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January 9 - January 10, 2024
This book is dedicated to all those who wait for the living to join them beyond The Veil, watching ever on, and to all those they left behind. May you be brave enough to follow the longings of your heart to far-flung places, adventure into the unknown, take leaps of faith and dare to dream bigger than the moon. Be brave, be hopeful, be you. And give them the show of a lifetime.
“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.”
“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!”
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.
“Defy the stars,” I said fiercely, willing her to do so with all I was and all I had.
“When one falls to the dark, the other shall be their guiding light,” Merissa murmured with a frown, those words familiar to me.
In all honesty, I had no further interest in my Acrux heritage. I was happy to leave all claims to it behind in the taking of my wife’s name. I was a Vega now.
“The one where I swore to love and protect your daughter with all that I was for all the time I had in that world and the next. The one that I joined her in when she vowed to change our fate at the cost of the stars if that was what it required. She has sworn to defy destiny in the matter of my death, and I have sworn to do all I can to defy it too. So will you help me, or would you rather allow your distaste for me to leave her grieving and alone for the rest of her life?” I demanded. Hail sighed heavily. “I preferred the blonde one,” he grunted.
“Just waiting for the dead king to move and I’ll be on my way,” Darius said. “Just waiting for my daughter’s poor choice to move aside, and I’ll be on my way,” I gritted out.
“Almost lived as in almost passed back through?” I demanded, suddenly more interested in this naked nice guy, wondering if he might hold the key to what I needed. Although the almost part was hardly reassuring. “Kinda,” Reth replied, his herd all cooing like the fangirls I hated so much back in the living realm. “I peered through a hole in The Veil when it was torn open. But in the end, I had to make the hard choice and-” “How was it torn open?” I demanded, moving closer, his cock disconcertingly close to my face as I looked up at him on that damn Pegasus. “It’s a long story, maybe we can
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“This here hollow is ours to protect. A fortress built of courage and gallantry.” He raised his hands, wielding the wood in the wall opposite and marking down four letters. “K for Kipling, I for Imai, N for Night, and G for Grus.” Wilbur jutted up his chin. “King’s Hollow this shall be, now and forevermore.”
This was actually happening. I was standing in the afterlife, haunting two of my closest friends in the world, watching as they shattered all the parameters I thought had existed within their friendship and- Oh for fuck’s sake, I did not need to see Caleb’s cock. I turned away, heading towards the door, but my foot hit something which lay discarded on the floor, and I looked down at it instead. Was that…oh hell no. I crouched down to get a better look at the box on the floor. Was that an old photo of me? My mouth fell open as I looked from the photo to the product it was advertising, a full
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“Merissa?” I yelled, wondering if she might be able to help pull me back. She’d been dead far longer than me, so she had to know how to reach me. “Yes?” Merissa asked as she appeared before me, and I groaned as Hail materialised at her back. I tried to move between them and the two Heirs who were now half naked and- yeah, Caleb was basically choking on Seth’s dick, so that was fucking peachy. “Did you just summon your mother-in-law to watch your friends fucking?” Hail asked in outrage, and I groaned, trying to block Merissa’s view of the bed while she made no attempt at all to look away, a
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“Each strike cast by the celestial swords will make a soul fall into slumber,” the stars hissed to us all. “Strike many. Strike all.”
Roxanya Vega left speechless, no venom left to spit, no rage left to break from her. I thought I’d never see the day.
“I pledge myself and all that I am to you, my Queen,” I breathed, emotion wracking my core as those words tumbled from me at last, my place in this world somehow fixing there as if I had found the truth of my own destiny, and all that I had ever needed to be. “I would be your sword to fight your enemies, your shield to protect your people, your monster to own and to wield. I would be yours in any and all of the ways I could be, and I should have told you that a long, long time ago. I am your creature, your servant…yours.”
“You once told me that you would never bow,” she said, her fingers brushing my jaw in the lightest of touches which set my entire body quaking beneath her. “You told me, that I would have to break you, just as you once tried to break me, and you laughed at the idea of it.”
“He has no place here,” she said firmly. “And he is not your father. He bears no responsibility for the man you became despite him. He can’t have a single piece of credit for that. He can’t even have your name anymore.” “My name?” I asked, a frown furrowing my brow and she nodded as she traced the back of her hand along my cheek, the metal of her wedding ring brushing my skin and filling my chest with more pride and love than I had thought anyone capable of. “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.”
I caught a glimpse of the dead who battled to buy us this chance as we raced past them, Hamish waving wildly with a whoop of, “Tallyho, my son! Give that dastardly Dragoon what for!” Hail’s Hydra bellowed, joined by the ferocious roar of Radcliff’s Dragon, the beasts singing their farewell to my own golden reptile before it collided with me, sinking back into my being where it belonged. “Raise the Zodiac Guild!” Azriel hollered. “Fate is shifting. My daughters can rise, Darius. Tell them that – tell them we await their call at the final gate and even hell shall bow to the voice of the true
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“Mother and father of the flames,” the stars’ whispered inside my head and I looked to Merissa, confirming she had heard it too. “You led the warrior souls well, and though you scorned us with your choice to let your daughter walk through into the realm of the dead, your sacrifice was acknowledged. You may have one ask of us in return for the preservation of The Veil. Speak it now and we shall deliberate upon its viability. You cannot ask for life, nor the death of those who live.”
“Crown the new queens, and weave a new path into existence, mother and father of the flames,” the stars encouraged.
