Restless Stars (Zodiac Academy, #9)

by Caroline Peckham

I did know one thing though; the stars were here among this celestial magic, and it felt like the ghosts of the dead were watching on too, witnessing the tune of fate changing forever with the ascension of our new queens.

They are

I couldn’t see him now that the bodies were closing in again, and what if he disappeared the moment they parted, his time here in our world dwindled and not a moment of it spent with me? “Darius!” I cried in desperation, blasting people away from me with water and giving up on showing any kind of courtesy to them.

Xavier my poor baby

Behind him, Darius stood there, sidestepping Seth to look down at me, his dark eyes full of love and his hand extended in an offering. I shook my head, a sob wracking through my chest. “You’re not real.” “I’m real, Xavier. And I’m staying,” he promised.

Im crying

“No trick. No lie.” Darius placed a hand on his chest. “Heart beating. I’m right here. Against all the motherfucking odds. Now get the fuck up and let me hug you.”

“I’ll tell you everything.” His eyes skipped up toward the twins who were still lost to that light. “As soon as they return.”

Oh god

As if in response to his words, the light dimmed until the two of them reappeared hand in hand, their fiery wings billowing out at their backs and the crowns of fire no longer on their brows.

Its not them!!!!!!

“Tell me, brother, how many stars did you have to fuck to be given another chance at life?” Orion asked. Darius turned to him with a smirk creeping across his face. “No stars, Lance. But your dad took it like a pro.”

We were trapped, alone in the dark of this cursed cave while that fucking star walked the Earth wearing our goddamn faces.

How does this get better

“If this place is entirely sealed, then I have to wonder when the air is going to run out,” I mused, my gaze fixed on the shadow as it hunted for some place to escape with no more success than we’d managed with brute force. “Morbid, Tor,” Darcy muttered as she moved towards me, then slid down the wall to sit on my left.

Tory has a point

“But you needed me, and I wasn’t there,” she spoke the words I wouldn’t because they were petulant and pointless now. It had hurt. It still stung, if I was being entirely honest with myself, but I had to let it go. The problem wasn’t Darcy. It was how much I relied on her, needed her, used her as a crutch to help disguise my own weaknesses.

“To deny death is to become death,”

Oh shit

I was finally taking steps towards a new life, one I was proud to be a part of and which was built atop a foundation of bonds I had forged with a group of Fae who, frankly, had become like family to me.

Awww im sad

Stupid little mouse. Should have run while you had the chance.

“First rule of Cardinal Magic,” I murmured. “Do not be a fucking idiot.”

“I suppose I should thank you for subbing my class, Honey,” I called to her. “L-Lance?” she gasped, poking her head out from under the desk.

Get her ass

“They don’t need a wicked little witch telling them whether their Order is worthy. They don’t need segregation and persecution. There is only one thing in this world that makes a Fae less than any other. And that is the weight of their soul. So tell me, Honey…” I leaned down to glare at her with a sneer. “If the stars weighed your soul in the scales of Libra, would they find it heavy with sin?

Get her ass lance

I caught the back of the necklace with a spurt of speed, yanking it off of her and making her wail in fright. I crushed the gemstone in my fist, turning it to dust, and the power within it crackled against my palm, dissolving to nothing. Honey cried out, throwing her arms over her head and running for the door, her hair evaporating as she went and revealing a glimpse of a bald, bumpy head beneath. She made it to the door, trying to keep her face hidden as she worked to open it, and accidentally set off one of her own boobytraps. A blast sent her flying backwards, the door busting off its hinges as she came skidding across the room to lay trembling at my feet.

“Good work,” he said darkly, then prodded Highspell with the toe of his shoe. “Show us your face, wench.”

Oof its kinda cruel but i remember what all she did

The fact that Highspell was bald with a bumpy, wart-bound head was the least of her ugliness, because right there in the centre of her face, instead of a nose, was a huge, veiny, flaccid cock. Balls and all, perched neatly beneath her eyes.

Wh---what

I mean, holy fuck, how did one even end up with a cock for a nose?

