Secret Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

  “Your parents expected you to help them oust the reigning family?”

  “I was sixteen. They would have had to kill those people to take their place. That’s how gypsy kingdoms are lost and won. My parents had to prove they were powerful enough to lead. By then, I was the strongest weapon in their arsenal.”

  A weapon of death, just like Sarah had been trained to be. Only it had been Richard’s flesh and blood trading on the dangerous gifts of a teenage boy who was ready to grow into a warrior, whose dedication to protecting others ran soul deep. Richard had lived through his own nightmare. His own childhood had been destroyed because of a legacy he hadn’t asked to be born into. He’d had to face his own moment of truth about what the rest of his life was going to be about.

  “You stopped them, didn’t you?” Sarah was as certain of it as she was of her next breath. She was finally seeing, understanding, the real Richard. “Instead of helping your parents hurt that other family, you joined with the Watcher team that stopped them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “The Brotherhood stopped my parents.” Richard felt the dark memories slip closer.

  He’d come here to help Sarah understand her own path. But he’d needed her here, too, he accepted. He’d needed the same honesty with his past he’d pushed her into. He needed the warmth and acceptance and understanding Sarah couldn’t yet give herself. And maybe, just maybe, they needed each other.

  “The council had been fine with the petty theft and minor felonies my parents had committed,” he said, “and my father’s parents before them. But my folks were about to use our legacy to take a human life, for greed and power. My psychic skills were on the cusp of expanding beyond their control, and they had no use for teaching me restraint or even common decency. Their plans would have irrevocably changed who I was meant to be.”

  He stared into the starkly beautiful vista spreading out before them. On nights like this, when the past weighed too heavy and there were too many hours before dawn, Richard came to this place to remember the future that he’d won on the same night that he’d lost everything.

  “The Watchers confronted your parents?” Sarah moved closer.

  There was understanding in her eyes. Compassion Richard had never let anyone close enough to offer him. Because he never would have believed them before now. Before Sarah.

  “I confronted them.” He’d never forget his parents’ fury and disapproval. “I was done being their pawn. I didn’t want anything to do with their new utopia. I wanted to be free and learn something about the real world. Maybe find a way to go to college and begin a career. I expected them to be angry. I didn’t anticipate their threats to disown me, and then when threats didn’t work, to stop me however they had to.”

  “You either did what they told you, or—”

  “I would cease to exist. They couldn’t afford to have me leave, knowing what I did about them and how they operated.” He looked deeper into the forest that had become the backdrop for Sarah’s first nightmares. He could almost see his parents’ deadly serious expressions when they’d told him he’d pay for his desertion. “I needed to think. I walked for hours, circling the camp and my problems and shutting out the world. That’s when the team of Watchers approached me.”

  “Isn’t that forbidden?”

  “The council had made a decision to intervene—to get me out. Initial contact is attempted whenever possible before a principal is extracted, in an effort to avoid resistance.”

  Memory flickered across Sarah’s face.

  “Like you talked to my mother when you first came to work at the center,” she said. “Maddie told me she found your private cell number in the admittance file my mother kept.”

  “It was essential that she trust me with your well-being in case I needed her help to protect you.”

  Sarah nodded. He felt her relax, the history between them sitting easier the more he let her see who he’d really been. What had made him who he was now.

  “My parents were furious,” he said. “But they still trusted me to protect the family or they wouldn’t have let me leave camp. When I returned hours later, they were waiting for me, and they were armed.”

  “The Watcher team let you go back?”

  Winter wind carved into Richard’s skin, robbing him of the warmth of Sarah’s consciousness reaching for his through the emotional shields that could no longer keep her out.

  “The team had explained that it was time for me to leave. That the abilities I was just starting to understand needed to be honed, trained, enriched. With my parents, my potential would be perverted. Degraded. The Watchers were prepared to take me, whether I was willing or not.”

  “But they let you go?”

  “To make up my own mind. Taking me against my will would have damaged the Brotherhood’s chances of integrating my gifts into the order, just as it has with you and Maddie. I talked them into letting me go until I was sure.”

  “You were destined to be in charge.” Sarah smiled, and it felt as if dawn were breaking over Richard. Inside of him. “Even as a teenager, you were a natural leader. So, when you talked with your parents again, they—”

  “They basically told me I’d been an asset they’d cultivated their entire lives, and it was time to pay up.”

  Sarah flinched.

  He could feel her trying to process the darkness that had surged within him in the moment that his father informed him he cared nothing for Richard as a person, as a son. His mother had just stood there by the man’s side, staring at Richard as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him. He’d felt isolated. Abandoned. Dirty. Furious. But at the same time, there’d been a promise waiting for him in the forest rising around them. There’d been others like him, watching and trusting him no matter how many mistakes he’d made.

  He hadn’t been alone.

  He hadn’t been locked into a path that would have destroyed his soul.

  “You didn’t have to allow your parents’ mistakes to define who you could be,” Sarah said, following his thoughts. “The choice was finally yours.”

  “Yes.”

  Understanding washed through Richard. Sarah’s understanding.

