Zodiac Academy 3: The Reckoning

LANCE:

I’ll make it worth your while if you pass The Reckoning today.

#motivation #seemeafterclass

Darcy:

I can’t believe you just hashtagged me!

Lance:

I can’t believe you’re not in my bed right now.

#missyourpeach

Darcy:

I also can’t believe you just admitted you want me to pass The Reckoning.

Lance:

It’s complicated.

You got that right.

I snorted a laugh, tucking my Atlas in my bag as I headed out of the door. The Reckoning was held in The Howling Meadow at dawn and as usual I had no idea what to expect. The one thing I was glad of though, was that after this morning, it would be over. And though I was nervous as hell, we’d done well in the trials and I just had to hope we could succeed at this final challenge.

 No matter what happened though, I knew Tory and I had each other. And that was enough. We’d been through so much together during our lives, but since we’d arrived at Zodiac our bond had grown even fiercer. We would ride out the storms of our fate together, hand in hand. And no one could ever take that from us.

I spotted Diego further down the stairwell and a lump bulged in my throat as anger opened up in me again. If I was going to get information about his uncle, I’d have to suck it up, but that didn’t seem like a possibility right then. I was just too damn furious and today was too damn important to waste my energy on him.

He threw a glance over his shoulder, scowled when he spotted me then quickened his stride. I shook my head at him, tutting under my breath. Jerk.

I followed the other freshmen outside where it was still dark and someone barged past me, nearly knocking me on my ass.

Kylie seemed to be walking on air as she hurried ahead of me with Jillian jogging after her. “All night?” Jillian was saying to her.

“Yeah, I haven’t even had time to wash the glitter off. He was still all over me this morning. He said he can’t get enough of me,” Kylie said, flicking her hair over her shoulder as they headed away.

Ew. One guess who she’s been screwing.

I fell to the back of the air freshmen, wrapping my coat closer around me as the wind picked up. We passed through The Wailing Wood and Tory caught my eye beside Sofia and Tyler. She waved me over and I quickened my pace, glancing over at Diego who pointedly walked away from us.

“How was the fair?” Tory asked, looking like she had a thousand things to say to me. We fell into a discussion about Caleb and the Heirs and I was horrified by what Caleb had done to her at the top of some mountain. But she seemed to think he’d made up for it. I wasn’t entirely satisfied by that, but Tory had clearly decided to keep seeing him. I told her about what had happened between Diego and I – leaving out the rest of my night with Orion – and she cursed his name, glaring over at him across the meadow. 

I itched to tell her the truth about Orion and wondered if I should just do it. She wouldn’t tell anyone. But even as I considered it, a sharp pinch in my gut reminded me that if she knew about us, she could get in trouble for covering my ass.

No, Orion and I had to figure out what the hell we were actually going to do about this insatiable thing we’d wrapped ourselves up in. It had to remain between us until then. And probably after then too.

Professor Zenith and Principal Nova appeared in long navy robes, moving in front of us with serious expressions. Ringing the edge of the field was a set of bleachers full of spectators. They were packed with the usual crowd of the Heirs and their fan club and Geraldine and the A.S.S., plus a whole host of hopeful looking parents.

Nova lifted her chin, gazing across us from left to right. “Today your fates will be decided. Each of you have been given a score between one and ten based on your performance in the trials you undertook this week. You will receive those scores…now.” She waved her hand and numbers appeared above all of our heads in glittering blue sparks.

I looked up, finding a nine above my head and I squealed with joy as I spotted the same above Tory’s. Geraldine went absolutely crazy, crying out our names with actual tears rolling down her cheeks. The A.S.S joined in, drowning out the heckles coming from the Heirs’ friends. The Heirs themselves were huddled together, their eyes dark as mutters passed between them.

I looked to the other freshmen around me hopefully, finding Sofia with a five and Tyler with a seven. Diego had a glimmering three above his head, his shoulders hunched as if he wanted to shrink away from it. Despite my anger at him, I couldn’t help but feel a small pang of disappointment on his behalf. It wasn’t like I wanted him to lose his place at the Academy, but an apology was definitely due if we were ever gonna see eye to eye again.

Nova clapped her hands to draw our attention. “No matter how low or high your number, you may still fail or pass the final assessment depending on how well you do in this test. The Reckoning will judge how strong of will and heart you truly are. How much you deserve your place at this elite academy. You will then each be given a final score which will decide whether or not you stay on at Zodiac. If your total is less than twelve, you will lose your place this very day.”

Nerves danced through me as Nova directed us to create a circle in the field like we had on the night of The Awakening.

I stood between Sofia and Tory, our fingers interlaced and locked tight.

“Good luck,” I said under my breath as Zenith and Nova took to the centre of the field and Sofia and Tory murmured it back.

Zenith raised her hand to the glittering night sky which was on the cusp of dawn, closing her eyes for a long moment. Silence spanned across the meadow; even the crowd were quiet and I wondered if they’d been told to be this time.

