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“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!”
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.
“You can do this. You were born to wear the crown, and you can bear the weight of it no matter how heavy it becomes,” I swore to her.
“Defy the stars,” I said fiercely, willing her to do so with all I was and all I had.
“That time is done,” I replied firmly. “But the time of the Phoenixes is beginning now. They will rise to power. And I will be there to help see it come to pass.”
“I’ll burn it all if that’s what it takes,” she breathed and I could have sworn her words were for me, that she’d felt me there, knew I wasn’t giving up.
“My taste is fire and ruin tempered by the kiss of a woman who has always and will always be out of my league,”
Death is wicked like that. A partition of souls that yearn for one another, how cruel.
“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.
“Mine,” she growled, sounding just like a Dragon as she claimed me, and I smirked like a lucky motherfucker.
“Sometimes our truest path lays hidden beneath a layer of impossibilities, but if we can find a way to believe it is there, then we can finally place our feet upon it.”
Roxanya Vega wouldn’t take no for an answer when she set her mind on something she wanted, and the stars themselves should be trembling at the thought of her wrath turning their way.
“I can see why she picked you in the end, even if you had proven yourself to be a son of a bitch,” he said, his grip tight, smile as savage as his reputation. “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?”
“I think heroes are supposed to put the good of all before their own selfishness. But you are selfish when it comes to her, utterly, unerringly selfish. She’s the one and only thing you won’t ever question, the one thing you put above all else. If the world had to end to see her safe, you’d light the fuse that blew it from existence.”
She had been a princess lost to a world that didn’t understand her but now she was back, and I knew there would be no stopping her again.
“The highest hope for the twins lies with the Guild Stones,” Azriel Orion said softly from behind me. “Any and all prophecies which have pointed to their victory in this war include the formation of the Zodiac Guild – the rise of a new dawn.”
The moon wasn’t a star. It was a force of its own, governed by its own set of rules. It didn’t bow to their power and its magic belonged to no other, born of the nature of the world itself. Did that mean it was charged with ether then? That the magic of the moon was its own potent cocktail of raw power?
“Death is a doorway in which we must stand, yes, waiting for those we love to join us, or to find peace in knowing they live on. Either way, it is not our final destination. It is a place between the here and there. What the there is, I do not know. But the here, I believe, is an opportunity to find harmony. A harmony, perhaps, we did not manage to find in life.”
“Royal blood is so very powerful,”
“Grief burns, does it not? It festers and rots, then somehow it blazes and takes on a new form. The pain dulls, the sweetness lingers. There’s power in that.”
“Fuck, baby girl, you never do things by halves, do you?”
“Love fades. It is only useful while it’s potent.
The price of a life was a death. And perhaps I could have chosen that path if I could have chosen a soul worthy of death to take my place. But to pick between the ones I loved? To use the power of their love and grief for me to force a trade in our places? It was an impossible choice, and one I could never even consider making. I wouldn’t be the man she’d fallen in love with if I was capable of that. But not being capable of it meant this divide between us was eternal for however long she had in the living realm.
“I scorn nothing but the stars,” I replied bitterly.
“Darius…I shed you of the Acrux name.” “Already happened,” he said. “When I married your-” “I shed you of the Acrux name,” I repeated louder. “I am proud to call you a Vega.”
Whatever Roxanya had done to reach this place, I prayed it had not cost her too much. But I knew The Veil would not get its chance to seize her yet, because Darius Vega would not let it be so.
No words escaped her, not a single one and I almost smiled at that. Roxanya Vega left speechless, no venom left to spit, no rage left to break from her. I thought I’d never see the day.
She was mine, my one good thing, the keeper of my heart and the shackles surrounding my soul.
I wanted to reach for her, kiss her, tell her…all the things that words could never encompass. But there was something I needed to do for her before I could attempt any of that. I drew the glimmering sword from my hip in a fluid movement before placing its tip against the ground between us and dropping to one knee in front of her. A tremor rumbled through The Veil as my knee hit the ground and I clasped the pommel of my sword as I bowed my head before her, my limbs trembling with the magnitude of this action, of what I had known and should have admitted for a long time now. “I pledge myself
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“You’re Darius Vega now. And you weren’t built to bow to anyone.”
“I love you, Roxanya Vega, and I wish I could have been worthy of you.”
Our daughters stood on the grounds of Zodiac Academy in the heart of the Howling Meadow, surrounded by hundreds of Fae. Before them knelt the four Heirs; Caleb Altair, Seth Capella, Max Rigel, and Darius Acrux himself.
“Crown the new queens, and weave a new path into existence, mother and father of the flames,” the stars encouraged.
“Your request shall now be answered,” the stars whispered, just for Merissa and I. The Imperial Star that hung from a chain around Roxanya’s neck began to glow, ready to be used by the true queens, proof beyond doubt that they were prepared to rule.
“Your daughters are as mad as you Savage King,” Felisia called to me, and laughter rippled out in response. “I rather like them for it. They have your wild heart, Merissa.”
