Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

The circular table that we had taken to using for these so-called war councils was full of noise, a clamouring train of voices that wouldn’t cease and only seemed to grow louder while my head pounded from the force of it.

Or maybe that was the aftereffects of the venom my sister had tried to kill me with last night.

My side burned with pain where the tigers eye crystal still sat within my skin, no one having noticed it during their efforts to steal me away from my other half and go running from Lionel Acrux yet again.

I didn’t remove it though. Despite the burn it caused, I could feel the power of it pulsing through my veins, imbuing them with strength even as my own body rebelled with an ache for rest.

But there wasn’t going to be any rest for me. Not since I had awoken to find myself back here, my wounds healed with Basilisk anti-venom, countless hours having passed while they mended me and kept me subdued throughout, too afraid of my rage to wake me before it was done.

A pile of food sat before me on the table, untouched and ignored while Geraldine constantly shot me concerned looks over it.

I ignored her too.

I was too furious with all of them to do anything at all other than sit here in silence and take in the facts of everything that had gone so horribly wrong once again.

The only pale light of good that had come from our ordeal was the fact that Xavier had managed to reclaim his wings. Sofia and Tyler were with him now, the best healers the rebels had to offer trying to figure out whether or not they could be reattached, and I hoped to hell and back that they would find a way.

The Heirs and their parents were arguing so loudly that my head was spinning with it, Geraldine’s wails of adamant outrage cutting through the domineering bullshit like a knife as they all fought over the next moves we should make and dissected every problem we now faced.

A huge group of rebel prisoners had died last night, when one of the queens they’d sworn to follow showed up and failed them. Gabriel’s prophecy had turned to hell on earth. I had to assume that either Lionel had managed to rip the warning my brother had sent me on that battlefield from his mind and twisted it against or us, or the stars had all colluded to fuck with our fates once more.

If what Darcy had claimed was true, then the latter was just as likely as the former. Because our bloodline was cursed. And the promise I needed to keep to end that curse was a mystery.

As they all continued to argue back and forth, discussing possible strikes or ways to rally our forces, I knew that none of it was what we needed. This army was decimated and on the run, fast losing any hope they’d been clinging to and now cast adrift with a bunch of squabbling Fae, waiting for us to produce some fucking miracle which none of us could find.

Geraldine was pushing for us to make a strike, something big which would help to not only turn the narrative of this war in our favour, but also draw more rebels to fight for us. We’d been sending groups out to destroy the Nebular Inquisition Centres and release the Fae being held there, but we needed to do something bigger. She had the idea to attack the Court of Solaria, take out Max’s evil stepmother and the newly formed court which Lionel had given to her to preside over, and maybe plot to take out some other important members of his regime too.

It sounded like a solid idea to me, but I just couldn’t focus on the war as a whole right now. My mind was too tangled in my own personal priorities, and I couldn’t summon the energy required to engage in the constant arguments taking place in this room.

Something shifted in my pocket, and I flinched before remembering the Tiberian Rat who Darcy had given me to save. One lone survivor amid the carnage we’d escaped.

I drew him out and placed him on the table alongside the other things they’d given me.

“Darcy wanted us to have these,” I said, shoving to my feet and leaving the items there, the little Rat quivering among them. I knew they were important, but none of them would offer up any of the solutions I needed, and I just didn’t have it in me to sit at that fucking table for one more minute.

I turned and strode for the door, ignoring the calls from behind me as the others protested me leaving, but there was nothing for me within those walls. I needed to do something, not sit around and fucking talk about how much we’d failed again.

I ripped the door open and came face to face with Dante Oscura, his powerful body crackling with lightning as he stood shirtless and bloodstained from battle before me, his eyes darkening as they met mine.

“I don’t see my brother with you,” I growled in a low voice, my back tingling where my wings lay dormant, as if they were hungering to escape the confines of my flesh.

Rosalie snarled low and rough behind him, she and Leon stepping closer to flank him while I stood my ground before them. Just little old me against a pack of hellhounds.

“And I’m failing to see your sister, piccolo regina,” Dante replied darkly, electricity sparking against his skin.

“That’s enough,” Tiberius Rigel boomed from behind me, but I didn’t turn to look his way, my ache for an outlet to this fury pushing me into recklessness.

“I didn’t ask the opinion of a man who stayed home with the children while the rest of us went to war,” I sneered, my eyes still on Dante but my words for the ex-Councillors who seemed so adamant to believe they had a say in this war which they were yet to play any real role in.

