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MY HEART IS PIERCED

BY CUPID; I DISDAIN ALL GLITTERING GOLD

Legacy’s a funny thing to talk about when you’re dirt poor and your dad is an alcoholic. But apparently, she had a legacy. Apparently, it had all been sold. And yet apparently that had not been enough to satiate her father’s tilt towards slow demise, and apparently, her mother had wept and wept yet done nothing at all. All this she had been told yet one fact above all: she would join coven Leviathan once she came of age, and reclaim that legacy the Helios Knights stole.
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But thoughts of the past seemed so far off in contrast to the present. And the present need was simulation, addiction, euphoria. So she had dabbled from a young age in things so wrong. But no one had told her what was right-- just told her what had been, and what had to be. So out of the inability to comprehend (or perhaps sheer spite, as was more of her nature), she rebelled against whatever delusions her parents had mapped out for her.
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So she grew up; would have been gold stars replaced by the achievement of a broken bone, love replaced by spite, and whatever remained replaced by a burning desire to feel alive.
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There had been a colossal fight after she unlocked the collaboration of her familiar-- her mother throwing plates and her throwing words, each drowning out regret with year’s worth of pent-up rage.
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“You understand nothing! Leviathan is your-our, family! This world is--”
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“You’re god damned right I don’t understand family!”
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And then she left the nest, like all birds do.

Upon one summer's

morning; i carelessly did stray

She wasn't destined for great flight or whatever legacy she apparently had, no. Though she couldn't deny the lingering thoughts and doubts that her parents' words had cast over her, she walked out of the house in an attempt to find a new path. And found that maybe she had a separate destiny after all. She was destined to a descending spiral of things illegal and dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
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So dangerous that she couldn't really count the number of times she'd almost died or been caught or had a fate much worse put upon her for all her thievery and delinquency. And she pretended, in some part, like she didn't care about the life she had left behind. After all, logically, what use had that life been, and could she really pretend she missed hell when she'd found heaven?
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She sat on top of a throne of stolen treasures, her name prominent in the docks as a crafty and mercenary thief. She had made this for herself. She had succeeded in forging a legacy where none had ever existed.
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For four years, nothing could touch her or reach her. Sure, she'd had her bad days of being beaten down, or days where she had to make ends meet with an empty stomach. But she had thrived and survived by herself for four years, unreached by any who tried. Except a single courier pigeon that somehow managed to find her. You see people had always said that she was a woman of steel (but never one of virtue), and that she couldn't be stopped.
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Yet, four years later at the age of twenty, when she was called back with the notification that her parents had died, she wept.
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She wept for the first time in a long time, and she couldn't comprehend why.

what lurked behind

cold waters; did not its name say

Now while it would have been nearly impossible to find her and identify her as the daughter of so and so and such and such, she wasn't brought home by the police or district officials, no. She had been called and messaged by Coven Leviathan expressing their sorrows. The letter had been concise and to the point, and had carried with it a ring she had heard only rumours of.
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And in that time of need, they held out their hands to her and told her that her parents were the great grandchildren of ferocious witches that had fought against the Helios Knights for years and years, and they had offered her solace and care. They didn't tell her legends or lies (she had grown too much in them to believe them any more). They told her simply that she was athelong long lost posterity of a long since dead comrade, but they still would honor her if she wished.
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(Of course in hindsight, there had been no other option, but the grief had blinded her to that, at least. Thank whoever was up there for the smallest of mercies, or maybe her pride would not have let her live and there wouldn't have been a story at all.)
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For as long as that emotion lasted, they had been her cure. And when she felt ready to return- she found she had nowhere to return to. Three years without a heist meant she had no name to claim, no reputation to live up to. She had become nothing again. And all for what? Some mourning? She felt as though she'd let her own self down.
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And Leviathan's offer still lingered on her desk. So she picked up the ring and put it on. And for a whole of two years, she's never felt better.