LEGACY ─ marvel

XIV. Feelings Revealed

Chapter Fourteen
Zy'aire

I'm nervous to go back to Wakanda. What state will I find it in? Will it be just how I left it? Will it be in ruins? I don't know. I wish I did, at least then I could prepare myself. What if the palace has burned down? What if it exploded? What if the my country has been reduced to ashes? I know that's improbable, but Wakanda has never been without a ruler, not in the several centuries it's been a country. I'm the first ruler to abandon the Wakandan people, the first failure.

"Stop worrying, Zy," Livy begs, her concerned eyes analyzing my expression. "Wakanda will still be standing when we arrive."

Bast, she knows me well. "That's easier said than done."

"Why don't you focus on flying, that should be a good distraction. It will certainly make me feel a lot better."

I chuckle lightly, glancing sideways at her. "You afraid I'm going to get so distracted I'll plummet us to our deaths?"

She gives me a pointed stare. "Do you not remember the disaster that happened a few years ago when you took what's her name flying? Monica? You got so distracted you almost hit a tree."

I look away from her in embarrassment. "It wasn't that bad."

"Uncle T'Challa grounded you for a month."

I let out a chuckle, picturing how fuming Baba's face was, and how annoyed Monica was that I got grounded. She broke up with me shortly after that. I recount this to Livy: "She dumped me a week into me being grounded because she thought it was lame that I could still be grounded even though I was a prince."

"She was one of my least favorites," Livy informs me, shaking her head. "I think Diego was my ultimate least favorite though. I've never wanted to punch someone more in my life."

Diego only dated me because I was a prince. He told me so after I broke things off with him because I didn't feel a connection with him. I'm usually okay after my breakups, but that one hurt.

"That's one of the hardships of being a prince I guess, that's all everyone will ever see you as," I say somberly. "I think most of the people I date only date me because I'm a prince, I don't think it is just Diego. They may not all say it out loud, but it's obvious. They like the power I have, but what no one seems to understand is how difficult it is to have that kind of power."

"You just haven't found the right person yet." Livy says softly, her eyes glued to the clouds floating around us, her body stiff all of the sudden. I don't know why.

I think back to John's house, the moment she and I had on the couch. We were so close to kissing, if Jo hadn't barged in I think we might have. As nerve wracking as it is to ask her about it, I have to at least try. I don't think my heart can take keeping in how I feel about her much longer, it might burst.

"Livy," I say lowly, pressing the autopilot button so we don't crash and die while I attempt to spill my heart out to her. "We should talk about what happened at John's house."

"I don't know what you mean."

"On the couch, before Jo came in we almost...was that just me?"

Livy lets out a deep breath from her nose, her eyes still glued to the sky as she shakes her head once. "No...it wasn't just you."

I feel like my heart just did a black flip in my chest, like my chest is trying to cave in on itself. Despite how that might sound, I've never felt freer, my mind never clearer. I feel like a tether on my heart has been released, and with that tether gone, a sense of newfound determination fuels me to say: