Zodiac Academy 7: Heartless Sky

Darcy chased me out into the long grass far beyond the clash of the battle and I sheathed my sword when I was far enough away to protect the fleeing rebels, turning to face her, my heart clutched in the grip of the stars who watched from above, my fate about to be decided as I let her come to me.

I’d had to get her away from Geraldine, and I prayed she would be alright, but at least she stood a chance now that Darcy had followed me here.

I took a breath, planting my feet and knowing I may well be granted my own death in this action. But better that than see the woman I love fall into the darkness of that Shadow Beast for good.

As she set me in her sights, her black eyes barely glinting with the rings of our bond, she snarled and ran faster towards me. I was running out of time. And I knew my next action was a gamble that held my life within the roll of the dice I was about to throw.

“I’m not going anywhere, Blue,” I said beneath my breath.

I cast an illusion at my back, painting out a thousand memories of us together, the reflection of our love rippling through the air. Our first kiss beneath the Acrux pool, the night she’d come to me with blue hair, the day the FIB had taken me away, the good, the bad and everything in between, right up to our mating, when we’d claimed each other under the watchful eyes of the stars. I bled for her here and now, offering every piece of beauty between us and every painful moment that was stitched into the fabric of my heart. We were made of these memories. It was our story, our beginning, but this was not our end.

I shifted the illusion, showing her a life not yet lived. The hopes I had for us, the things I had fought this battle for. She was the dream I had never seen coming, the purpose I’d been searching for. I didn’t want the dreams of the boy I’d lost the day Lionel had bonded me to Darius anymore, I wanted these new dreams that were born from her. I had been dipped in darkness, painted in sin and hardened into something cold and unlovable. And yet she had found some way to love me and I was liberated because of it, rising from that inky blackness I had known for so long, and laid in the sun. But now she, my light, was draped in darkness and I would not abandon her for anything in this world.

So I showed her the life I wanted for us, I showed her the children I prayed we’d have and the laughs and smiles I swore I’d offer her. I showed her peace and love and countless days where no suffering lived and all that existed was joy. And I pledged that future to her this very moment. My life was an offering she could eradicate tonight, or else she could find a way back to me, and accept all I had to give while I still had breath in my lungs and beats left in my heart.

“I am yours. And this life can be ours,” I called out to her. “You are mine and Lavinia will not take you from me!”

Darcy slowed before me, her eyes falling on those memories behind me as I stood in front of her with no shield, nothing but my hands raised before me in a gesture of surrender.

“Please see me,” I rasped, terror lacing the words as she stalked toward me, wet with blood and towering above me so I was cast in her shadow.

I knew I would die here if she was lost. Because there was no place for me in this world without her.

“Blue, come back to me,” I begged.

She lowered her face to mine and I was sure I was dead as I gazed up at her, my magic nearly entirely tapped out. And I would not wield my blade against her.

She shifted so fast, I inhaled sharply, finding her standing before me in the snow, naked and shivering, her hair no longer blue but deepest black, moving about her shoulders in the way Lavinia’s moved. She was bloody and bruised, her legs and arms covered in deep wounds, and my chest ached at seeing her like that.

She raised her hands to inspect them, turning them over as if she didn’t know herself and the fear I felt over that nearly destroyed me. But when she looked up, my girl was there.

“Lance?” she breathed, her hands beginning to tremble and I rushed forward in relief, crushing her against me and offering her the last of my magic to heal her, the well of power in my chest hollowing out.

She shoved me away suddenly, shaking her head and running a hand over her face as she looked back at the battle. “What have I done? Oh my god, Geraldine…”

“It wasn’t you,” I swore, stepping toward her once more, needing to make sure she was alright.

“It was,” she said in horror, tears spilling out of her eyes.

I stepped closer to see the silver rings in them, and watched as they flickered, there one moment and gone the next. They blinked out like dying stars and my heart forgot to beat. 

Fear pressed down on me, but I wouldn’t break. I would be here for her through anything. Rings or no rings, it didn’t matter to me. She was my mate regardless.

She gasped as though she felt it, her hand going to her chest. “I’m mortal,” she croaked.

“No,” I refused, capturing her hand and pulling her close as terror wound its way around my throat like a noose. “Look at me,” I begged, but she wouldn’t, her eyes on the blood staining her trembling fingers until I gripped her chin, forcing her to look up at me. “I’ll fix this,” I promised with all the grit I could muster.

“It’s too late,” she said in fear then pushed me again to get some space between us. “You have to get away. I can feel it coming back.”

“I’m not leaving you,” I snarled. “This curse doesn’t get to break us.”

“I can’t stay here,” she half sobbed. “I have to get away from you all.”

“Blue, please. You can fight this. Just look at me. You can stop it from taking over again, I know you can.”

But she shook her head, more tears flowing down her cheeks, carving tracks through the blood and ash staining her face and a growl of pain left me as I stepped forward and she stepped back.

“Please,” she whispered, holding up her hand to ward me off. “Please stay away, I don’t want to hurt you. Oh god…oh god, what have I done? All those people…” She fisted her hands in her hair, a noise of anguish leaving her and I shot forward, not caring what she asked of me, I wasn’t going to leave her alone. She needed me more than she ever had in her life.

I held her against me as she came apart, sobbing against my chest and clinging onto me as I wrapped her in my arms and tried to figure out what to do.

“We’ll run. We’ll go somewhere far away together, okay?” I offered, but she drew back, taking in a shuddering breath as she stopped herself from crying.

“No,” she said, the ring of a queen in her voice. “I have to go alone. If I hurt you, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Blue,” I growled, as her green eyes filled with so much darkness, they almost seemed black. “Please.” I grabbed her hand, trying to hold onto her as she continued to back up and the shadows seemed to thicken around her.

“I have to go,” she said.

“I’m not saying goodbye to you and you’re not going anywhere,” I demanded. “You’ll have to summon the stars themselves to keep me away from you.”

As if in answer to my words, a meteor tore across the sky, a fallen star leaving a trail of glittering fire in its wake as it streaked over our heads towards the mountains and collided with the side of one, sending a tremor rocking out through the earth.

I inhaled in shock. “What now? The sky is falling too?” I looked down at Darcy, finding her backing further and further away from me, an apology in her eyes.

“The monster is waking up,” she said, her voice breaking and I looked down to find she’d bound my legs in shadows with the beast’s power, tethered to the earth itself as I lurched forward and was yanked back by their strength.

“Wait,” I gasped in terror as she turned, shifting into the huge black Shadow Beast and howling mournfully to the night.

“Darcy!” I bellowed, my throat ripping raw. I knew I was going to lose her in the next moment and I couldn’t stand it. “Meet me tomorrow at dawn where the meteor struck!” I cried after her in desperation as she took off in the direction of the mountains, and I wasn’t sure she’d even heard me.

I released a roar of anger, yanking against the shadows again and again, fighting to get free, my heart cleaving in two at the idea of us being torn apart.

I wouldn’t let her go. I would follow her to the edges of the Earth, I’d follow her to the moon if I had to.

I used every ounce of Vampire strength I had left in me to rip the shadows off of my legs then looked to the mountains, my mate already long lost.

“Blue!” I yelled, panic potent within me.

I was about to shoot after her when my gaze moved to Lavinia among the last remnants of the battle.

I shivered as the stars seemed to lean closer, whispering among each other as they watched their playthings put on a show for them. I was so tired of being worn down, so tired of losing everything whenever I believed it was finally mine for good. I’d had to look into my Elysian Mate’s eyes and watch her silver rings fade right in front of me, I’d seen her heart shatter the moment she realised what that beast had made her do and if this broke her, I’d break too.

I felt so exhausted fighting for a life the stars seemed determined to steal from us. Were they ever planning to just let us be? Or would life be one loss after the other?

“Are you happy now?!” I yelled at the stars. “Are we tortured enough for you yet?!”

It took all the strength I had to stay standing, my gaze falling from our shining makers and my thoughts shifting onto Lavinia again, a decision solidifying in my mind. She was the one who’d done this to Darcy. She was the creator of the curse so I would rip the answer to breaking it from her worthless lips.

I took a shuddering breath then shot forward with a surge of speed, tearing back to where the last of the rebels were retreating into The Burrows, knowing what I had to do even if the stars defied me time and again. Because yes, I was tired, but I was not defeated. I would not submit to this fate even when it broke every bone in my body and tried to force my back to bend. I would fight for another destiny, I would build one from the fabric of the sky if I had to.

Before I made it to the shadow bitch who I hated more viscerally than any other creature on this earth, my gaze fell on a body laying at the top of a hill beyond the raging battle, something instinctual within me drawing me towards it and making everything inside me seize up.

No.

The very foundations of my being were rocked as I staggered my way towards him, panic binding my limbs as I fell down at his side and grief choked all air away from me as I touched his face.

“Darius,” I rasped, his skin icily cold and the sun steel knife in his chest so fucking deep there was probably nothing left of his heart at all. His eyes were shut, his features still, but even in death he didn’t look restful.

Pain splintered through my body like a dagger cutting into my flesh again and again.

“I’m so sorry,” I groaned, falling over him and hugging him to my chest, feeling I’d failed him.

I should have been here, I should have stopped this from happening.

I held him while screams still cried out around me as Lavinia worked to hunt down the last of the rebels and I knew death could sweep over me at any moment, but I had to steal this time with my brother, some part of me still praying he could come back. But I knew deep down that his soul was gone. Stolen away beyond the Veil. I could feel the emptiness of his body and it shattered a piece of my heart that belonged solely to him.

“Please wake up,” I begged, unable to bear the weight of this loss. He was more than my best friend, he was one of the only good things I’d had in my life for so many years. We’d fought a hundred fights together and it seemed impossible to lose him now after all we’d been through.

I released a groan of despair as I forced myself to let go of him, laying him back down in the mud.

“I’ll come back,” I promised through a razor sharp lump in my throat. “I’ll give you a proper burial, I swear it.”

I lifted my head, barely able to make myself stand as I set my gaze on Lavinia across the snow upon her tower of shadows, chasing down a group of rebels with her twisted power. My hands shook and the freezing air cut deep into my bones as I drew my sword, casting a final look back at Darius and finding my heart so full of vengeance that I could think of nothing else. For him, for Blue.

My grief turned to the most bitter kind of rage I had ever tasted and suddenly I was moving, running with the speed of my Order towards the witch who had caused us so much pain. Who had bound my mate to her with a curse that had could have destroyed her tonight, who had trapped my sister’s soul within her and made her suffer for so many years.

With an almighty swing of my sword, I sliced through the shadows which held Lavinia aloft and she tumbled toward me with a screech of fright.

But of course, she caught herself before she hit the ground, hovering just a foot above it on a platform of shadow. I charged forward, the weight of grief and anger in my heart so heavy that it nearly drowned me as I aimed to kill her. She gasped as she lurched backwards to avoid the swipe of my blade and I swung it again with a yell of hate, using the speed of my Order to slash and cut, but she moved like the wind to avoid me.

My blade slammed into the flesh of her neck at last and she screamed as her head was nearly severed clean off. But as she rose up on another swirl of shadows to avoid my next strike, her dark power wound around her throat to heal the wound which didn’t ooze even a drop of blood.

This monster was empty, no heart lived within her, no organs there to make her even close to living. She was made of rot and death, and so long as the shadows poured unendingly into her body, maybe she could not be killed. But I’d damn well fucking try.

“You feisty little hellion,” she growled, lowering down before me once more and my fangs snapped out as I dove forward again, determined to make her scream if nothing else.

I tried to drive my sword into her chest with a shout of despair and anger erupting from my lungs, but she flicked her fingers and wrapped me in her dark power, wrenching the sword from my grip as if I was made of nothing but paper. And I guessed that was what I was, just a paper man, ripped and cut apart by the stars. I was forged by them, and they would crumple me in their fist the moment they were done with me. Perhaps Lavinia would be the one to do it for them.

“Well, well, well,” she purred, rising up above me while her shadows coiled around me like a python, binding my arms to my sides. “I wondered when I’d be seeing you again tonight.” She smiled wickedly and I bared my fangs at her, struggling uselessly against her hold.

“Tell me how to break the curse,” I commanded and she smiled, floating closer to me and sliding a finger under my chin to make me look up at her sharply.

“I knew you’d come to me,” she whispered, her skin writhing with blackish veins as she stared deep into my eyes. “Look at those rings,” she hissed. “Pretty, pretty little silver treasures. But mortals cannot be mated to Fae, and when I am tired of playing beast with her, perhaps I shall recall my pet from her body and leave her to waste away as a weak human girl,” she mocked. “Your princess’s rings will be gone forever. Poof. Bye bye.”

“Fuck you,” I spat. “She’s my mate regardless.”

“Is she now?” she laughed. “And have you come to pay the price for your sweet princess, Lance Orion? I bound your blood to the curse after all.”

My throat thickened at those words as I remembered the blood she’d spilled from me that day. So this was it? The answer lay with me? Well all the better.

“I will pay any price for her. Name it, and swear she’ll be free,” I demanded and she considered that, a look in her pitch black eyes that said this was what she’d hoped for all along. And it made my stomach twist that I was playing so easily into her hands, but Darcy had to be free. I would do whatever had to be done to ensure that.

“Why are you doing this to us? Why not just kill us and be done with it?” I snapped.

She shifted closer, all darkness and death clinging to her flesh.

“Because a Vega punished me once a long, long time ago. And it is my turn to repay the favour,” she growled, vengeance sparking in her gaze. “I’ll make them hurt, and squeal and writhe in agony in every way I can think up. And it is so very easy, little hunter. I’ve already turned one of them into a killer, a monster too, now all that’s left is to take away her king like mine was taken from me.”

“So it’s my death you want?” I bit out, and though I felt numb to the idea of death right now, I was not numb to the thought of being parted from Blue because of it.

“Perhaps,” she said through a smirk, sliding her hand down to my heart and I felt her shadows reaching into my body and making it beat painfully hard for her. I was sure I was about to die, the stars pulling on my soul like they were preparing to tear it from my being at any second. “Your blood is the price. Flesh, bone, heart, whichever way you want to offer it. You can cut your heart from your chest and give it to me raw and bloody if you wish.”

My heart thundered as Lavinia released me from the binds of her shadows, offering me back my sword, but using her shadows to guide my hand so I turned the blade’s tip against my own chest. I glared into her eyes, snatching the blade from her grip and pushing it hard against my flesh myself, not wanting the choice to be hers.

Pain flared keenly and I gritted my teeth against it, staring my fate in the eye and not cowering from its cruelty.

Blood spilled from the wound as I gave this offering without a shadow of doubt passing through me. It was easy when I thought of Blue, holding her in my mind’s eye and not letting go as adrenaline burned through my limbs, begging me not to do this, but for her I’d do anything.

I’m sorry, beautiful. I’ll wait for you in the stars.

She was my winged princess, the girl who had saved me from myself and had offered so much sweetness into my life, it was staggering to think I was the same person at all. She had made me into a man I had never thought I could become, and there was nothing I could offer that would repay her for that. But I could do this, because what was my life worth here in this world anyway if Blue was lost?

“Goodness,” Lavinia purred, latching the shadows around my hand to stop me from cutting any deeper. “What a loyal little king. More loyal than my own.”

“Do you want my heart or not?” I snarled and she shifted closer, tracing her thumb along the line of blood that had spilled down my chest, bringing it to her mouth and licking it away.

“Mm,” she sighed. “So sweet, so tempting. But you didn’t listen to me very well. I’ll say it again. You may offer me the price in flesh, blood or bone. Personally…I think I’d like to take it from your flesh.” She leaned down, capturing me in her shadows once more as she sank her teeth into the meat of my shoulder, and I growled in fury as she bit deep enough to draw more blood. Then she lapped at it like a heathen, making me shudder at the caress of her cold tongue.

“I don’t know what you’re asking of me,” I hissed in disgust as she pulled away, licking her lips as a raw, depraved kind of lust filled her eyes.

“You will become willingly mine,” she announced. “Your body will be my playhouse to do whatever I wish with. I may cut it, whip it, burn it, and fuck it if the notion takes me. And you will allow me to do so willingly, no complaints, no fighting back.”

Bile rose in my throat as I glared at her, the weight of that price nearly too much to bear.

“It’s that or death?” I asked, my voice a hollow, empty thing.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “Or I can take the bones from your body one by one, crack, crack, crack, but that’ll probably end in death too.” She laughed lightly like we were having some perfectly normal fucking conversation.

“And if I offer you my body, how long do you want it for?” I growled, knowing death would be preferable to an eternity in this bitch’s company. “When will Darcy be free of the curse?”

“Let’s say…three moon cycles,” she offered. “I can’t say fairer than that. Then when I send you back to your Vega mate, her heart will shatter piece by piece when she learns of what you have given me.”

“You underestimate us,” I said, my tone rising with the strength of our star bond. “We can survive anything.”

She grinned, but it was more evil than anything I’d ever witnessed. “We’ll see about that, Lance Orion. So do we have a deal?” She offered me her hand.

“You have to make a death bond on this,” I insisted, my heart beginning to beat erratically as it slowly accepted what I was agreeing to. “I need your word to be binding beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

She rolled her eyes then ran her palm across my sword, slitting it open and grabbing my hand to do the same. Then she slapped her hand against mine, the icy, wet touch of her blood vile against my skin as our blood rushed together – though I wasn’t sure hers was really blood at all.

“I swear upon the stars to honour the terms of our agreement,” she purred. “Your body will be willingly mine for three moon cycles, and when that time is up, I shall release Darcy Vega from her curse.”

“And you will release me from your captivity,” I snarled and she smiled coyly like she hadn’t been going to mention that.

“And I shall release you, Lance Orion, from my captivity. And if I do not uphold my side of the deal, I shall die.”

“Can you even die?” I snapped.

“All beings can die,” she said bitterly.

Magic hummed between us, confirming her mimicry of blood was enough to make this deal at least. But I knew there was one more part to this, a lump building in my throat as I accepted what I had to do.

“Do you agree?” she asked, victory burning in her eyes.

I hesitated, fear spilling through me at what I was about to be subjected too, but I had to. It was that or let Darcy be consumed by a curse which would tear away her magic for good. It would leave her mortal, not to mention that vile beast which was housed in her flesh and drove her against the people she loved. She was too good, too sweet to deserve that fate. And Solaria needed her more than she needed me right now.

Three moon cycles would pass. And no matter who I was when I came out of it, I would still love her. I would still be hers.

I knew my decision was already solidified, and that I wasn’t going to pull away even though terror was snaking through my body. But I could survive three moon cycles in hell for Darcy Vega. It would be agony in its purest form, but my body was nothing. Blue owned the part of me that mattered. And Lavinia would never be able to touch it. At least this way ensured I could return to my girl, ready to love her with every thump of my beating heart. I just prayed that when I was one day reunited with her, she wouldn’t blame me for this choice, and could find a way to forgive me.

“I agree,” I said firmly and the bond snapped painfully between us, the stars whispering as the magic wound beneath my skin and hers, light flaring around our palms and our blood drying to dust.

She released my hand and I found a red star burned onto the inside of my palm, glowing there for a moment before sinking beneath my skin and disappearing. Lavinia watched as that same mark settled within her own flesh and a smile curled up her lips.

It was done. I was bound, chained and owned by this foul monster.

“Three moon cycles,” she confirmed, reaching out to touch my throat and I felt a collar of shadow winding around it, cinching tight.

“There we are. All mine.” She floated towards me, tugging on a tendril of shadow that connected to the collar like a leash and she jerked me toward her by it, taking out a pouch of stardust from the cloak of shadow around her body. “Let’s go home, pet, I cannot wait to start breaking you in every way a man can be broken.”