“You know full well that you concocted that hair-brained scheme without our knowledge or approval,” Tiberius seethed. “Likely because even in your arrogance, some part of you understood that an army of entitled youngsters playing dress up would never succeed in toppling the Dragon King and-”

I whirled to face Tiberius, but Max had gotten there first, his chest slamming into his father’s as I found the two of them on their feet, facing off against each other.

“The so-called youngsters in this room have fought and bled for this war,” Max snarled. “We’ve seen death and mayhem unlike anything you’ve ever experienced in your cushy office jobs. We’ve fought alongside friend and foe alike and lost more than just those we loved along the way. We’ve sacrificed our souls to this cause, pieces of us fracturing and breaking off with every heinous act we are forced to commit in the name of fighting against Lionel’s tyranny and oppression. Meanwhile, the three of you spent years sitting across tables from him, turning a blind eye to any signs of what he was up to behind closed doors. He didn’t just seize this opportunity when the Shadow Princess crossed over into our realm – he’s been plotting this for years. He was Dark Coercing your fucking king, the man you were all sworn to serve and protect at all costs, and you didn’t even see it. So don’t try to talk down to Roxanya Vega now that she is standing there before you, bloodied and broken from everything that has been stolen from her thanks to all of those failures. You should be on your knees begging her forgiveness.”

Antonia Capella sucked in a sharp breath at the suggestion of them kneeling before me, even if Max hadn’t meant it in the sense of them bowing. I glanced from her to Melinda Altair, expecting the same outrage there but finding something far softer instead, her eyes bright with regret.

“We know we failed all of you when it comes to Lionel,” Melinda said softly, her gaze meeting mine and my heart wrenching painfully as I was forced to endure these words. “We should have seen it sooner, should have…” She shook her head, sighing. “Regrets and what-ifs do us no favours now. But I can assure you that I have spent many nights awake in my bed, pondering more moments than you can comprehend, wondering if I missed the signs, realising when I was manipulated, and hating myself for my failures when it came to that lying piece of shit. At first, I think I gave him too much leeway because I assumed he was grieving the death of his older brother, and my love for Radcliff made me want to…I don’t even know. I suppose I just wanted to believe in the power of the Fire Heir and then Councillor because without him, the balance required to sustain our kingdom would have been lost.”

“Our four families have been matched in power for generations,” Antonia agreed. “Second only to the house of Vega. And after your parents died and we believed you and your sister had been killed with them, we had to focus on ruling, on figuring out how to lead without a monarch to instruct us. And believe me, we made a lot of changes which were better for our people than the iron fist of the Savage King had ever-”

“Except it wasn’t the Savage King who commanded such hatred or committed such atrocities, was it?” I sneered.

“No,” Tiberius said on a breath, his shoulders slumping as the tension between him and his son dulled, and he sank back down into his chair. “And I wish to the heavens and beyond that we’d seen that sooner.”

Caleb drummed his fingers on the table, looking from the shame-faced ex-Councillors to me, arching a brow as if asking ‘what now?’

There was an ache in my chest where Darcy’s rejection had carved a piece from my heart. I may have been able to understand her reasons for staying while I was dragged back here, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. She was my other half, but I wasn’t even certain that I was half a girl at all without her now.

“We need a bigger army,” Seth said in a low voice, his eyes moving to the map lying in the centre of the table, Solaria sprawled out before us, taunting us as if it held all the answers but refused to share them.

“Maybe some weapons too,” Caleb agreed, but as the noise started up again, I turned from the room. Nothing they schemed for in there was going to make any kind of immediate difference, and I was done sitting around tables and fucking talking. I was going to act, and I didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought about it.

Dante and his family were still barring my way out, but I didn’t slow, shoulder-checking the enormous Dragon Shifter and giving myself a dead arm in the process. But I moved him, slipping between him and his cousin while Rosalie bared her teeth at me in warning.

I exited the room, ignoring Geraldine as she tried to call me back and heading up the two flights of stairs to my room.

Footsteps sounded softly at my back, but I ignored them, climbing steadily and leaving the door wide behind me as I moved into the luxurious space.

My clothes were ruined and filthy, my own blood staining them more than any enemy’s, and I stripped out of them without care. I used my water magic to draw the blood from my skin, my clothes, and my sword, directing it into a glass decanter sitting on my desk, then I cleaned myself with a rush of ice-cold water and used air to dry off again.

I grabbed an oversized shirt from the closet and tugged it on, the black material swamping me and making me think of Darius even though the item had never belonged to him. Nothing of his, barring his treasure, remained to me now. That, the ink on my thigh, and the necklace which seemed to pulse with the presence of him from time to time.

I scratched at the throbbing wound where the tigers eye crystal was still embedded in my side as it burned with that dark magic once more, the taint of it sinking into my body and making me shiver.

I had only brought it as a last resort, my studies on the magic it called on making me more than wary of it, but now that I’d been forced to use it and had survived, I had no inclination to draw it out. That thing had helped me cling on to my miserable excuse for a life when fate had tried to steal me away from it, and I wasn’t done wreaking havoc here yet.

The crystal was imbued with a form of necromancy which made me shudder to think on, but it basically laced my skin with the power of a long-dead soul, anchoring me on this side of the Veil. It wasn’t immortality, but it was as close as I could get. There was a cost of course, but childhood memories weren’t things I cherished. Reliving some of the worst things Darcy and I had endured for the benefit of the soul I had coaxed into being my anchor was an acceptable price for this power.

I’d felt it in the dark before waking up in this place, Basilisk antivenom sliding through my veins and healing my wounds. Death had come calling for me in the moments before we’d made it back here, and I would have gone with it had the crystal not secured me to this plane. I’d felt the tug, seen the shimmering light of the Veil and even felt an urge to accept that call. Darius would have been waiting for me there, beyond the shroud of light. He’d have been there, and I could have reunited with him, far from all the rot and ruin and agony of this life I clung to.

But that wasn’t the path I was going to tread. I wasn’t going to let the stars shepherd me to my damnation so easily

“Dante loves Gabriel like a brother too, you know,” Rosalie Oscura said as she padded into my room without any inclination to ask permission, nor give an explanation for how she’d made it past the guards standing at the foot of the stairs. “He would have gladly given his life if that was what it took to rescue him from the clutches of that pezzo di merda, Lionel Acrux.”

“Everyone who fought last night was willing to lose their lives,” I grunted, taking the Book of Ether from the shelf where Geraldine had placed it when tidying, dropping onto my bed with the intention of reading it and finding some answers of my own.

“Well, you’re certainly arrogant enough to be a queen,” Rosalie commented lightly, ignoring my dismissive tone, slinking closer. She prowled like the Wolf she was, dark eyes shimmering with moonlight as the predator in her moved closer to the edges of her skin. I doubted she ever strayed far from the animal in her.

“Did you want anything in particular?” I asked, flicking the pages over one by one, seeking something, anything. I didn’t even know what aside from the fact that I was done waiting here for something to happen.

I’d been hanging on for Darcy, but she’d made her choice and it wasn’t me. It hurt. Hurt so fucking bad I could hardly breathe, but there it was. I wasn’t about to throw myself a pity party over the fact, despite how tempting the idea of that was. So now I was going to be selfish too. The winter solstice was almost upon us, and I was done waiting to fulfil the promise I’d made.

“I don’t suppose you know much about Moon Wolves,” Rosalie said, her Faetalian accent colouring her words as she perused my room, trailing her fingers over Darius’s treasure and making some feral part of me want to bare my teeth at her.

She gave me a knowing grin and released the gold coin she’d picked up before moving to my bookshelf instead.

“I know that you’re a Moon Wolf, if that’s what you’re referring to,” I said, watching her as she plucked the ancient book on earth magic from the shelf and let it fall open to a random page in her hands. “Seth was bitching about it relentlessly the other night after he drank too much of my tequila. He seems to think the moon should have favoured him too.”

Rosalie snorted, her hand raising as she used her earth magic to cast a pale stone moon into her palm, every crater and ridge on its surface looking eerily accurate as she set it spinning in her hand, then cast a levitation spell on it so it drifted towards the ceiling.

“That pup spends too much time thinking about the things he can’t have, when he should be claiming the things he can,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“If he heard you call him a pup, he’d probably challenge you to another fight – I heard the last one was turning nasty,” I said blandly but Rosalie just grinned.

“That was fun. Especially the part when he started crying because he thought he’d killed me.”

I couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped me at the wickedness in her dark eyes, and I found myself more curious about this little visit than I had been. I hadn’t had the opportunity to spend all that much time with Rosalie Oscura before now, but I got the feeling she was precisely my kind of girl, especially when it came to making bad choices for all the best reasons.

“If you hadn’t tricked him, he’d have won, I suppose,” I said, and that steely wildness flashed in her eyes again.

“He’s the only Wolf I’ve ever met who might stand a chance – but I think I’d have a good shot at winning if it really came down to it,” she replied cockily and I eyed the tattoo crawling up the side of her neck, the rose vines echoing her name, yet I got the feeling there was more to them than simply that.

