Zodiac Academy 7: Heartless Sky

I lay with Roxy in my arms, her dark hair spilling across my chest and her breathing heavy. There was a smile playing around her lips and every now and then she released a breathy kind of sigh.

I’d hardly slept myself. In fact, at this point I was using so many alertness spells and drinking so many wakeful potions which I’d convinced one of the rebels to brew for me that I barely slept at all. I just didn’t want to waste a moment of the time I had on sleep.

Eight weeks had already passed, and I felt like I’d barely stolen a fraction of the future I wished I could claim with her. I’d let that time slip by like grains of sand running through an hourglass and I knew I really needed to start making preparations for what would have to happen after my bargain with the stars ran out.

I’d already been spending any spare time I had with Xavier, helping him hone his magic so that he would be ready to step into my position on the Council once my time ran out, though he just thought I wanted to help him get stronger for the war.

The ache in my chest over the reality of my fate wasn’t even about all the things I would lose and wouldn’t have the chance to experience. It was about this girl who owned my heart and the future she wouldn’t get to live out with me. About my brother and the Heirs and Lance and the pain my loss would cause them. That was where the guilt stemmed. Yet still I hadn’t spoken a word of the deal I’d made with any of them. 

Perhaps at heart I was a coward. But that wasn’t why I was hiding this truth from them. I needed them to focus on the chances we would get to strike at my father and those who followed him. And I knew if this came to light, they’d all want to work on finding a way to twist my fate just as they had when they were determined to see our Star Crossed bond fall.

But this wasn’t like that. I’d struck this deal of my own free will. I’d given my life for hers and her sister’s because I knew that they were far more deserving of life than I was anyway. I may have hated my father and was working against him with all I had, but at heart I was always going to be the creature he’d created. But this girl in my arms was so much more than that. Worth so much more than me.

Roxy shifted a little, rolling onto her back and biting that full bottom lip of hers as a soft moan escaped her again and my cock hardened at the sound. She was as insatiable as I was and this freedom we’d claimed to own each other in the way we chose had torn down any final barriers that had been there between us.

Every night we fucked like animals then fell into each other’s arms panting and grinning and telling each other stories about every little thing we could think of. I wanted to know all there was to know about her and the places she’d grown up in, the bond between her and her sister and everything she’d been through, and she was just as interested in getting to know me. Neither of us held back, we didn’t shield the ugly truth of the things we’d survived and there was a freedom and a beauty in that. For so long, my secrets hadn’t even been mine to share. My father had locked them away inside me with his Dark Coercion so that I couldn’t tell a soul even if I’d wanted to.

Roxy never looked at me with pity when I recounted the times he’d beaten me or the cruel lessons he’d forced me to learn. Instead, her eyes would flare with this unending hatred for my father and a lust for his death that made my heart thrash with the knowledge that she cared for me so deeply.

And when she explained about the way she’d lived, how she’d learned to steal to ensure the survival of her and her sister, I didn’t show her any pity either. Only pride in the strength and fortitude she’d found to survive and rise up through the shitty fate they’d been dealt to become the powerful woman she was now.

She hardly even had any nightmares these days, seeming to have finally found peace in her sleep as she lay curled in my arms and only seeking Max out for help for a few moments here and there. I knew there was no instant fix to the scars my father had left on her memories, but she had so much good in her life now that it seemed like she was able to at least live in that feeling now, no longer plagued by the things she’d endured. They’d just made her harder, stronger and more like the Fae queen she’d been born to be.

Roxy moaned again, a single phrase spilling from her lips which made it more than clear what she was dreaming about and brought a cocky grin to my lips.

“More, Darius.”

And I wasn’t going to deny my girl when she asked so nicely.

I pressed a kiss to her neck which had goosebumps erupting across her skin and her spine arching against the bed, her firm nipples making me groan as I moved my mouth lower in need of them.

I ran my hand down her bare side, finding the tattoo she’d gotten to link herself to me and caressing the skin there before sucking her nipple into my mouth and making her moan a little louder. 

I swear her skin tasted like fucking cotton candy, so sweet and intoxicating I could never get enough of it. She began to writhe beneath me, but as I glanced up I found her eyes still closed while she continued to dance the line of sleep and wakefulness. And to be fair to her, I’d worked really hard at exhausting her last night so she could probably do with the sleep more than she needed another orgasm. A good man might have left her to rest. But I was never going to pretend I was a good man when it came to her.

I shifted to kneel between her legs, pushing her thighs wide and looking down at her body with so much lust and need pulsing through me that I knew even if I had an entire lifetime of loving her, it would never be enough. But I didn’t have a lifetime. I had ten more months. So I would have to fit as much love and lust and pleasure into that time as I could while aiming to wipe my father from this world and leaving it safe for her to live in after I was gone.

I wondered if she would find someone else after me, my gaze running to the priceless ruby pendant she wore around her neck and a possessive snarl building in my body at the mere thought of anyone else ever touching her again.

Perhaps I should have wanted her to find love when I was gone. But I wasn’t a man built to be selfless and the mere thought of it sent a wild kind of fury burning through my limbs alongside a hungry desire to spend this year claiming her so thoroughly that I knew no other man would ever be able to live up to the memory of me.

Selfish? Yeah. But fuck it. She was mine.

I dropped down between her thighs, that unfair anger still burning hot through my flesh as I pushed her legs wide and ran my tongue straight up the centre of her wet pussy, a hungry growl erupting from me at the taste of her as I found her so turned on already.

I sucked her clit into my mouth and Roxy gasped as she woke fully, a curse leaving her lips as I sucked hard before going back to licking her with the hunger of a starving man. 

I was furious at the mere thought of someone else even thinking about touching her and the beast in me was rising to the surface of my skin demanding I claim her fully and remind her of who she belonged to now.

Roxy moaned loudly, bucking her hips against me as I licked and sucked at her, fucking my face while she ran her hands over her tits and teased her nipples to gain even more pleasure.

I growled against her sweet pussy, driving two fingers into her as she moaned for me and making her come with just a few thrusts of my hand. 

Her spine arched and she cried out beautifully as her wet pussy clamped tight around my fingers and I continued to lick her clit until she stopped pulsing around me, making her pleasure linger for as long as I could.

The moment she dropped back against the mattress, I caught hold of her hips and flipped her over, claiming this moment of weakness while her body was spent to dominate her before she fought me for control again.

I gripped her round ass in my hands, squeezing her flesh and groaning as I drove my cock into that slick pussy of hers, keeping her flattened against the bed as I did so and growling her name as I felt the perfect tightness of her surrounding my shaft.

I fucked her hard, forcing her body down beneath mine as her cries of pleasure filled the room and the bed slammed into the wall so hard that I could hear the wood creaking in protest.

I pressed my chest to her back, kissing and biting her neck as her hands fisted in the sheets and she cursed me out between the thrusts of my hips.

“Mine,” I snarled in her ear as she fought to push back against me, the curve of her ass feeling so good as I drove into her that I couldn’t help but push a hand between us and press my fingers against her other opening.

“Jesus,” she gasped which I’d long since figured out meant ‘hell yes’ in her language and I grinned as I pushed my fingers into her ass and fucked her pussy even harder with my solid cock.

Roxy came hard and fast, her body taking hold of mine and forcing a roar of pleasure from my lips as I spilled myself deep inside her and bit down on her shoulder in a dominating move that was born of the beast in me. I couldn’t fucking stop myself when I was around her, she made my animal rise up and pay attention, and it needed to maintain its hold over her just as desperately as I did.

I pulled out of her and fell onto the bed beside her, dragging her into my arms and grinning as she tried to scowl at me.

“Asshole,” she muttered, reaching out to run her fingers along my jaw and making my smile widen, which was bound to only incite her more.