  “Just like the choices you’re facing now,” he said, “not to keep running from your past. To learn from your failures without being defined by them. To use the insight your experiences have left you to help a little girl who’s just as lost as you once were.”

  “It’s not the same. My family never did anything wrong. My parents tried to protect me. I’m the one who couldn’t handle my talents or gifts or whatever the hell you want to call them. Now, they’re both dead.”

  “You did the best you could with what little information you had. You didn’t cause the circumstances you were born into any more than I did. Some things are simply larger than we are. Some failures are the result of time and fate, necessity and circumstance. Your experience is more common than you think, when a legacy reaches a crisis point. Not everyone can be saved. Not every person involved can be persuaded to put the needs of others before their own.”

  Her forehead wrinkled while she searched for her own answers in the jumble of their shared emotions. The sadness and guilt and anger and loss they both still felt were tempting her to run again—from him this time. Then her disgust slammed into both of them.

  “How could you join the same people who destroyed your family?” she asked. The self-loathing she felt for making the same choice filled every word.

  “My parents’ greed for power destroyed them, not the Brotherhood.” It was the reality he came back to this place to remember. “The Watchers protected me and the world from what my parents would have created in me. My father intended to kill me that night. I felt his lethal intent when I told them I was leaving, but I was too stunned to defend myself. The Watchers gave him a chance to back down. My father refused. They both did. He and my mother attacked the Watchers with their powers. I would have been next if the team hadn’t stopped them. I blamed mysel
f for their deaths for a long time, the same as you. So long that I learned not to feel at all so I could keep going.”

  Night sounds hummed. The nervous energy of Richard’s memories swayed trees and underbrush. The ravine absorbed the release.

  “Legacies like ours destroy everything they touch.” Sarah’s voice was thready. Fragile. “Good or bad. Darkness or light, power like ours damages things that can’t be made whole again. Watchers are simply the hall monitors, trying to control the uncontrollable while things go from bad to worse. Until there’s nothing anyone can do to stop the insanity but neutralize it before it’s beyond anyone’s grasp. And that’s what I was born to be? That’s what you brought me out here to tell me?”

  “I brought you here to see the possibilities beyond your hatred for yourself and the people trying to help you. A new world is waiting for you, Sarah. A reality where all of you fits, with people who understand you. Everything you’ve learned will make you a better Watcher. Everything you’re feeling right now will help you identify with others who are like you, and help you fulfill your oath to guide them—starting with Trinity.”

  It wasn’t easy, accepting the daily conflict of living a psychic legacy’s existence. He could still feel his shock and rage at his parents. A part of him still wanted to drown in that memory and take the Watcher team who’d killed them with him. Sarah would be dealing with her own dark past for the rest of her life. But she couldn’t let it rob her of what could come next.

  “There is a calling waiting for you,” he said. “It’s what’s gotten you this far. It’s why you held out against Dream Weaver long enough for your sister and me to pull you back. It’s the part of you that was created to save others. There’s a purpose beyond the rest of the crap you’ve had to endure.”

  “My purpose is to swear undying fidelity to an organization that took everything from me?”

  “Stop seeing any of us as inherently evil. You’re fighting yourself now, not the Brotherhood. Not the center. And you’re going to get people killed if you don’t stop. No amount of guilt and regret is going to change what you’ve become or what you have to do next. Watchers saved my life that night, when they destroyed the damaged world I’d come from. Tomorrow, they’ll fight to save yours, if you’ll trust them.”

  “They?”

  Richard cupped her cheek in his palm, drawn in all over again by her vulnerability and courage and fire.

  “We’re trying to save you,” he said, doing his job as her Watcher, but also accepting that he needed Sarah in this place for himself, becoming part of his memories, part of his truth. He’d need her forever. “No matter how it might seem, we know you’re not what’s out of control. Your legacy is. This is your time to choose. To join us fully, instead of following the same path that’s pushed everyone but your sister away from you. The Brotherhood gave my legacy a chance to mean more than damage and pain. That’s what I trusted when I couldn’t trust myself or them. Every day I wake up and find myself in charge of the warriors I command, I feel like I’m still conning the world. But I keep waking up, and I keep fighting. And because I do, the powers I inherited have gone on to help countless others. That night, when I chose to live instead of dying with my family, my Watchers saved me so I could find you, Sarah.”

  She gasped. The full force of the emotions he was grappling with consumed them. His need to belong. His need for her. The compulsion to lose himself to the homecoming her mind had become to him.

  Her cheek nuzzled against his hand, the softness of her skin branding him, the same as it had the night he’d first found her at the center. Then she froze.

  “What if I can’t make the right choice,” she asked, “once the ocean has control and I’m lost in the nightmare?”

  “You were born to dream.” He listened to the voices of the woods shifting around them. In them, he heard what she couldn’t yet—the power and possibility of the life she was meant to live. A life he wanted to share. “You’ve already chosen, Sarah. You’re here with me, instead of still running. You’ll dream again tomorrow with the Brotherhood’s support, and you won’t be lost. I won’t let you be. Then if you have to run again, whenever the night and the memories become too real, I’ll be right here running with you. Trust that. Trust your team. Trust yourself. And no matter what happens, you won’t fail. You never have to be alone with your darkness again.”

