Zodiac Academy 8.5: Beyond The Veil

Death struck me like an anvil to my chest, my soul hurled from my body to collide with the afterlife so hard that the crash of a gong rang out, making The Veil itself rattle with the force of my passing.

I leapt to my feet, my fist colliding with the closed gate which had trapped me here, and I bellowed Roxy’s name as my path to her was cut off eternally.

My fist hammered against The Veil so forcefully that for several minutes, I didn’t even notice the silence in my own chest, the lack of movement where my heart should have been pounding.

I sucked in a sharp breath as I stumbled back, my hand pressing to my stomach as I found a silk shirt where my armour had been, the silvery fabric unblemished and my hands clean of blood and grime. A golden cloak hung from my shoulders, a circlet falling across my brow as death dressed me in the clothes of a warrior, hailing me as some hero in the moment of my greatest failure.

I refused to accept it. Any of it.

I hurled myself against The Veil and fought harder, bellowing my refusal at death, demanding the ferryman take me back across the raging river which I could hear but couldn’t see. Time turned to nothing as I raged against the truth of what I’d lost, of my failure, of all I’d left behind in life.

This wasn’t happening.

It couldn’t be happening.

“Darius?”

My blood chilled as I took in that voice, the soft, gentle embrace of it wrapping around my name as I realised what must have happened if she was here too.

I didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to look at her and confirm this unspeakable truth, because if the two of us were here, then my departure from the land of the living would have destroyed so much more than just Roxy’s life.

Her hand landed on my shoulder, and I almost broke as I recognised the feeling of her presence close to mine, the memories I’d once let myself forget resurfacing. I remembered her holding me in her arms as a child, crawling beneath the sheets in my bed and whispering stories to me in the dark. I remembered curling up in her arms and feeling safe beneath those sheets, a world hidden away from the fear I didn’t even fully understand in my father’s presence.

“Mom?” I breathed, my voice cracking as I forced myself to turn, to look into the depths of her tear-lined eyes as she peered up at me.

Her hand moved to my jaw, those tears spilling over as she broke in the face my death, her own passing not even seeming to register with her, and I just had to watch her shatter before me. My beautiful, brave, mother, broken by the monster who had destroyed her life all over again.

“You had so much to live for,” she whispered, and somehow, I saw what she meant, like her memories were playing out for me within my own head, shared between us as she opened the gates of her mind to me.

I was running through Acrux Manor with Xavier at my side, giggling as I grasped his pudgy hand, and we sought out somewhere to hide from her in our game. I was growing year after year, feeling the love and pride and pain she had experienced as she was forced to stand back, as she watched Lionel beat and brutalise me in an attempt to make me into the creature he desired. And she feared he might succeed.

I saw myself with Roxy, saw the way she looked at me when I wasn’t paying attention, how she let her walls crack sometimes and the love she felt for me spilled through. I saw my mom’s heartbreak when she found out we were Star Crossed, felt her unending hatred for my father and what he had cost me. Then I felt her explosive joy when we’d defied the stars despite it all. I felt the pride she’d experienced when watching me turn against my father, the love consuming her as she saw me soaring over the battlefield.

It was endless, her love for me, only matched by her love for Xavier too. Xavier who had been left behind, all alone without either of us now, the truth of that a horror I couldn’t bear to accept.

“How?” I gritted out, unable to face any of the other questions ringing inside my skull.

“Xavier was wounded,” she breathed. “He was running, fleeing the battle along with the other rebels, and someone had to hold the way clear for them. Hammy and I…we chose to give every drop of our magic to shield the retreat for as long as we could.”

At her words, I lifted my head, finding Hamish beyond her, his hand on her shoulder, that gleam of death clinging to him too as he looked to me with utter heartbreak in his eyes.

They had been redressed in death just as I had, my mom wearing a gown of shimmering silver which swept down to her feet and made her look like an angel come to comfort. Hamish was dressed as I was, a warrior laid to rest with a golden cape pinned over his shoulders.

“We used all of our power to stop that cretinous turd from following our dear children,” he swore. “We gave everything so that Xavier and Geraldine might stand a chance at survival.”

“And they got away?” I demanded, looking around us, spotting more and more people, though there were no others who I recognised close by. The landscape surrounding us was coated in a golden haze, buildings and mountains just visible through it but nothing substantial enough to hold my focus as I hovered on the precipice of death.

“They did,” Hamish confirmed, and Mom nodded, her thumb sweeping across my cheek as she tried to contain her grief over seeing me here too.

“We gave all we had until there was nothing left for us to fight with,” she swore to me. “And when Lionel came, we only had our Orders, but we knew…we knew that we weren’t a match for him and those who followed on his heels in their shifted forms.”

