Athens, Sparta, the Cult of Kosmos, the Isu remnants — all of them have tried to use Kassandra, to direct her capabilities toward their ends, to make the Eagle Bearer a resource rather than an agent. The fear is real because the alternative to using her is confronting her, and confronting someone who answers to no king means confronting someone who cannot be managed through the normal instruments of power.

No king is the completed definition of the free mercenary — not the Kephallonia-bound outcast who needed contracts to survive, but the person who has built enough of her own power to be genuinely independent. The legend did that. The legend is now the armor that no political actor in Greece can penetrate.