“Why’s that?” I asked curiously.

“Because I fight dirty,” she replied with a feral grin. “And for all his Alpha bullshit, Seth Capella is a clean-cut rich boy when you get to the bones of him. All the Heirs are – even Darius was, beneath that rough, inked exterior of his.”

My heart hurt at his name, but I didn’t let that stop me from thinking of him, refusing to balk from the pain of his memory and risk losing him altogether. “Oh, I know. I gave him shit for it relentlessly.”

“Woman after my own heart,” Rosalie purred, moving to sit beside me on the bed, her knee brushing my thigh as she crossed her legs and placed the book in her lap. “Though I think I’ll stick to the real villains over the broken hero types, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Why fight in the war if you don’t care for heroics?” I asked.

“I’ll never say no to a fight. Besides, my grudge with Lionel Acrux was personal long before he gave me the additional reason to kill him of being a tyrannical stronzo with a small cock complex.”

“Personal how?” I asked curiously and she pursed her lips, seeming like she didn’t want to answer for a moment before deciding she would.

“A few years ago, I tried to steal something from Lionel’s manor with Leon Night and his brother Roary,” she admitted, her jaw tightening as she spoke that last name, her emotions shutting down in a way so similar to my own natural defences that I recognised it instantly. “It…went to shit. The Dragon stronzo discovered us before we could escape. Roary saved me, but by doing so he cast his own fate and he was captured. He’s been in Darkmore Penitentiary ever since.”

“Rosalie,” I breathed, reaching for her sympathetically, knowing how much Darcy had suffered while Orion had been trapped in that place for a few months, let alone a few years. And despite how hard she was trying to hide it, I could tell that this leader of Wolves loved the man who had been taken from her. “Were the two of you together?”

Rosalie snorted dismissively, leaning into my touch then withdrawing again as she shook her head.

“Roary is ten years older than me. He thinks I’m just some dumb pup, so no, we were never…anything. Or at least, I was never anything to him.”

“If I’m ever in a position to free him,” I began, because surely if Darcy and I took the throne we would have the power to release people from prison, but Rosalie shook her head sadly.

“He made a Death bond with Lionel Acrux. One that cannot be broken. The only way he could get around it would be by breaking out,” she said bitterly, flicking a page in her book as if searching for something to do with her hands. “Or if someone breaks him out…”

“Has anyone ever managed that before?” I asked, my brows arching at the thought of all the security they had containing that place.

“No,” Rosalie laughed hollowly. “It’s buried deep beneath the earth and surrounded by all kinds of magical, physical and even living barriers to escape. No one has even come close. To attempt escape from that hell is to welcome death.”

“So why do I feel like you’re planning on breaking him out of there?” I asked, wondering if she was insane and she leaned closer conspiratorially.

“Because maybe I am.”

Before I could reply to that, Rosalie pushed the Book of Earth into my lap on top of the Book of Ether, her finger pressing down on a spell I hadn’t paid much attention to before now.

“Moon Wolves are gifted foresight and intuition not governed by the stars because the moon herself is a celestial being all of her own variety,” Rosalie told me, continuing with what she’d begun talking about at the start of this conversation. “There are many other gifts I am rumoured to have, some of which I’ve proven true or false, others I may yet discover, it’s hard to say. But I can always tell when two souls are destined to be with one another. Or sometimes even more than two.”

“What do you-”

“I have never felt anything like the connection I felt between you and Darius Acrux,” she breathed, shifting closer to me so that all I could see was the beauty of her features, the full lips which seemed designed entirely for seduction and the cunning glint in her brown eyes letting me know that nothing ever got past her. “The power of your love and hatred burned hotter than the sun itself, the constant tug and pull, a war unending and a passion unyielding. You were two stars always set to collide and cast the world on fire because fuck the consequences.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked, my voice weak as the loss of him surrounded me, the memory of that love we’d felt echoing in all the empty places of my soul and making them ache with longing. The ruby necklace I wore seemed to heat at her words too, the echo of his hand slipping through my hair, a memory that was somehow tangible like his ghost was leaning in to listen.

“Because that fire hasn’t gone out yet,” Rosalie breathed, taking a lock of my ebony hair and winding it around her finger until it pulled tight, like she’d known I’d imagined his touch there too. “I feel a chord of it straining to remain in place. And I think it’s time you tugged on it.”

She gave my hair a little pull, the corner of her lips twitching with amusement as I sucked in a sharp breath. In the next moment she was on her feet, backing away towards the door.

