Beyond the Veil (Zodiac Academy, #8.5)

by Caroline Peckham

“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.”

“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.

“What glory can be found when standing shoulder to shoulder with men and women you don’t even know while united against oppression and persecution? What glory can be found when standing firm against a tide of tyranny so all-encompassing that you feel like a grain of sand trying to resist an entire ocean? What glory is there in seeing Fae you love cut down and butchered by monsters weaving shadows and creatures born of darkness? What glory can you claim when you fight against a leash which has already tightened around your throat? When laws are written against your rights and a false king dons a crown and no one manages to knock it from his over-inflated head?”

“Every one of you standing before me and every Fae who fell on that battlefield fighting by our sides knows the answer to that question. Because we don’t need glory. We only need to know that we are fighting for what is right. We are fighting for freedom from oppression and the end of a tyrant. We are standing up and saying no more. And Lionel Acrux may have sat his scaley ass on my father’s throne, but he is nothing but a serpent perched on a pretty seat. I don’t bow to him or his false crown. Do you?” A deafening roar of defiance met her question, and a dark smile curved her lips that was worthy of my own. “No war is won in a single battle,” she went on. “No kingdom claimed with one fight. And though we may have bled for our cause on that field of chaos and carnage, they bled for it too. We cut them in that fight. We made them bleed for us and a thousand tiny cuts can kill just as surely as a single blow to the heart. So I say we keep cutting Lionel Acrux and his shadow bitch bride in every way we can. We cut and slice and carve them up and we keep fighting and fighting them until the bitter end, when I know in my soul that we will claim more glory than any of us ever dared wish for!”

“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.

“No. I’m not. I’m just an echo left behind, a malignant spirit set on revenge, and I’m far beyond the point of salvation.

I had seen less and less of the truth of her after we were married. We’d had some good years, which turned to good months, then good days, then only good moments, until eventually, all the good was gone.

Time flickered again, like a heavy breath against a candleflame, and I roared into the abyss, defying it as I stayed with my flesh and blood, the child I loved with the ferocity of the stars themselves. He had a life to live, and I would deliver it to him even if I had to die all over again to secure it, even if my soul was cast to ash and scattered to the farthest reaches of the universe, never to be restored. I would do it for him, as I would do anything for my children.

“Besides, a hero is never going to be what it takes to bring my father down. He moulded me into a villain and so that’s what I am. For her. For him. Damnation isn’t good enough for that piece of shit. And heroics aren’t good enough for her. So hand me the fuse, oh Savage King, because I’m ready to burn it all.”

“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.”