I sat back in my seat on the shuttle that would take me up to the battle cruiser Maxem. I had just settled myself down when Master Kiev had shown up. He had taken the seat directly across from me. Now we waited for our last passenger to arrive, according to our shuttle pilot. I hadn’t expected the Admiral to be the last of us to arrive. He had seemed quite eager to leave at our breakfast.

We didn’t have long to wait before I heard a set of boots tromping up the ramp. But it wasn’t the Admiral who came through the still open doorway. The squat form of Dur-rele made his way inside and he swiftly made his way to the open seat next to Kiev.

The door began to close and I gave Dur-rele a surprised look. “I thought we were waiting on the Admiral?”

“As I understand it, he went up half an hour ago.” Dur-rele replied.

“Of course he did,” I grunted. Probably just so he didn’t have to share the same shuttle with me. I couldn’t help but feel like my latest adventure had significantly soured the Admiral against me. Well, even more than he already had been.

Lovely.

I only hoped the trip to the College would be a quick one. That way the both of us could part ways as soon as possible. He certainly wasn’t my favorite person either.

“I didn’t know you were coming, Dur-rele,” I said.

The other man grimaced. “I didn’t either until this morning. I had a time scurrying around to get my stuff together last minute. I suppose the Emperor decided that you needed me more than he did for the time being. He knows you will be busy at the College, but thought we could still spend a few hours together each day. There really is so much to be caught up on, and he wants you ready to attend the Feast of Kings in five months time.”

“Oh?” This was the first I had heard about this. “What is the Feast of Kings?”

Dur-rele looked appalled that I should even ask such a question. “Only one of the most important events of the year, Highness. Anyone who is anyone will be there, and the Emperor thought it an appropriate time to present you to the Empire as his official Heir.

“The announcement is necessary and an important step to becoming the Ascendant. It will proclaim you as a representative of the Imperial Family and allow you to interact with the Kings in an official capacity. As well as giving you the authority to act on the Emperor’s behalf to the citizenry of the Empire. Once you have had sufficient exposure and experience at being an agent of the Imperial Seat, you will advance to the full title of Ascendant.”

I felt a little sick at hearing all that. After our little moment in the garden this morning, I had dared to hope that maybe things had changed, or at least my father would let up on things a little.

Guess not, and he’d sent Dur-rele as a reminder of that, and had probably told his aide to give me this little speech as soon as possible. And hey, look at me, already starting to get some fine experience in using my Perception Dome-ni, which of course, was probably the secondary reason why my father had sent Dur-rele my way at a last minute notice.

I suppose I wasn’t all that surprised of this passive aggressive ambush. The Emperor had an agenda and he was determined to make it happen. He didn’t let pesky little things like emotions get in the way. But it was at least good to know he had them. The Emperor had shown me a side of him today that I was pretty sure most people never saw. Besides the unexpected presentation of the secret garden, I took his moment of sharing some really hard feelings with me as the true gift.

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It had certainly left an impression on me as I had meandered through the garden. It had set everything I thought I had known up on its side as I realized that maybe things weren’t so black and white as I first thought. That maybe I should give him a chance and stop making this all about me.

He deserved that much at least.

Was the grand gesture of presenting the garden to me yet another way for him to manipulate me into giving him that chance?

Maybe.

Probably.

Hell, most likely.

But right now I didn’t care, because even with my father playing the puppet master through Dur-rele, I realized a few key things. The Emperor was my birth father. And Ethia was my original home. And I was being offered an opportunity of a lifetime. Didn’t I owe it to myself to at least give it a shot? Who knew what I might learn or become in the process?

So maybe I didn’t have much of a choice about whether I came here or not. And maybe I was still a little upset about being separated from people I truly loved and cared about. And even though we had had a moment in the garden, I wasn’t foolish enough to think the Emperor still wouldn’t send those mark 12’s to Earth if I didn’t do my part.

All that was still true.

But it also didn’t have the hold on me it once did.

My anger was gone.

It had disappeared sometime during my time in my mother’s garden. Even though I had tapped into a lot of my memories with my family in that space she had created, the time there also made me realize that they were still with me, even if they weren’t here in person, and that would never change.

By the time I exited the garden, I could feel the shift in me. I think for the first time since learning about my Ethian origins, I was truly beginning to accept it, and accept that maybe I really never would get to go back to Earth or see my family there again.

I didn’t like it, but also I didn’t like how all the anger had made me feel either, or what it had done to upset my life and others. I had to let it go. I had to let them go. I would never be able to give this new life of mine a chance, if I kept hanging on to the old one. But at least I had my memories of them––the good and the not so good, and for now, that would have to be enough.

In the meantime, it was becoming clear to me that maybe getting a new Protector really was the best thing. I’ll admit that I had been resisting the idea of it. I didn’t like the idea of replacing dad. And I realized that maybe a lot of my anger had come from that.

But whether I liked it or not, my track record so far proved it was necessary. It hadn’t even been a full month since I was last on Earth and already I had three encounters that could have killed me.

Sure, I knew a handful of Earth’s martial arts, and as it turned out, a deadly Ethian discipline called quat-lo, but that hadn’t done much good with Tessa. It hadn’t even registered on my radar she was a possible threat. But I know dad would have seen it. He would had never allowed her access to me in the first place.

He probably would have seen Chief Hon as a threat long before I did. He most likely would have stopped me before I had gone barging into the Emperor’s private quarters and started that whole fiasco. And even if he somehow hadn’t intercepted that bad decision, he certainly would have met Captain Hame at my door when he’d come looking to insert his opinion on my night time activities.

I needed someone to watch my back, to maybe even warn me off before I bumbled into possible disaterous mistakes. All this Ethian stuff was all still so new to me, not to mention being a part of the ruling family of an empire. I was realizing that there was a lot more to this than just learning the ropes, especially if those ropes were going to snap and break before I even had a change to learn what they were all about.

Yeah, I needed help.

Big time.

And if that help couldn’t be my dad, then I would have to find someone else that was close. Aragon Remeer would be a tough act to follow. I knew I’d never find anyone quite like that, but maybe someone who was competent enough to keep the crazies off me and respected me for who I was. That would be a really good start.

I rested my head back on the seat behind me as our shuttle lifted off and began its ascent. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I reached the College, but for the first time since I had arrived in Ethia, I felt a distinct eagerness course through me.

I was going to yet another planet after all, and didn’t I once spend my time on Earth looking up into the night sky and wondering what was out there? Now, through a twist of fate, I had been offered the keys to a whole other freaking galaxy, and if that wasn’t something to get excited about, I don’t know what was.