This is a good question

“It was an old friend. I slept with her husband,” she cleared her throat. “And her father – not at the same time, of course, but… anyway, when it all came out, she tracked me down and cursed me with some twisted dark magic she’d learned from who even knows where. She said if…if I was so addicted to cock then I could have one of my own to look at forevermore.” Highspell hiccupped a sob before continuing. “I’ve been hunting for a way to break the curse for years, but I’ve never found a way to escape it.”

This is insane

“That’s a super great story and all, but does the dick actually function?” Seth pushed. “Y-yes,” Highspell choked out, still trapped in Max’s power. “In what way?” Seth asked keenly. “All the ways!” she cried.

What drugs are we on

“Dick face, dick face, dick face,”

Very juvenile

Max turned to me with arched brows, and I cleared my throat. I’d never spent much time with him alone, if any actually. And now I was left to carry him. What the fuck was I meant to do? Pick him up like Caleb had carried Seth, holding him in my arms while he looped his arms around my neck? By the stars.

Awkward besties

“Just get on my back,” I said. “Riiiight, that makes so much more sense,” he agreed with a nod. “Yeah, I dunno what we were thinking there,” I muttered, and he snorted, moving behind me. “Shall I duck down? Or…”

Lmao!!

“Hold on tight, asshole,” I said with a smirk, and his grip tightened on my shoulders.

Hold on tight spider monkey

“Everything,” Max growled. “From start to end, no pieces missing.” “It’s a long story,” he said with a dark look. “I don’t care if it takes all day, dickweed,” Xavier said. “Get on with it.”

I love them

“No, he didn’t,” Seth breathed, leaning in to nuzzle Darius’s cheek, and Darius sighed, lifting a hand to scruff Seth’s hair. “You’re here, and stars be damned, Darius Acrux, if you don’t start telling us the hows and the whys and what it’s been like and how you’ve felt and whether you were even a person beyond The Veil, I’m going to lose my mind. Or maybe you were just a floaty little ghost spiralling away through space and time, all alone, or were you with other ghosties? Or perhaps you were just a puff of a cloud, with no thoughts at all as you sailed through the mystical beyond going weeeee-” Max flicked a finger, casting ice across Seth’s lips to silence him. “Speak,” he commanded Darius, and the silence between us deepened, all of us on the edge of our seats.

Lololol

We were one in that moment, a single entity with a single need, and as Darius started telling us the story of his time beyond The Veil, I was sure the stars were turning to listen too, the entire attention of the universe aimed this way.

Dude bet theyd be mad

He had watched us too, pushed against the very fabric of The Veil to stand at our sides during moments when we had thought of or needed him, like our grieving had called him to us. It was terrifying and wonderful in equal measures, knowing how close the dead really were at all times.

He sure did... Seth and Caleb

“The stars told me we’re Nebula Allies,” Darius said. “I’m your number one Nebula Ally, apparently. There was someone called Gabe who came in at like number three or something.”

“You’re going to fuck with him constantly, aren’t you?” “Fuck with the Seer who’s all-knowing?” he pretended to be shocked, then smiled like a heathen. “Oh yes, I’m going to pretend I have far more insight than he’ll ever comprehend.”

“Clara wanted you to know that she’s free now. Truly free. And Lance…” Darius’s hand landed on my shoulder, his grip tightening. “She is happy there. Really. She even met a guy who-” A ragged laugh broke from me, and I looked up at him in surprise. “You’re telling me that I’ve been suffering over her death, agonising over the choice I was forced to make to release her from that bitch Lavinia, and she’s hooking up with some ghost asshole?” “Yeah,” Darius laughed too. “His name was Rash or something like that.” “Rash?” I arched a brow, knowing full well that Darius did not have that right. Who the fuck would call their kid Rash? “Yeah, pretty sure that was it.” He nodded. “Like a ball rash?” I pressed, my grief falling into amusement as Darius laughed fully.

Lmao?! RETH

“And how do you feel about that?”

Therapy with Darius

The low murmur of their queenly voices reached me, some utterance about a fallen star and a lost crater, but I closed my ears against the words which were not intended for my consumption.