  “That’s . . .” Her shy smile was a surprise. “Is that the recruitment speech you Watchers give everybody?”

  Richard trailed the backs of his fingers down her cheek. His thumb rubbed across the tantalizing curve of her lips. Then his mouth brushed the same spot. She gasped into his kiss.

  Heat.

  Desire.

  Silky promise flooded them. The winter night caressed their skin with fire. She accepted his need, sending back a flood of her own along with the magic that happened every time their minds brushed. He swept her body closer, where he’d wanted her since he held her in their vision. Where he’d always want her.

  An insatiable craving flared to life, for more of her, all of her, everything inside her that he hadn’t yet touched. For the reality of Sarah holding him, needing what they could become together. It was all new to him, this touching and wanting and believing beyond his duty. Sarah was teaching him to feel again while she learned the same for herself. She was teaching Richard how to dream.

  “This is where the worst nightmare of my life happened.” He closed his eyes against the feel of her mouth and her thoughts claiming him. “It’s where I wanted to help your nightmares end.”

  “I . . .” Her gaze was alive with need. It was haunted with doubt. “I don’t know how to stop seeing the monster in my nightmare.”

  “The wolf?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “The monster he wants me to become.”

  “For a long time, I saw my father’s hatred and my mother’s weakness every time I looked in the mirror.”

  And as his penance, Richard had shut down so he could survive and guide and protect and preserve, taking nothing for himself. Then he’d found Sarah. And even lost to him in a coma, she’d instantly become a future he wanted to fight for.

  “The only person keeping the monster you fear alive is you,” he said. “You don’t have to endure this alone. Others want more for you, Sarah. Accept that you’re a Watcher. Survive the battle you have to fight for your legacy. Believe that you’re mine. That I’m yours. Give the life you’ve made me want with you a chance.”

  Memories swirled around them. His memories still. Hers, too. All of them shared, released, as the haunting rustle of a raven’s wings rode the wind and the clouds and the shadows, freeing them of the demons they’d both clung to.

  “The Temple Legacy either lives or dies in my dreams tomorrow.” Sarah’s tiny, searching kiss at the curve of Richard’s neck stole his heart all over again.

  “Then so do I.” He took her mouth with his, needing to consume her, body and soul.

  “I . . .” The moonlight in her eyes shone like forever, winking closer for just a moment before it was swallowed by quicksilver tears. “I don’t know how to believe in this. The good things in my life . . . All I’ve ever done is destroy them.”

  Richard had asked her to believe once before. Then he’d used his duty and his mission to build a wall between them, because he hadn’t believed enough himself to fight for what they’d found.

  He rested his forehead against Sarah’s and found himself praying. Gods and spirituality were unknown to him, but he was praying to every deity that had ever been worshipped for another chance to protect the magical place within this woman that still dreamed.

  “I failed you,” he said, “when I didn’t stop Tad Ruebens from manipulating your mind. But Dream Weaver is his darkness, not yours. You’re everything good and loyal and honorable and beautiful that I’ve been afraid to want. I’d die before I’d let anything happen to you again. Just like you’d die before you’d hurt the people you love anymore, no matte
r what your nightmare’s programming wants. We’ll find a way through this together. Tell me you can believe that. Tell me we have a chance.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sarah clung to Richard’s honesty and his strength while he asked for her future. Her mind swirled with his gypsy’s story and his warrior’s logic and the emotional honesty he was finally giving her.

  There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t hurt her again. But safe or not, she could feel herself falling. Sinking. His memories from his family’s tragedy surged around them and rustled through the ravine like thousands of tiny wings fighting to escape the night’s darkness, as fearlessly as Richard had survived his own legacy’s meltdown.

  She nestled deeper into his embrace, exactly where she’d always wanted to belong. She yearned to be as fearless as that sixteen-year-old boy who’d found a way to survive the unthinkable—as fearless as she appeared right now, reflected back from Richard’s gaze. She wanted to become whatever she had to, to keep him in her life, in her mind. More than ever, she wanted to conquer the nightmares that threatened this new beginning he made her want to believe she could have.

  Richard had been her raven. A villain from her past. But the man before her now was so much more. He’d never left her, despite the duty and oath that had been all he’d known since he was a child. He hadn’t abandoned her to her psychotic rantings when she was impossibly damaged. He’d accepted his own role in the unfair price she’d been forced to pay, for the sake of other legacies and the innocents his Dream Weaver mission had spared.

  He’d guided her and trained her and waited for her to heal enough to see the bigger war being waged around her. A war he believed she could be valuable in, as long as she kept fighting. Kept believing. Kept trusting.

  Sending her consciousness deeper into his, she wrapped her mind in the truth that he’d been waiting for her tonight. Not just for duty, but for himself. She was something he needed. Something he’d always needed. He’d run with her because she filled a hidden place in him that was just as broken as her darkest fears. The dream of them she could feel inside him had been there, within his mind, from the start.