Restless Stars (Zodiac Academy, #9)

by Caroline Peckham

“It’s that way,” he said with a grin which looked all too eager to me. “You want him dead that badly?” I questioned, striding in the direction he had indicated at a near run. “I want to pick my own paths,” Tharix replied. “And I have come to see that I will never do that while our father keeps trying to yank on my leash.” “Hail to that,” I agreed because even now,

“Vard,” I croaked, and my Seer moved to my side. I grabbed his jaw, forcing him to look, my nails pinching into his skin. “What is this? Your monsters fall. Your weapons fail. What use have you brought to this day?!”

Hes such a baby

“No,” I gasped, backing up, terror thickening my throat. “It cannot be. What concoction or trick is this?” The Savage King charged among those soldiers, fighting alongside his loathsome daughter, his black sword coated in purple Hydra flames scoring through my warriors, while his bitch wife was there, her own sword sending pulses of energy out into the Fae and knocking them flying. A shaky breath shuddered its way over my tongue as my gaze locked on the impossible, tracking from one face to the next. Radcliff. My fallen brother. The one I had struck from this world like an errant fly, there to fight in the masses with a wild smile on his lips and his eyes alight with the fight he fought against me. Me! His own flesh and blood!

Haahhah

“It won’t be long before they make it here. A-and it seems, perhaps, forgive me, but your Heir, Tharix…he-” He faltered, eyes wide with terror. “He what?” I snarled. I had long taken note that my new Heir had made no appearance in this battle. His shadow Dragon had not been out there winning this war for me, despite sending him into the fight myself and commanding him to take his place among my forces. But now, instead of tales of his victories in my honour, his name was spoken with trepidation by the tongue of a terrified guard. “He fights alongside Darius, your Majesty. Arm in arm.

Lololol

Betrayal once again gilded my flesh. Was I cursed to suffer it so often? Were those surrounding me so intimidated by me that they couldn’t bear the weight of my shadow despite all I offered them in exchange for their loyalty? A better world. A place at the side of the greatest ruler this kingdom would ever know.

God he sucks

Tharix would die with the rest.

He literally cant

Even Clydinius had abandoned me on the brink of victory.

He ded

“Vard,” I said, my voice thick with a tremor that I despised the sound of. “Where is my stardust!?” I roared so loud the ceiling shook and my advisors flinched. Vard gasped, shaking his head. “I do not know.” “Of course you do not. Because your Sight is useless and you foresaw nothing of it going missing. You have failed me as you always fail me!” I bellowed, panic setting in as I realised my means of escape was now lost.

Bahahhaha

How had this happened? We’d held every advantage, our victory so assured that I had been celebrating it from the moment our forces collided, but now look at me. I was scurrying into the dark like one of those foul Rats who dared buck against the rightful order, who dared question the supremacy of their superiors. It was a bitter pill to swallow indeed.

Bc you suck

“Ah, little hunter, how much you must have missed me,” she crooned as we failed to locate her once again. “Do you think of me often? Carving my pretty knives through your flesh?”

Kill that bitch

“I am a queen,” she growled. “I claimed this kingdom. It was owed to me. You have been in this world for barely a blink of a moment, but I have waited, I have suffered, I have fought for my crown and claimed my Acrux King. You will never take that from me, descendant of Avalon.” Shadows coiled around her arms in deadly tendrils, power darkening her eyes.

“You fight for power while I fight for love,” I called. “Let’s see which one triumphs on the cusp of oblivion.”

“Watch,” she growled as the spear slammed into Orion’s back, piercing his armour and running him through. He had been so desperately fighting off the shadows that he hadn’t seen it coming and a scream rubbed my throat raw. Before he hit the ground, the shadows wrapped him in tight binds and yanked him away into a rolling sea of black mist. “Dead, dead, dead,” Lavinia sang, driving her shadows against my back and working to crush me within them.

NI FUCK YIU HE DOESNT DIE

I felt my power connect to hers, almost as if we were power sharing, but it was wholly opposite to that. My fire was feeding on her shadows, dragging and dragging them from her body, and she was revealed ahead of me, trying to claw her way across the ground to escape. But my fire was connected to the darkest pieces of her power, ripping them clean from her body in ribbons of shade. “No!” she screeched and her skin began sizzling away, making her cry out in purest agony, that thin veil of flesh constructed as a lie to hide what she really was. And beneath it lay the horrid truth.

Die bitch

“I cannot die,” she rasped. “Die? All things can die if I wish it,” a dark voice made the ground rumble, and I looked up to find a cloaked figure standing there with a weathered paddle in hand and his black hood drawn low to conceal his features. His sinister presence made the hairs stand up along my arms and the breath in my lungs turn icily cold, and I knew with a certainty that rattled my bones, that this was The Ferryman.

Ahhh

“I will not,” he answered in a snarl. “She and her wraiths will be nothing. Shattered. Less than remnants. They will face no after. They will vanish from existence for all eternity.” “No!” Lavinia cried, terror lacing that word, her shadowy essence trying to move away from him.

“Yes,” I agreed, and Lavinia screamed louder, the desolate souls inside her screaming too, knowing their time was up. In this world and the next. They would have no afterlife, no moments of freedom, no joy ever again. “Lavinia Umbra,” I hissed, willing my fire to grow hotter, the earth glowing with heat beneath her so she was in a world of agony as The Ferryman stepped closer. “You are nothing from now until forevermore.”

Bye bitch

The Ferryman looked to me. “Your mate’s soul calls to me. Will I be claiming his life so soon?”

Fuck off

I ran to him, falling to my knees at his side and laying my hands over his, lending him my power to heal the shadow wound that had torn through his chest. And together, we managed to stitch it over. “You did it, Blue,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “You’re a damn warrior of the stars.” “She’s gone,” I breathed, hardly able to believe it.

Stop scaring me

It was over. We’d won.

Thank god

“You have my blessing, good choice,” my father muttered to Orion, and I shook my head in disbelief, finding no words as purest shock took hold of me.

Omg

“Oh my love,” she crooned, her hand stroking my hair, doing one of the things I had dreamed about my whole life. I felt her love in the way she held me, her kisses touching my cheeks as tears raced down them. Then my dad was pulling me into his arms instead and I felt the strength of him in how he held me, a firm kiss pressing to my head as a sob racked through my chest. “Don’t leave,” I begged, knowing they had to. Knowing they couldn’t stay. “My little darling,” Hail sighed. “I wish I could spend all your coming days right here with you. But I promise we’ll be watching. We’ll be here, even when you cannot see us.”

Im so fucking sad

She smiled, tears falling from her eyes as she hugged and kissed us, and Hail tugged us all into his arms, the five of us reunited for the first time since we were children, too young to even remember what this had felt like.

“Geraldine! Max!” I amplified my voice to bellow across the land. “Seth – Caleb!” Silence followed and fear clutched my heart. I couldn’t face losing them. I couldn’t bear the weight of that grief. I listed all the names of those I loved, calling out for them to join us and suddenly they were there, being lifted into the arms of their legions, and tossed our way upon a sea of our allies.

Omg

Sofia and Tyler came cantering across the ground with neighs of greeting and Xavier ran to meet them.

Omg babies

Piled bodies heaped before a throne of Hydra sculls, two glorious queens glaring down at me from the throne they had reclaimed. “Death,” their combined voices boomed my fate and I cowered away.

Yep

Lionel cried out ahead of me and I almost ran headlong into Madam Monita where she had halted on a narrow landing along with all the others, staring at the Dragon King. “What is it, Sire?” Horace begged as the king sagged back against the wall, clutching at his forearm above the stump where his hand had once been. “My Bonded,” Lionel panted, his blonde hair no longer quaffed to perfection but lying lank and clinging to his reddened forehead. “All of them are dead.” “What of the queen?” Madam Monita gasped, and he backhanded her so savagely that her skull cracked against the wall before she crumpled to the ground in a heap. “I said all of them,” Lionel spat, his eyes wild as he glared from one face to another, hunting for some sign of what to do.

Oh nooo.. Lol fuck them

Even his imposing stature seemed diminished, and all I saw as I looked at him was a weak, sweaty man, running from the fate any other in his position would have stood and faced with honour.

If every one of Lionel’s Bonded were dead, then that meant those weren’t his Dragons close on our heels – those were his sons come to hunt us down.

Lol yes

Lionel turned and crossed the small corridor, throwing open a hidden door and revealing the treasury beyond. He removed his protective wards from the space, allowing us all entry then started barking orders at everyone to take hold of chests, bags and crates filled with his precious treasure.

Stupid

I stepped closer to the golden bars, smiling my true smile at long last and breathed, “I had a vision about you and what they will call you after this day has passed.” Lionel shook the bars and bellowed at me but I didn’t even flinch, the weight of his hold over me falling away at last. “The Dragon who burned.”

Time seemed suspended within the cloud of dust and I moved myself to sit upright on my brother’s back, amused to find myself riding a Dragon of all things at the end of this day of chaos.

It is amusing

“And yes to the second question,” I added, nodding to him. “My other brother is one of us now too. The dead souls which were bound to him have been banished into death and he proved his loyalty in the battle.”

Family!

I looked her up and down, this bloodstained, beautiful, terrifying wife of mine whose green eyes were simmering with violence. “You are…everything, you know that?” I told her, reaching out to catch her waist as she got close enough to me, the adrenaline and intensity of battle making my pulse thrash and my need for her spike, but she just side-stepped me with a dark smile.

I pressed a hand to Tharix’s shoulder as I passed him, exchanging a look with him which swore to end the man who had chained him, and free him just as the act would fully relinquish me.