“Is death the greatest adventure?” my sweet Darcy asked, and the question set my mind into a flubber as I considered it.

Im scared

A vision spilled through my mind, not of the beauteous faces of my queens as it should have been, but of a dark-eyed scoundrel with the soul of a salmon and the body of a god. He would be ever so disappointed in me for this. Ever so furious at my fall. My end beckoned, and despite all I had to live for, I accepted it, the agony of its approach consuming me as the Nymph leered in my face, a smile twisting its rotten features. I felt its probes brush against my thrashing heart, my magic screaming in desperate refusal, and its power calling to it like a piper to an army of rats. No. I had so much more to live for.

Clyde sent them to their death

We had our targets, and they were clear. Gus Vulpecula: the asshole who was responsible for filling the media with bullshit accounts of Lionel’s rule and smearing the name of the rebellion. Irvine McReedy: the enforcer and general who Lionel had put in charge of the Nebula Inquisition Centres. And last of all, my so-called mother, Linda, who had been heading up his government and buying into his bullshit in her quest for power which she wasn’t capable of claiming for herself the way a true Fae would.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Caleb taunted as he began to move away to my left, drawing the sharp eyes of the Manticore after him, the enormous, winged lion snarling as it took the bait and prowled his way. “Wanna play cat and mouse?”

Brave to a fault

There was ice fusing their hands together, keeping them locked as one while Linda lived up to the parasitic title of our kind and sucked the magic clean out of Ellis to use for her own. That was precisely what she was. A leech. One who had suckered herself onto my father in her desperate desire for power greater than what she’d been born with, and now she planned on using Ellis to elevate her position instead.

My teeth snapped shut and my song cut off with that single note, the torture of it too ruinous to inflict upon that innocent little baby who I had so longed to hold in my arms. That was who I saw as I looked into Ellis’s eyes. Not the spiteful, jealous creature Linda had moulded her into but the bright-eyed little girl who I’d once snuck candy to during a thunderstorm.

Fuck im sad

My lips twitched cruelly as I found the first piece of it; her Awakening, ambition thrumming through her in that moment too, her narrowed eyes sweeping across her classmates as she sized up her competition and felt her magic bloom within her for the first time.

Holy shit

When I was done, she would barely be able to conjure a drop of water or flicker of flame into existence, and I made certain to shatter any piece of her which may have been capable of relearning it too.

Scary

Linda screamed as she fell back to the rooftop, blood bursting from her lips. I dropped to one knee beside her, healing the injury just enough to make sure it wouldn’t kill her. Not out of mercy but out of the greatest cruelty I could conjure.

particular day flitted through my mind of when Lionel and the other Councillors had won an award for dealing with some dangerous criminal in Alestria.

Oooo king

He shuddered, bowing his head. “I’m just a reporter. I haven’t hurt anyone.” “Your lies hurt everybody,” I barked, my voice cutting through the air and making him flinch. “You’re responsible for twisting the minds of the masses, making them believe the bullshit you spew in your rag of a newspaper.”

We ran into the fray and Geraldine’s bellowing voice carried across the crowd somewhere close by. “Look yonder! How the Court of Solaria festers before our very eyes!” I glanced back at the high walls and glittering flagpoles rising up behind me, the mould crawling all over it, swallowing every piece. A groaning sounded before a crack shot up the central wall and a loud crash came from somewhere inside the building. It didn’t look like it would be long before the whole structure collapsed, and my chest swelled with the knowledge that I was responsible for its fall.

Sofia smiled at the fire dog, then let it dissolve in a swirl of fluttering flames, and I swooped toward her, kissing her hard and dipping her low as I did so, making her laugh against my lips. Her skin began to shine and mine did too, our Pegasus Orders glowing with utter joy and making our skin shimmer like raindrops in the sun.

So proud of them

CHAPTER SEVEN

.....whos lyra????

But the screams were still ringing in my ears, my mother’s blood hot against my cheeks as she tried to fight back, placing herself between me and the men who had found us.

Oh im so sad!!!