calmed, like a storm receding.

“I’ve shown you a great deal, inundated you with much. It is a lot to absorb. However, your ignorance could no longer continue. It was imperative that I showed you the truth. You must understand the reality of your situation,” he spoke in a careful, almost kind tone.

It was probably just a manipulation to get me to calm, but I was taking it right now. I clearly needed the assist.

“I am not here to harm you or to cause you emotional pain either, Ariana. But until you knew the truth, we couldn’t begin our work together. Now, do you have any questions for me? Or do you require time to process what I have conveyed to you?”

“Tell me more. You’re right. I need to know.”

He eased his hand from mine. “There. You’ve calmed. Quite easily, too. You can handle this better than you allow yourself to believe. You can handle a great deal.”

All I could do was nod and utter a murmur.

“You are the only one of your kind,” he told me then. “A full Celestial being who possesses equal power to a True Celestial, but who is also free to impact the mortal plane without shattering the balance entirely and in irreversible ways.”

“Like Draco?” I asked, hating voicing the words at all.

“Your power is beyond his. Like mine is. Draco was stripped down to Fallen status the moment he betrayed us. But, yes, he could impact the mortal plane like you can without disastrous damage to the balance between realms and planes of existence.” He reached out and tipped my chin up with his thumb and forefinger, staring intently into my eyes.

“But unlike him, unlike Mia, Cornelius, and Jaxon also, you do not possess that inner darkness. You are purity and light.” He released me and linked his hands behind his back as he began pacing in front of my chair.

“We must keep it that way. We’ve felt your struggle and with you now taking back your power, we need to be careful, to ensure you remain in the light.

I will assist you with that. I will prepare you to fulfill your duty. ”

“What exactly is this duty? What cause or threat am I supposed to champion?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“You don’t know?”

“My mission is to prepare you, to act as your Guide. And I will ensure you are ready for whatever comes your way, whatever you are assigned in the future.”

So either what I needed to champion hadn’t come about yet, or didn’t yet exist, or it did and he just wasn’t privy to it, because the True Celestials compartmentalized information as some sort of precaution—possibly even as a means to control those under their rule.

“And that’s just a given, isn’t it? There’s no choice for me in the matter at all, is there?”

“There is not. This is what must be. I won’t leave until my mission is complete.”

“They all see me as a thing and not a fucking person, because of my great power.”

I hated it. I’d shown my hatred for it many times when I was younger. But as I’d grown older, I’d retreated into accepting that. I’d given up where that was concerned, really.

Until recently.

Until Kai, Vorzyr, and Nyx had been all up in my space with their intensity, with them actually seeing me as a person with emotions, needs, dreams, the whole nine.

“But things are different now.”

Those had been Kai’s words to me when I’d tried to explain what it was like for me and why I’d pulled away and shut down as a result.

And I’d wanted to believe in them so badly.

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 with them.

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 to guide me, 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 about me and 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.

And my 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 life and mine being very obvious proof of that.

I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t happening again with his mission as my Guide.

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 whole champion thing 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 family and those 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’ve stated already, should they stand in the way of my role as your Guide, 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 challenge and a hope that more of that would come to be, that I’d take a stand and work toward breaking those proverbial strings.

And I would.

Going backward wasn’t an option.

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

“You also require time for your power to settle after reunification tonight. One week and then we will begin. In the meantime, should you need help stabilizing, you may reach out to me. I’d rather you try on your own at first, but it you fail, contact me.”

“How do I do that?”

He twirled his right hand and with a brief flare of his white power, something materialized between his fingers.

He held it out to me and I found myself staring at a mystical small disk-like object. It was a translucent opalescent material etched with Celestial script. In the center, a faint glimmer of stardust swirled slowly.

“This is an Echo Coin,” he told me. “When it’s time to begin, speak the word Vocare as you hold it. I will hear it no matter where I am, and come to you.”

He placed it in my free left hand.

And then he unfurled his wings and plucked out one of them, wherein he then pressed it to the right cuff, dissolving it within an instant, and freeing me entirely. He destroyed the left cuff completely as well until there was nothing left, like the restrictive things had never been.

He held out his hand to me and I took it, allowing him to ease me back to my feet.

“The soothing sensation I bestowed upon you to calm your power will maintain for a few hours, but then it will fade and it will be down to you.”

I nodded. “Understood.”

“Until then, Ariana,” he said, stepping back, and offering me a benevolent smile, before then shooting up into the air at rapid-fire speed and flying away in a captivating majestic show.

I was left standing there and pocketing the Echo Coin, as I stared out at the ruins, and fought to start processing everything that had been bestowed upon me tonight.

That processing was interrupted as a huge surge of energy tore through the area.

In the next moment, Grandfather teleported in with a burst of silver light. Dad was right behind him with his red magic.

And a couple of seconds later, Pops’ vibrant-green lightning shot through the sky, just before he touched down in front of them, a second away from creating one of his infamous shockwaves of his defensive power that would knock out the power of every magic-wielder in his vicinity.

“Hold!” Grandfather called out.

Pops stilled and retracted his magic as he saw what Grandfather and Dad had registered—that I was here alone.

All three of them looked stunned as they took me in, and I realized it was because during my processing attempt just before they’d arrived, I’d unconsciously walked over to the scorch marks on the ground—the site where Mom had perished.

“Are you—” Dad started.

“I’m fine,” I cut in. I shoved a hand through my hair.

“I know. I know everything. That a brutal battle happened here. That Mom died right here. I know about the bargain that was made to save her life and about the one you made to spare mine. That’s why Cassius is here, to ensure that’s seen through, to prepare me.

He’s my Guide. ” I shook my head at the three of them.

“But you knew that last part, didn’t you?

You’ve known they were going to send someone to do this for the longest time. ”

“Listen, Ari, I know tonight was a lot—” Pops spoke this time.

I held up my hand. “Don’t. Not right now.”

“This is all my doing,” Grandfather said. “Don’t blame them.”

“Thank you for coming for me. I know it can’t have been easy to track me through the heavy cloaking spell I’d felt him employ. But I’m fine. I’m unharmed. And I need to get back to people I care about who weren’t so lucky during this shitshow tonight.”

Dad stepped forward. “We need to talk about this. All of us.”

“And we will.” I glared out at them. “On my terms for once.”

“You need time to process,” Pops said.

“Yes. I really do.”

“Then we shall grant you that. As you wish,” Grandfather uttered, laying his hand firmly on Dad’s shoulder, seeing his obvious reluctance to let this go, even for a little while.

I was done, though.

And the longer they were here in front of me as a direct reminder of all of this, the nightmare that had come before, the nightmare that was coming my way in the very near future, the more worked up it was making me.

I didn’t need a massively long and deep talk with my entire family right now.

I needed comfort.

And with the way things were currently, only my men could give me that.

So, in the next second, I smiled sadly out at Grandfather, Dad, and Pops.

And then I teleported out.