“That’s it?” I asked, frowning in confusion as she began to leave.

“Segui il fuoco,” she replied as if I had a clue what the fuck that meant. “I’m horny and my pack have been begging to fuck me for a full week now. I usually prefer the efforts of a real Alpha, but they’re in desperately short supply around here. I’d ask you to take a tumble with me, but your heart will always be with him, and I don’t want any part of anyone else’s love story.”

I arched a brow at that suggestion, wondering if I might have taken her up on the offer if Darius hadn’t already ruined me for every other Fae.

“I thought the army was crawling with Alphas?” I asked because I’d noticed plenty of posturing bullshit going on in the barracks and training rings whenever I’d gone near them.

“Plenty of Betas like to think they’re all Alpha, amica, but it’s a sad reality that far too many of them fall flat when put to the test.” Rosalie sighed in disappointment.

“So, you’ll just have a pack orgy and hope for the best?” I teased and she grinned.

“I can always get myself off if I have to – but Jessibel has been dying to get between my thighs and Andre has been sending me dick pics for two weeks straight. So, I might as well let them shoot their shot. Who knows, maybe I’ll like it.”

“Enjoy,” I called as she left, sauntering off like she ruled the damn world and hell, if I didn’t know better, then maybe I’d believe that she did.

I looked down at the book in my hands, frowning at the spell she’d pointed out to me and snapping my head back up as I called after her, but all I got in reply was a distant laugh from her as she shouted, “You’re welcome!”

I stared at the page, wondering how the fuck I’d managed to miss something so fucking obvious as I read over the title there.

To Raise the Trees of the Damned.

My brows lifted in surprise as I read the words beneath it, the damned trees which could be grown like a living curse, the heart of their victims bound to it, their entire family line tied to its existence.

Once the blood of the intended is added to the seed, the essence of the caster’s soul must be leashed to its roots. The light of the moon helps raise the shadows to assist in the growth of the sapling, and the longer the bone chant continues, the larger and more powerful the tree itself shall grow.

I looked over gruesome pictures of bloodletting and sacrifices of small children, but so far as I could tell, the growth of the tree simply required the blood from a member of the family you wished to curse. Not every drop, just enough to infuse the seed.

The harvesting of the seed was a shit show of horrors which I had absolutely no interest in, especially as the only motherfucker who I would like to curse went by the name of Lionel Acrux, and I had no intention of dragging Xavier into the punishments which were fit for that son of a bitch.

But the bit that mattered lay at the foot of the page – the directions to the Damned Forest where all of the cursed trees grew, their roots rotting the soil beneath them and their leaves filling the air below their canopies with toxic pollen that destroyed all life.

To reach the Damned Forest you must drink a dose of wolfsbane mixed with larkspur from a chalice scrawled with the runes halgalaz and raido, and carve the name of your deepest desire into your flesh, then follow the ache of your heart before it gives out on life itself.

So, all I had to do was poison myself in a cup marked with the runes linked to trials and travel, cut my flesh open and hope the wind whispered the fucking answers to me. At least it didn’t sound utterly insane or anything.

Fuck.

But I already knew that I would do it, my fate sealed the moment I’d laid eyes upon that book. No. My fate was sealed well before that. With the blade which stole the man I loved from this world and left me here alone to suffer through his loss.

I strode across the room and began to gather a pack together, the Book of Ether watching me silently from the bed as I thought over everything I’d learned from those books since we’d taken them for our own.

I had a plan. A plan which I could admit had holes in it and may well have been suicide, but I was hoping it just might work anyway. I’d been holding off on trying it, hoping to find something else in those ancient pages to help me, but I was done. Done waiting, done giving my all to everyone else, and done hungering for the impossible while my curse upon the stars went unanswered.

The winter solstice was almost upon us, the longest night of the year holding its own power which would aid me as the space between realms became thinner. I’d been studying relentlessly, learning all I could of the magic predating the stars’ involvement, and I knew how dangerous what I was planning could be. But I’d given all I could to this fight as I was, and if I didn’t give myself to my oath now, then I knew I would fall to ruin before I ever did so.

Sacrifice, blood, pain. I didn’t care. I’d offer it all willingly and throw myself upon the pyre of my own destruction if it wasn’t enough, because the world wasn’t the place it needed it to be without him.

So if this was what it took to right that wrong, then I’d do it. Darcy had abandoned me, we were losing the war and there was little else left to me beyond this desperate, foolish hope. And it looked like I was going to give it all up for that chance, because without it, I was already lost anyway.