“Look to the stars, freshmen! It is time for your Reckoning!” Zenith said dramatically and I lifted my head with a deep inhale, taking in the expansive dots of light above.

 “Optio vobis faciam!” Zenith cried and I felt her voice right down to the pit of my soul. The stars seemed to twist, turning and turning until I was trapped in the vortex, unable to move as they snared me in their powerful aura.

A weight fell over me like the pressure of a waterfall and darkness descended, taking everything and everyone with it.

A hovering sensation filled my body and I felt as though I was suspended in a chasm of nothingness for a million miles in every direction.

“Hello?” I called out, panic squeezing my heart and stealing my breath.

“Hello? Hello? Hello?” My voice echoed back to me a hundred times, overlapping and merging until it made my ears ache.

Absolute silence pressed in on me again and I hung there with only the drilling thump of my heartbeat for company. I drew fire to my fingertips and it flared brighter than I’d ever seen it, flickering with power in electric blue and blazing scarlet.

Whispers brushed my ears that sent a sliver of fright into my chest. I wasn’t sure if they were coming from inside my head or from the abyss surrounding me. Something told me they came from the stars themselves, somehow neither feminine nor masculine, they just were.

 “Gemini of air, fire, water, earth, daughter of a king, twin soul and Fae born of ash and fire…it’s time to face The Reckoning.” 

The blackness appeared to peel back like the page of a book and I found myself on a dark, suburban street before a burning house. The flames reached into the air, seeming to lick the sky itself. An anxious crowd were gathered on the road beside two huge fire trucks.

I wanted to move closer, my instincts drawing me toward that house. A mere thought transported me to the front of the crowd and my heart clenched as a firefighter shouted orders to his crew, shaking his head as if he’d already given up hope. Fear lapped in my chest as I realised what I was witnessing.

I blinked and it was dawn. The crowd had dispersed and only one fire truck remained. The blaze had reduced the house to a blackened husk. A shadow shifted in my periphery and I turned to see a tall figure standing at the end of the street, head bowed and body cloaked. A flicker of glittering light shone in their palm and I was certain it was stardust. A wave of their hand and the magic swallowed them up.

A baby’s cries caught my ear, then another and my heart stumbled.

“Sir!” a male voice drew my attention back to the house and a fireman came marching out of the wreckage with a bundle of blankets in his arms. “The twins survived! I pulled them out of the ashes.”

My heart pounded harder and harder as I finally understood why we hadn’t died this night. We were impervious to fire. Impossible as it seemed, it was clear as day now.

But who was that Fae standing on the corner watching? A pit of dread in my gut told me it meant nothing good. No one was supposed to know about us. We were Changelings. So how could anyone have been there to witness this night?

My birth mother? My father? Who else knew? Did they die before or after this night?

 “Gemini,” the whispers filled my head again. “The wood burns hottest at the heart of the fire. The more hardship you face, the stronger you become.”

The vision faded away and I found myself standing in an office. Tory and I sat on the floor together, we were five, the absolute image of each other. But I had a cast on my arm which was covered in scribbles and Tory had a paper chain bracelet on the same arm.

“It’s not working out,” my foster mother, Mrs Fairchild, spoke to a woman across the desk, her voice hushed. “They’re impossible.”

This memory seemed more vivid now, like I’d locked it away, buried it so deep that I’d almost forgotten it had happened. The young me and my sister looked up, hearing what she was saying.

“Tory breaks every toy or game I give her and Darcy always has scrapes and bruises like she’s trying to hurt herself. They snuck out of my garden into the neighbour’s last week and climbed into her son’s treehouse. It’s a miracle Darcy didn’t kill herself when she fell. I just don’t have the nerves for it anymore.”

“Perhaps you could try-“ the administrator started.

“I’m done trying,” she said, standing and moving to place a kiss on each of our heads before walking out the door.

I felt the crack in my heart Mrs Fairchild had caused all those years ago, breaking me apart again for a moment. The confusion, the feeling of Tory’s hand curling around mine, the uncertainty of where we’d go next.

The vision shifted once more and I had the awful feeling the stars were about to drag me through every painful moment of my life. But the next thing I witnessed was a blur of Tory and I standing before ten different schools, each day marking the first at each one. We were older in every vision. But as they progressed, I noticed we looked stronger as time went on, our eyes hardening, our posture straightening. The stars weren’t trying to hurt me, I realised. They were showing me how we’d been made. How after each rejection and hurt, we’d lifted our chins a little higher, built our armour a little thicker.

A clamour of noise filled the air. All of the insults I’d ever received in my life that had stuck with me. Given to me from nameless mean girls at school, teachers, foster parents, friends. The words which had left a scar on my heart.

Clumsy. Unwanted. Weird. Stray. Too quiet. Too broken. Too poor.

