Beyond the Veil (Zodiac Academy, #8.5)

by Caroline Peckham

“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 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!”

There was only her. My one, my only, my wife.

a creature who had not followed its rightful path once it had tumbled from the heavens long ago, twisting the laws of old and changing fate. It should have released the power within, offering it up to the world as a final gift as was decided by the ancient stars themselves. Instead, Clydinius had thwarted nature and unbalanced the true path, setting a curse upon my family for generation after generation with the deal it had offered my ancestor.

of course it fucking did.

Every soul in this place had felt that,

I’d spend plenty of time staring at that wall all the same, my desperation to be with those I loved drawing me to it even now.

My father’s idea of a game was to lock me in a box for hours at a time to help rid me of any claustrophobia I might have.

"You forget that you’re as dead as me, boy,”

they’ll be besties by the time this book is over. i bet it

well, no one really grieves for me enough these days

but as my fingers met with the ruby pendant which still hung from her neck, I felt an echo of my old magic awakening within it.

“Lance Orion,” she said with a light laugh. “My descendant Leon likes him. He licked him once, you know?”

“You can maybe flip the page of a book or stir the wind. Perhaps pull a particular tarot card from a deck she’s-”

I breathed in the exquisite scent of her, feeling her more closely than ever, before I exhaled again, goosebumps rising along her neck as if she’d felt my breath. I growled at the idea of her truly feeling me, dropping my mouth to her neck and kissing her skin, feeling the warmth of her there, so close, so perfectly real. More goosebumps trailed the path my mouth took, and she leaned into my hold just enough to make me think she might be able to feel me there, at least a little.

just purest pain.

“There’s no stopping Roxy when she gets that look in her eyes,”

but so long as she and my other children bathed up there in the balmy glow of life, I was at peace.

There wasn’t a Fae in any realm, in any time, that I would have chosen for Lance over Darcy Vega.

“You can enjoy a dick comparison with your son-in-law later, Hail,”

stop😭

“Sometimes I think I feel you,”

Roxy’s head fell forward and she began to cry again, my presence as irrelevant as a gnat caught in a hurricane.

Which meant I needed to get a soul ready for her to claim.

oof

“When it comes down to it, you’d burn the entire fucking world to ash for a single smile from her lips, wouldn’t you?”

“Is there a problem with that?” I asked, uncertain if it was meant as a compliment or not.

Roxy called on a soul to house in it, and Hail gripped Jenkins by his other arm and the two of us forced his screaming, pleading, pathetic soul inside it. The power snapped shut around him, securing his fate once and for all. And as I turned from him with my wife’s father at my side, the two of us grinned like savages.

besties

Lionel plans to Guardian Bond every Dragon in the Guild, creating an army between him and any who try to end his reign.”

“beware the bonded men”

“Your hearts are pure and bound in steel. You’ll find safe passage here,”

“He is no Fae. He is death itself,”

and we all heard him. Me, my mother-in-law and my father-in-law. Brilliant.

this chapter is so fucking funny

Radcliff took off too, flying up and doing a somersault above me in his Dragon form. Darius joined us next, his beautiful golden Dragon bursting from his flesh as he fully shifted and followed us into the sky, letting out a bellow that shook the heavens.

“Go on, son!” I roared to Lance. “Give him hell!” “Son?” Azriel hooked an eyebrow up at me. “He is that to me, Azriel,” I said fiercely and he moved closer, grasping my arm. “And Gwendalina is a daughter to me,” he said, the two of us sharing a brief smile before we turned back to watch the fight.

🥹🥹😭😭

“Firstly, do not boss her around,” I growled. “Secondly, you have a point.”

lol