Beyond the Veil (Zodiac Academy, #8.5)

by Caroline Peckham

I wound my arms around her, feeling her thrashing heart against my chest even though I knew she couldn’t feel me there, even though she didn’t soften into my embrace the way she always had before. But I willed her to feel me all the same, to understand that I was fighting this fate too, that I would always fight for her, no matter what it took to do so.

She needed me. I had to make sure she found what she sought. I felt her as she called for me, the power of her grief spiking, her hand locking tight around the ruby necklace, anchoring me to it like she’d known I needed her to pull me back.

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.

“This doesn’t feel like he saved me,” Roxy replied, her words cutting into me with a brutality that only she had ever managed to wield against me. “It feels like he destroyed me one final time. Like this was all some big joke, leading up to the annihilation of everything I was and ever could have been.”

the pain I’d once again caused her cut me to ribbons.

I’m just an echo left behind, a malignant spirit set on revenge, and I’m far beyond the point of salvation. Which means there isn’t anything in this book I won’t use if that’s what it takes to right the wrongs which have been done against me and mine. Do you understand?” Roxy growled, her voice a cold, dark thing. I’d done that to her. I’d broken the light in her and left her with nothing more than what she spoke of. That fitful need for vengeance.

I dropped my face into my hands, my grief consuming all that was left of me, my own rotten soul left here to linger, shredded by the pain of losing her and all the others who I had loved so fiercely.

Roxy’s condemnation enough to break what little was left of me. I’d abandoned her when she needed me most and now I’d watched as she stepped onto a path so steeped in darkness that it was hard to fathom any hope blossoming along the way. Worse. I may well have been the driving factor that pushed her to find this darkness through nothing more than my own selfish desire to reclaim a life which I had long ago forfeited any right to.

The story says it was Alphard from Altair, but some versions of it say it was Acrux from Vega,”

“I know you,” he whispered. “Even if you will never know me. And I am so very proud, my darling boy. I have loved you from beyond The Veil for so many years, watching you whenever I was deemed lucky enough by the stars. I am sorry I could not be there, that I am not here now. Death is wicked like that. A partition of souls that yearn for one another, how cruel. But please know that I do yearn for you, Gabriel. My son, my wonder. And I will never stop.”

My gaze fell on one sorry soul who sat alone with his head in his hands, elbows rested on his knees and a look of utter woe about him.

his eyes finding mine with no bravado or malice, just purest pain.

“I am only so harsh on you because I love her too, and when someone hurts my family, I tend to get murderous. The fact that I have not dragged you to the cursed river and tossed you in for the demons to claim beyond the Harrowed Gate is a testament to how much I do think of you.”

“Trust me, if I could go back to the moment I trapped Roxy in that swimming pool, I’d bring down a world of wrath on the man I was that day. There are so many things I’d change. But how am I to destroy a monster who is me?”

And I believe I have seen enough of your love for Roxanya to know that you are a changed man. You are free of your father’s taint, and I believe, had you stayed in the realm of the living, you would have made an…adequate husband to her.”

“Had to cut me down at the last moment there, didn’t you, relic?” he smirked. “I cannot have you growing a bigger head than you already have, poor choice,”

“My daughters seem to like dangerous paths.” I frowned. “They tread them far too often. But perhaps that makes them experts in the matter.”

Darius Acrux was not all bad, I supposed. And if there was one thing we had in common that neither of us could deny, it was that we were both pining for more time with a girl who had been lost to us. My little love, who was not so little anymore.

“You offered an olive branch – you went soft on him.”

“The boy has his faults, but I cannot deny the love he feels for her,” Hail grunted, the words seeming to cause him some pain. “Much as I might have wished for her to find a gentle, kind soul to match with, I suppose a ferocious, passionate one will have to do.”

“If anyone is determined enough to do so, then it would likely be him,” Hail grunted, setting his glass down.

“I don’t think Darius would have wanted you to risk-” “That’s the thing about dying,” Roxanya hissed venomously. “You give up the chance to want anything at all.”

“This is my fault,” Darius said, his face paling as he moved closer to Roxanya though none of them noticed us at all.

“Do you really think so?” Roxanya challenged, a slight shimmer igniting in the air between them, making it clear that she’d placed a shield there with lightning speed. “I’d like to see them try,” Hail chuckled darkly,

Darius sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes widening as he watched his brothers lining themselves up on opposite sides of a fight for what had to be the first time, one of them picking a side against the others.

“She needs to figure out this magic. And I swore an oath to help her do it. I believe she can, and I agree with her on the Darius point. If he’d wanted a say in what she did, he should have stuck around to voice his own opinion,” Caleb spat, and I glanced at Darius who looked like he’d just taken a knife to the chest at hearing those words.

“She’s trying to find Gwendalina,” I breathed, looking up at Hail who had come to stand over me. “She’s hunting for her sister.”

“There’s no stopping Roxy when she gets that look in her eyes,” he said, a note of pride mixed with hopelessness of his warning.

“Tory!” Max yelled while Darius roared in terror, scrambling back to his feet and racing towards her like he might cross back over here and now if that was what it took to get to her.

“She can’t be tempted into death. Don’t let her see you,” I added, looking to Darius who seemed on the brink of cracking and running for her.

“Darcy,” he said firmly. “You came looking for Darcy.” Roxanya lifted her head at those words, either hearing them or feeling the truth of them as determination filled her shadowy posture.

My soul lurched with pain as I felt that contact between us, the closest I had come to truly holding her in my arms in so many years. Roxanya gasped as the three of us spun around her, greeting her, letting her sense that we were here to help before I focused on the pull of my heart which led to her sister.

I lingered there, twisting around her as nothing more than a ball of golden light, willing her to feel my love as Hail and Darius did the same, the essence of our souls caressing hers, offering whatever she might need to take from us and more.

She had too much to live for to let death tempt her away, and as she dove into the bright light of the living, a clap of pure power rang out across all the realms.

I might have been lost to the ocean of death, but so long as she and my other children bathed up there in the balmy glow of life, I was at peace.

Even from death, I was hurting her.

Any small inclination she’d had towards self-preservation had fallen away when she lost me, and now I was staring that reality in the face. She would risk anything, gamble everything and pay any consequence to rescue Darcy, Gabriel and Orion. Any cost to herself had become irrelevant to her in the face of what she’d already lost, and she was playing games with her own life, her star damned soul

She would be better if I slipped through that door and left her to find a path which wasn’t tainted by my presence, but wasn’t it already too late for that?

“You lied to me.”

“You promised you’d stay,”

Her grief was like a sucker punch to my gut, urging me to her, reeling me in. But I couldn’t bear to look into those green eyes and face the nothingness in her gaze as she failed to see me in return.

“Mine,” I growled, moving closer to her. But the word was no claim on the trinket she’d stolen to place upon her brow. My claim was for her. The true treasure in that room. The only thing I ever needed to claim anymore.

“I’m so sorry, Roxy,” I breathed. For dying. For leaving her. For everything that had come before this moment and for all the moments which should have come after. And for setting her on this path laced with darkness.

my queen

I was just a thorn in her side who was drawing far too much of her attention.

“Darius?” she breathed, a plea in my name like she was begging for this vision of me to be real. And it was.

“You promised you’d stay,”

I had never wanted to leave, and she knew it. I’d given everything fighting for her, fighting for an end to the man who had tried to forge me in his image.

“You promised you’d ...

Some small part of me just wanted to tell her to be safe, to keep fighting, to know that I loved her. But the petty, aching, desperate piece of me which wanted nothing more than to return to her arms by any means possible was what had hold of my tongue now.