The pain of it all built up in my chest like water against a dam. I shied away from it as the darkness swallowed me once more, covering my eyes. 

“Stop it,” I snarled, forcing the visions to recede and the stars listened.

As I opened my eyes I found myself facing Tory. I smiled my relief, moving forward to touch her but the image of her rippled and changed, morphing into Seth instead.

I shrank back, but his expression was softer than in real life, warmer.

The stars whispered to me again, sending a little tremor through me. “Adversaries surround you, Gemini. But do you know which ones are your true enemies?”

Seth became Max, then Caleb then Darius. Each time the vision changed, their expressions became more frightening, the promise of pain in their eyes. Darius shifted into Sofia, then Diego, Geraldine, Tyler, Kylie, Nova, Angelica, Washer, Marguerite, a hundred faces I knew from the corridors of Zodiac, each looking angrier than the last, their eyes full of hate. The Councillors appeared next, ending with Lionel who looked like the devil himself, his eyes two chasms of hellfire. His face became Orion’s and my throat tightened as a cold wave of hate emanated from him.

“Darkness breeds darkness,” the stars whispered as I continued to gaze at him, a thick shadow seeming to cling to his form. “What does a Fae do when their back is against the wall, Gemini?”

My tongue grew heavy as I mulled over the answer to that question. “They fight,” I breathed.

“And what does a Fae do with their heart?”

I swallowed as Orion moved forward, reaching toward me almost lovingly, but then a dagger appeared in his hand. The same one he’d had in the cave the other day. He took my arm, holding it above my wrist and I winced, trying to pull free of him.

“They guard it,” I answered, dragging my hand away from him and his form disintegrated like grains of sand on the wind, leaving me in total darkness once more.

“And what will a Fae do to claim their rightful place in Solaria?”

The answer slid onto my tongue as easily as breathing. It was instinct. Something I’d known about Fae this whole time, but had failed to truly acknowledge. It was why the Heirs hurt us, why Orion helped them, why Lionel controlled them all.

“Anything.”

The darkness drew back like a tide and the night sky shone down on me once again. A glittering number twenty shone above my head and I blinked heavily as I shook off the oppressive feel of the darkness which had claimed me.

I turned to Tory beside me, her eyes wide as she gazed up at the blazing number twenty above her head too. All around us, more and more numbers appeared above the students circling the field, but none as high as ours.

Beside me, Sofia had a glittering fifteen and I quickly looked to Diego, quietly relieved to find he’d just passed with a twelve. Kylie had a bright eighteen and Tyler had the same. 

A horrified wail caught my ear and I spotted a girl falling to her knees as she started crying, her number eleven meaning she had lost her place at Zodiac. Nearly thirty hadn’t passed and a mixture of tears and anger clamoured around us as everyone broke the circle.

Nova called out, “The Reckoning is over! Those of you who scored less than twelve, you are dismissed.” She gestured to The Wailing Wood. “Please pack your things and head home before midday.

Sadness filled me as I watched the dejected students heading over to their families at the edge of the field, falling into the arms of their parents. Sofia squealed at us before running across the field to hug her family and the rest of the crowd did the same.

I turned to Tory and smiled, tears welling in my eyes. “Did you see the fire?”

She nodded, blinking back her own tears. “I saw everything. And I think I get why we had to go through it all now.”

I pulled her into a hug as a tear rolled down my cheek. “Me too.”

“Did you see the Fae after our house burned down?” she whispered into my ear and I nodded against her shoulder.

“What do you think it means?”

She remained silent a moment. “I don’t know. But I get the feeling it’s nothing good.”

“Congratulations,” Max’s dark voice made me pull away from Tory and I found the four Heirs lined up in front of us. Fear juddered through me, but I wasn’t going to let them ruin this moment for us.

“Thanks,” Tory said. “Are you here to give us warm hugs?”

Darius tsked. “We’re here to give you a message.”

I ground my teeth, staring back at him. “Why do I get the feeling I’ve heard this message before?”

Max stepped forward, an aura of calm emanating from him that my heartbeat slow a fraction. “We don’t intend on letting you graduate, little Vegas.”

Seth sneered, brushing his hand over Max’s arm. “It’s going to hurt.”

“You might wanna get out now while you still can,” Caleb said and Tory pursed her lips at him.

“You’ve proved you’re Fae. We don’t intend on underestimating that fact,” Darius snarled. “So enjoy the Lunar Eclipse tonight. It will be the last night of peace between us. But every night after that…when you lay your pretty little heads down on your pillows, I want you to remember we’re coming for you. In the dead of night, at the break of dawn or the fall of dusk. You won’t know when and you won’t know how, but what you will know is that we’re coming. For. You.”

 He turned and walked away and one by one the other Heirs followed, leaving me shaking from head to toe.

Words echoed in my mind, branded on me from the voices of the stars.

What will a Fae do to claim their rightful place in Solaria?

Anything.