“I would have fought him to the last breath,” Hamish snarled fiercely. “But I wouldn’t risk him taking my sweet Kitty for his own ever again.”

I crumbled at those words, understanding the choice they’d made, the sacrifice they’d taken upon themselves. Because they were right, my father would have taken her if he could have. He would have taken her and punished her and committed all kinds of horrors before he ever let her find relief in death.

“Thank you,” I gasped, reaching for Hamish as my chest shook with emotion, and I drew the two of them into my arms, holding them close and finding some small measure of solace in the fact that neither of them could ever be hurt by him again.

My mom’s slender frame was dwarfed by mine and Hamish’s, and I swallowed a thick lump in my throat as I felt her tears falling against my chest, her fingers coiling in the fabric of my shirt.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she sobbed, and the weight of my own failure crushed me as I nodded my agreement, my eyes meeting Hamish’s over her head.

“Your queen will be most tormented by this loss, my boy,” he said, clapping my arm bracingly as he tried to offer me some comfort, sensing the grief of his own passage from this world pressing down on him. “Fate has been cruel indeed this day.”

Something tightened in my chest, the feeling of true sorrow clinging to Hamish on my behalf overwhelming me. He was hurting for me, for my death and the pain it would cause those I loved. He was disappointed, and yet he wasn’t looking at me like I was a failure.

“I re-watched the battle and saw you fighting your father when I arrived here,” he said roughly. “I saw it all and I…you should have won. Fate was a wicked thing in that moment, and I cannot fathom the thoughts of the stars when they saw fit to take you from life and the love of your dear queen. It was a brave and honourable sacrifice you endured, and it was not without meaning. Xavier lives because of you. And many more besides him managed to flee the battle when the tides turned, making the most of the time you bought them to escape, ready to fight another day. You gave all you had.”

“But it wasn’t enough,” I replied, my words hollow, vacant, the unending need in me for another outcome to this fate more than I could bear.

“Never think that you are not enough,” Hamish growled, his grip on me tightening, and he took my jaw in his hand, locking his gaze with mine as he seemed to peer directly into my soul. “You fought with all you had, unflinchingly and without fear, giving yourself entirely to a fight that could have righted the world. You fought for love and justice, and you should have won. I am endlessly proud of you, dear boy. Endlessly, utterly proud of the man you proved yourself to be.”

Words abandoned me at that declaration, something inside the hardened steel of my chest caving at the pure honesty he was offering me with those words. The man who had sired me had never once been proud of me like that. His pride in any accomplishment of mine had been purely a reflection of his own ego, any talent he saw in me something he simply claimed as his own doing.

Lionel Acrux had never cared what kind of man I was, nor what kind of honour I claimed, he only ever saw me as an extension of his own achievements, a puppet he could trot out to bolster his own self-worth. And even if he had been proud of me in my own merit, it was all too clear now that I never would have felt anything like the emotion I was experiencing from Hamish Grus’s declaration. He made me feel like I was a man worth knowing, worth following, worth something far more important than my name or any title I might claim.

“Roxanya Vega was right to deny your bond when it was offered,” my mom added. “Because it was the push you needed to find yourself, to become the man I had always known you could be. You set out to prove yourself worthy of her love, but in finding what was needed to do so, you became so much more. I have been proud of you from the first moment I held you in my arms, but I am honoured to have been there to watch you step into your destiny as fully as you did.”

I shattered then, held between my mother and the man who she had found such brief and pure love with. I broke between them, for all I had failed to do, all I had lost and all the life which had been waiting for me beyond that moment on the battlefield.

Fate was a wicked mistress to have stolen all of us from the embrace of life, and I bared my teeth against the injustice of it all, letting myself fall apart.

I gasped as I felt the power of the woman who I had pledged my life to whipping out with such ferocity that it could be felt even here, beyond death.

I looked up, expecting to see her as I released my mother and Hamish, instead simply hearing the words which tore from her, the pure, undeniable power of them making the entire world quake.

“I will tear the heavens apart for this,” Roxanya Vega snarled, the curse of a true queen lashing across the heavens and scoring them with her conviction. “I will shred your world to pieces and rip your hold on destiny from your fucking fists with blood and fire and vengeance for this,” she screamed at the stars, her power making the ground beneath me tremble, magic unlike any I’d ever felt before burning its way between the realms as she forced the stars to take note. “On my life, I curse you. On his life, I curse you. And for our fate, I’ll end you!”

The power which blasted through The Veil pushed me to my knees, and I turned my face up towards the heavens too, a snarl on my lips as I joined her in that curse and made a vow of my own.

If she refused our fate, then I would too. I would fight with whatever power remained to me and use whatever I could to see an end to this injustice. If there was any way for us to reunite our souls once more, then I would give all I had to do so.

There was only her.

My one, my only, my wife.