“I…yes, you were my creature once, but I-” “That’s where you’re entirely mistaken, you piece of shit,” Darius snarled, sheathing the axe on his back and forging a wicked-looking dagger from ice instead. “She was never yours. And you signed your own death warrant the very first time you dared to come near her.”

“How do I get out of this confounding hell?” I snarled. “You could try getting through me,” a voice replied from the darkness, and I flinched around, fire igniting in my palm and illuminating the cold gaze of my youngest and most worthless son. “Xavier,” I ground out, contempt lining my features as I looked him up and down. He was grubby with the evidence of battle, his roughly-forged armour making it clear that he had fought in shifted form before crafting it. “Are you so keen to reunite with your mother that you thought to find your death in me?”

I hope he kills you

“What’s the matter, Lionel?” he purred. “Out of places to run to?” “I am a king,” I spat. “I run from nothing!” “No?” A howl sounded from the tunnel to my right and I flinched around again, my head quickly snapping back towards the Vampire who had shot even closer to me in my moment of distraction. “The True Queens are looking for you. Won’t you face them like a true Fae?” he asked. “I’ll destroy them in my own time,” I retorted, fire blazing from me in an inferno which forced him back. An enormous white Wolf ran at me with fangs bared from the passage on my right and I released a noise so unlike a Dragon that blood rushed to my face in reply to it.

“We have to stop meeting like this, Father.” Darius stepped into my path, right in the mouth of the exit to the cave, daylight gilding his silhouette and making him seem even larger than the last time I’d seen him, his frame towering over my own.

Hes big boy

“I’m not the one you should be frightened of,” Darius replied cruelly, a smile gripping his features as he watched me summon every scrap of my power into my fist ready to blast him from this life and see him destroyed for his betrayal. “I’m not frightened of you,” I retorted, the acrid taste of a lie caressing my tongue. “You are. You have been for a very, very long time,” he countered like it was a fact that was so very obvious to him. “But the problem with waiting for the beast at your front to strike is that it’s so easy to miss the one aiming for your back.”

Eeee

Everything from the air, to the rock, to my own body burned. Everything, except her. And as Roxanya Vega’s sword slammed straight into my chest, piercing my heart and ripping my soul from the confines of my living body, her final words to me rang like a death toll throughout my skull. “So much for the reign of the great Dragon King.” The world of fire and ruin shattered around me, the agony in my flesh evaporating in an instant as I fell from my rightful place within my body and into the freezing waters of the river of death.

Someone play taps

“No!” I roared, my arms and legs thrashing as I fought to swim, hands grabbing hold of me from every direction and dragging me back down again.

In the words of the shadow bitch DEAD DEAD DEAD

I had died. My reign had truly ended and everything I had done, everything I had plotted and schemed and worked for had come to nothing…nothing at all… “Thank you,” I choked out, my mind lashing against the reality of where I was and my focus falling on the here and now, the man who had pulled me from that river of torment, the one who had seen fit to save me. I looked up, expecting to find one of my Bonded there, another soul thrust into death, ready to serve me beyond it. The faces of five bloodthirsty demons looked down at me instead. My mouth opened and closed as my gaze moved between my brother Radcliff, Hail and Merissa Vega, Azriel Orion and my traitorous wife, Catalina. “Wait,” I gasped as I took in the utter hatred and joy lining their features, the ranks and ranks of the dead who stood at their backs awaiting their turn to meet with me too, but they did not wait.

Beautiful

A dark and forbidding voice dripped over me, the Savage King drawing closer again to see me shudder beneath him. “You will face all those you wronged, and only when they have seized their vengeance and grown weary of your suffering, will we deliver you to the Harrowed Gate where you will be tortured for all eternity by the monsters who wait for you there.”

“It’s time for you to reap the results of your life of corruption and betrayal, Lionel,” Hail said as he stepped aside to let the sea of souls rush back towards me to take their revenge. My screams didn’t stop, my fear a potent thing inside me that clutched at every fibre of my being and in that endless torment I found myself trapped in the reality of the very things I had sworn never to be. Helpless, afraid, alone and entirely without power.

Justice

The light of the Phoenix fire bird which had shot from me a moment before Lionel’s attack lit the far end of the passage, still circling my most prized possession and keeping him safe from the flames which had destroyed his father.

“Your debt is paid,” a shadow spoke from above us and we pulled apart, looking up into the face of death as The Ferryman peered down at us and it was as if shackles fell from our souls, the need for death and carnage slipping away like it had never been. “Today was a good day for death but I do not wish to see either of you again until it is your time to pass me by.”

“I thought I’d want to spit on him more than I do,” Xavier mused as he grasped Darius’s arm, his head shaking with disbelief at the body of his father lying between us all. “Instead, I feel nothing but the urge to turn my back on his bones and never think of him again.” “He’s not worth more than that,” Darius said.

“It’s time to claim your glory. The sun is waiting to smile down upon the new queens,” he said.

Our crowns. Our story. Our souls.