“I can’t help it,” I protested, knowing she was objecting to the dominating thing, but I’d also figured out that as much as she protested to me doing that to her, she also came so much harder whenever I did. Roxy may not have been submissive by nature but she sure as hell liked it when I managed to force her beneath me while we fucked. 

“You’ll pay for that,” she said, her lips twitching with amusement which I knew meant she was already thinking up how best to turn the tables on me next time. She’d managed to distract me enough to tie me up with her earth magic more than once now so that she could take charge and ride me instead of me pushing her down beneath me, but I couldn’t say I had any real objections to that kind of punishment.

“I get possessive sometimes.” I shrugged, gripping her ass in one hand and tugging her closer so that I could kiss those full lips and taste her some more. 

“What was it this time?’ she teased. “Did you see me smiling at some other guy again?”

I scoffed like that was ridiculous even though I had kinda gone all Alpha on her and dragged her into a side tunnel to fuck her against a wall after I’d seen her laughing with that rebel asshole with the dimples last week. But that wasn’t the point.

“Dragons are all about treasure,” I explained and she tilted her head to the side as she looked at me, her dark hair falling to brush against my arm and revealing the teeth marks I’d left on her shoulder when I’d gone full animal and bitten her.

“Yeah, I noticed the huge chest of it taking up half of our room,” she teased. “Not to mention the fact that I wake up with gold coins stuck to my ass every other day.” She reached over and plucked a coin from the mattress behind me to prove my point and I smirked at her.

“The most important thing to my kind is finding the most valuable treasure you can imagine and then hoarding it away to protect and keep safe away from any and every threat to it. And you, Roxanya Vega, are more important to me than all the gold and jewels in the entire world combined. I’d go without them for the rest of my days if it meant I got to steal a moment in your arms with you looking at me the way you are right now. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe and to make sure you stay mine. I want to possess you with all the greed and wrath of the monster in me and I want to own you with the desire of a thousand Dragons guarding a priceless treasure, but more than all of that, I just want to love you like this. Endlessly and brutally and possessively. Now that you’re mine, I won’t give you up for anything.”

“Not even the throne?” she teased, the one remaining point of tension between us raising its head while I shook mine.

“You’ll make a stunning Councillor’s wife,” I teased and she punched me in the pec hard enough to bruise. “Ow,” I complained as she gave me a look that warned the next one would be harder.

“You’ll make a gorgeous king consort,” she tossed back. “You know, pretty, good in the sack…silent.”

A laugh burst from my lips and I dove at her, wrestling her down beneath me as she fought like an alley cat, a squeal of laughter leaving her even as she tried to kick me in the damn balls.

But before we could fall any further into the trap of each other’s arms, a terrified scream echoed through the tunnel outside our room and we both fell still.

“Darcy,” Roxy gasped even though it hadn’t sounded at all like her sister screaming.

But after Cal and Seth had discovered those dead guards weeks ago, we’d all been worried about the people we loved down here.

I rolled off of her, tossing her a pair of jeans and a black sweater before pulling a grey tracksuit on and grabbing some sneakers.

We were out the door and hurrying along in a tide of bodies within moments and Roxy called out in relief as we spotted her sister’s blue hair in the group ahead of us. Lance was with her and he caught her arm, tugging her to a halt so that we could catch up to them.

Roxy hurried forward and grabbed Darcy’s hand, the two of them exchanging relieved looks and muttered reassurances as I moved to stand beside them.

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking to Lance as he strained his ears to listen for some more information.

“I think another body has been found,” he said in a dark tone, meeting my eye with the same fear in his gaze as I felt in my soul. 

If someone was somehow striking at the rebels down here, then it was more than clear to both of us who their real targets would be and the girls standing between us were it. But we’d made vows upon the stars when we’d entered The Burrows and anyone who came here had to swear they meant them no harm. So maybe we were wrong, but something in my gut told me we weren’t. I just didn’t know how they were pulling it off without Hamish feeling the vows break.

Dragon fire flickered through me at the thought of anyone trying to hurt the twins and I placed an arm around Roxy’s shoulders, tugging her close to my side as I narrowed my eyes at the people swarming past us.

“We should go see who it was,” Darcy said urgently, taking Roxy’s hand and tugging her into a jog as she slipped out of my grip instantly.

“Tory too, huh?” Lance muttered as we fell into step, hurrying to keep up with them as we strode down the huge tunnel. The earth Elementals had been hard at work here too and the walls were all lined with grey stone now, a decorative, vaulted ceiling making the tunnels feel less oppressive and plenty of water and fire features decorating the walls. “Darcy refuses to let me protect her as much as I want to.”

“That’s because they’re stubborn as all hell,” I grumbled, smirking as Roxy heard me and flipped me off over her shoulder.

‘Yeah. Remind me why we’re with them again,” Lance teased but as the two of us continued to jog along behind them like a pair of whipped little guard dogs while blatantly checking them out, the answer to that question seemed kind of pointless.

We made it to the dining cavern before finding a huge crowd bottlenecked at the entrance to the tunnel which led down to the communal bathhouses.

“Make way for the true queens!” Geraldine bellowed, a doggish bark following her demand which had the rest of the rebels leaping to attention and backing out of the tunnel to let the Vegas pass.

We kept close behind them and I tensed briefly as another Vampire shot up behind us, relaxing as I recognised Cal when he fell into step beside me and let Seth drop down from his back.

“Have you seen Max, Xavier and my mom this morning?” I asked them anxiously, glancing around to look for the people I loved in hopes of spotting one of them.

“Yeah, I had to borrow some toothpaste from Max earlier and Xavier was in the room with him,” Caleb said, his gaze fixed on the tunnel ahead of us as we walked down it at a fast pace.

“And I saw your mom a few minutes ago making food with Hamish in the kitchens,” Seth added. “She called me a naughty pup and chased me out of the room when I tried to steal some cookies. They let the Vegas have anything they want though, so my only snack avenue is through them. At least Tory likes to leave them out for me to find.”

He looked a little salty about the situation and I snorted in amusement. I’d never realised my mom had an interest in cooking, but she’d been throwing herself into it wholeheartedly since we’d been here, helping to make all of the meals for the rebels while Hamish hung around her, murmuring sweet praises and stealing kisses from her whenever he thought no one was paying attention.

I wanted to protest against the idea of my mom hooking up with a damn Grus, but she just looked so fucking happy whenever I saw her with him that it was impossible for me to make any kind of issue about them being together. She deserved something good and someone to really care for her like that after spending years shackled to my father.

Lance exchanged a relieved look with me at the knowledge that the people closest to us were okay just before we turned the corner into one of the men’s bathhouses and the stench of death hit us hard.

There were lumps of flesh and gore strewn all over the place, pieces of a destroyed body splattered up the walls and a severed head with terror filling his dead eyes lay floating in the middle of the central pool.

“Oh, for the love of the bulbous and everlasting moon!” Geraldine cried. 

“What the hell could have done that?” Darcy muttered, her nose wrinkling in disgust as she looked at the remains of the body.

“Plenty of Fae could do that in their Order form,” Seth piped up. “Like Dragons or Manticores, or Lions or Bears or Wolves or-”

“A Vampire could do it easily,” Caleb added and Seth nodded thoughtfully. “Can anyone see tooth marks? Or claw marks? Someone pass me that arm.”

“I’m not touching some gross severed arm, dude,” Roxy replied with a shudder.

“No one touch anything!” Geraldine cried. “We must conduct a full investigation.”

“Oh my god, I think I know who it is,” Darcy breathed, stepping closer to the pool of water as she peered in at the floating head which was slowly circling in the current of the water. “Isn’t that the guard who was on duty outside when we went to Wasted Mountain, Lance? Barney Von something?”

“Oh yeah,” he agreed as he moved closer to get a look. “That guy was a dick.”

Geraldine gasped as she whirled towards him in outrage, but before she could say anything in protest to describing the dead guy as a dick, one of the rebels wailed in recognition. 

“Noooo, not Barney Von Bonderville!” The girl rushed forward and started sobbing, and I exchanged a look with the others before we all wordlessly retreated, heading out into the tunnel and hurrying away.

We made our way to the dining hall and I looked up at the vaulted ceiling which had piercing golden stalactites decorating it, the glint of all that gold always tugging on the attention my inner Dragon in the way The Orb once had.

A waterfall tumbled down the back of the cavern into a gleaming pool where a stone seating area was built and symbols of the star signs decorated the wall around it, lit up in gleaming blue Faelights. The pool was full of auras that people had tossed in, making wishes on the stars to win us favour in the war, and I’d seen a few precious crystals in there too which had caught my eye. It was tempting to scoop some of the coins out too, but I guessed it would be a dick move to steal people’s wishes.

The tables were made of stone, most of them circular except the large rectangular one in the middle built for the ‘true queens’ and their entourage. There was a statue of a Phoenix bird beyond it, its wings outstretched and its beak open as if it were releasing a cry, a fire burning at its base and even more coin offerings had been tossed into those flames.

The floor glittered with constellations, marked out across the stone with gleaming jewels and to the right of the room, the wall was painted with an intricate map of Solaria that some of the more artistic Fae were still working on, every corner of our kingdom accounted for from the Polar Capital right down to the Neptian Sea.

The cavern was alive with hushed whispers and suspicious gazes as everyone in the room looked between each other, wondering if the person beside them might just be a killer and I gritted my jaw against the tension. As if we needed something else to worry about while we were trying to prepare to take my father on. Every day there were new laws and announcements which put more and more Fae at risk, and the rebels had been working tirelessly to relocate Tiberian Rats, Sphinxes and Minotaurs as his Nymphs closed in on them.

The Burrows were being expanded daily to house all the new refugees, meaning Seth, Caleb, Geraldine and the twins were spending a lot of their time wielding their earth magic to create a deeper and deeper labyrinth down here to house all of them. 

Eugene Dipper had taken full command of the Tiberian Rats and their quarters had been made up of tiny tunnels which no one aside from them could enter in their shifted forms, insisting none of them minded shifting for sleep so that they could take up less space. The only problem was that the Rats required a lot of nesting material and for some unknown reason they had a strong preference for underwear which meant it was going missing from the laundry caverns every damn time any of it was sent to be washed.

The others moved towards the centre of the cavern and I started after them, but a hand grasped my elbow before I could take more than a few steps and I turned to find Gabriel Nox holding my arm and scowling at me. He was shirtless with his wings on display as usual and I arched an eyebrow at him, letting him know I wasn’t all that pleased to be stopped by him.

“We need to have a word,” he said firmly before turning and grinning in Roxy’s direction just before she twisted around to look back for me. He gave her a friendly little wave, making her smile brightly in return like she thought the two of us were doing some cute brother and boyfriend bonding thing or some shit before she turned away again, and he turned a glare on me once more.

“Did you just bullshit my girl?” I asked him and he leaned closer to me, still giving me a death glare.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be throwing stones from your glass house, Darius,” he hissed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“You tell me – you’re the one who doesn’t seem to have a future past Christmas Day.”

My heart lurched and I gritted my jaw, glancing over towards Caleb and Lance to make sure they hadn’t heard him with their Vampire gifts while wondering if there was any way this asshole really had any idea about the deal I’d made with the stars, or if he was just fishing. I could admit that I’d been avoiding him as much as possible since we’d made it back to the group here too, not wanting him to look into my future, but I guessed it was so entwined with Roxy’s now that it was impossible for him to miss it. Either way, I didn’t want any of the others listening in on this, so I cast a silencing bubble around us and jerked my chin towards an empty passage to our right before ducking into it.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I growled, closing in on him and trying to make him back off with the threat in my posture, but he only looked me in the eyes and sneered.

“I think we both know I do. So tell me, asshole, what deal did you make with the stars to break the bonds placed on you and my sister?” he demanded like he had a right to know my business.

I wanted to punch him in his stupid face. I never had liked this prick. He was always giggling with Lance over their little private jokes or acting so self-assured because he had the damn Sight. Though I had to admit that he’d saved my ass when it came to Mildred, and if he hadn’t taken me to that star damned cave then Roxy and Darcy could well be dead right now.

I turned away from him, stalking a few paces into the dark as I swiped a hand down my face and tried to banish the anger born of my Dragon and think rationally about this. He had The Sight. And even if we weren’t close, my connection to Roxy clearly meant enough to him to give him a view of my life, and he’d obviously already figured out that my future ended pretty fucking sharpish on Christmas Day in ten months’ time.

The reality of him having seen that hit me like a punch to the gut. Yeah, I’d known it was coming. I wasn’t a fucking idiot. But I’d also been trying to live for the moment, enjoy the love and life I’d only just begun to sample a taste of since my far too recent liberation from my father’s control. It had been eight weeks already, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like a blink of an eye and barely a taste of everything I’d always dreamed I might be able to claim for myself. A year was never going to be enough, but now I could see that it was going to be so brief that it broke me.

I turned back to Gabriel, pain tearing into my chest as I forced myself to face the truth and own up to this.

“They were going to die,” I told him, my voice cracking a little as I remembered the visions I’d been forced to endure. “The stars told me their fates and showed me how that fight would play out if I didn’t act. Either Roxy or her sister or maybe even both of them would have died just like you told me they would if I didn’t make that deal.”

“What deal?” he asked, his posture rigid like he was preparing for a blow that he already knew was coming.

I stared at him for several long seconds, knowing the moment I gave voice to this truth that it would become real. I’d lose control of it. Cast it into reality and be forced to deal with whatever came of it if I did.

The words fell from my lips in a rush which left me aching with grief as they escaped me. Because I may have been terrified to lose Roxy when I’d made that deal, I may have been more than willing to trade my life for hers because of how strongly I felt for her. But I hadn’t yet experienced what truly getting to love her and be loved by her would feel like. And this bliss which I had stolen for us was rushing to an inevitable end that would only cause her more pain. The one thing I’d sworn never to do again.

“I traded my life for theirs. I get one year to prove to her that I can give her the world then the stars will tear it away from her when they call me into their embrace.”

Gabriel’s jaw dropped and I could tell he hadn’t been able to foresee those words leaving my mouth. Hell, I hadn’t even known I was going to tell him until they’d forced their way free. But there it was. The ugly, honest truth of it and now it was cutting him open just as it was carving into me.

“This will destroy her,” he breathed, the pain in his eyes on behalf of the girl I loved enough to crack something inside me.

“I know,” I choked out, feeling the raw brutality of that truth as I spoke it. “I’m weak. I know I should have stayed away from her. I should have spent this year trying to make her fall out of love with me so that it would hurt less when the time came but I…I’m nothing without her, Gabriel. She’s the only girl who ever looked at me and saw the man worth loving within my skin. She didn’t see my position or my power or my wealth. She saw me and she made me become a better man for her. She’s every fantasy I’ve ever had and every dream I ever dared give thought to, but she’s even better than that because she’s real. I can’t give her up. I might as well drive a blade through my heart right now if I have to.”

“Oh fuck,” Gabriel exhaled, his eyes glazing with The Sight as he shook his head slowly like he was trying to deny the fate laid out in front of me, but I knew he couldn’t. The power of the stars had been so immense in that place that I knew there was no denying them in this. I’d made my bargain with them. There was no changing the price. “I’m sorry, Darius…I can’t see any other future for you…”

Gabriel’s face crumpled in pain like he was already seeing the future that left Roxy with, and in that one look I knew that this would do more harm to her than any of the awful things I’d subjected her to in the past. I’d given my life for hers, but I was the one getting off lightly in that trade.

“I had to do it,” I muttered. “I couldn’t let her die.”

Gabriel nodded hopelessly before stepping forward and pulling me into a tight embrace. It was so unexpected that I only froze, unsure what the hell to make of that from a man who had made it so clear he disliked me since the moment we’d first met.

“Please don’t tell the others,” I begged. “I know what they’ll do. They’ll want to focus on changing this fate, on making some other bargain and trying to save me despite it being hopeless. We need to concentrate on killing my father and destroying the Nymphs, not to mention that Shadow bitch he has working with him. They can’t waste this time on me. What if it costs them more lives than mine by stalling?”

Gabriel drew back and frowned at me, but he nodded slowly. “You’re right,” he said, clearly seeing that future too. “They’ll turn their focus onto saving you over destroying him, and…”

“And there’s no hope for me regardless, is there?” I demanded, almost wishing he’d tell me I was wrong, though I already knew he wouldn’t.

“I’m sorry, Darius,” he replied, shaking his head. “I promise I will keep looking into your future to see if any way presents itself, but…”

“Yeah,” I said bitterly, trying not to think of all the things I ached to live for beyond that ultimatum. It didn’t matter now anyway. I had to concentrate on what I could do with the time I had.

“What does this mean about your intentions for the throne?” Gabriel asked me and I released a long breath.

“I don’t know anymore. I was born to rule but now I’m fated to die. But my opinion still stands true that the Vegas don’t know enough about running this kingdom to just claim the throne and do it. They know little to nothing of the way our political system is run, and they may be powerful but they aren’t knowledgeable in all the things they would need to be so they could rule successfully. All I ever wanted was for our kingdom to be run better than it has been in the past. And I’m yet to be convinced that two mortal-raised girls could do a better job of it than my brothers who have been taught the ways of our world since the moment of their birth. We have endless plans for how we would help improve Solaria and the lives of its people. I doubt the Vegas even know where to begin.”

“So you’d have Xavier take your place on the Council?” Gabriel asked, not giving his own opinion on my thoughts on the subject of the throne, though I had to assume he was all for his sisters claiming it. But surely he could see what that future would bring to our kingdom, so maybe he was the right person to ask for advice on it.

“Yes,” I agreed. “In truth, I’ve been spending what time I can with him helping him to strengthen his magical abilities. He was already given the same lessons in politics and ruling that I had as a child, and he is a better man than I am anyway.”

Gabriel nodded. “I can see that future as a possibility. The kingdom run by the other Heirs and your younger brother. But it is one of many futures open to us at the moment and the way to almost all of them are paved in death. The most likely path right now is that your father will wipe all of us out given time and his brutal reign will continue.”

“It won’t,” I snarled furiously. “If there is one thing I am determined to achieve before my death then it is to see that bastard’s head torn from his traitorous body.”

Gabriel opened his mouth to respond but he fell deadly still instead, his eyes darting back and forth as he saw something which was beyond my comprehension and the stars fed him some vision.

“We have to go,” he gasped as he came to again and the fear in his voice made my heart race.

“What is it? Has he found us? Are we under attack?” I demanded.

“Not here. Not us. He’s claiming that the Pegasus herd your brother was a part of are linked to the rebels and has ordered a cull-”

“A what?” I barked, fire flaring through my limbs as my Dragon reared its head in anticipation of a fight.

“You need to find your brother. You and Xavier alone. If you leave now, you have a chance to beat him to the academy – but Darius, every second you waste could mean another life lost. You must hurry.”

“Where is he?” I asked, knowing I had to trust him on this or face the cost in blood which he had already foreseen.

“He’s with your mom and Hamish outside the kitchens. It’s hard for me to see much of what will happen at the academy, but I know that if you can save the Pegasus herd and get Lance’s dark magic equipment our future looks brighter.”

“Got it,” I said, shoving past him, his final words chasing after me as I broke into a sprint.

“Run, Darius! Fate is shifting with every passing second!”