Never Keep (Sins of the Zodiac, #1)

by Caroline Peckham

His name was scrawled across the face of a gawdy signet ring on his finger as if he needed the reminder of what it was. Kaiser Brimtheon. So he was one of the many orphans who had taken that name.

I blinked as I felt the ragged brush of something against my soul as I did so – he was trying to get a hold on me too. I smiled darkly as I realised neither of us could penetrate the mind of the other, wondering what measure of beast he might be.

“How long until your friend breaks under the weight of her own terrors, I wonder?” Kaiser asked, his eyes never leaving mine, the threat there clear. My jaw ticked.

“Prince Dragor,” Cassandra gasped, clearly not stupid enough to make me wait any longer. “He will marry the Collingsdale heir a week tomorrow with the rising moon.”

blinked. A single moment passing as those words struck me. I was his. He’d made me swear it. But he had never promised to be mine.

“Let me be plainer then,” Cayde replied, leaning closer and dropping his voice, his mouth caressing the shell of my ears with his words. “I saw you with your thighs parted as you perched on your desk in your room back at Wrathbane and Prince Dragor made you come for him with his fingers buried in your cunt while accusing you of being wet for me.”

“What’s the matter, Cayde? Are you jealous?” I taunted. “That’s the funny thing,” he said, dragging me closer still so that I couldn’t see anything beyond the honeyed gold of his eyes. “Because I think I am.”

I tightened my grip, my gaze falling to his ruinous, hateful mouth before pushing up onto my toes and capturing his lips with my own.

The door banged behind him as he kicked it shut, his tongue invading my mouth, his kiss stealing the sting of reality that the news about Dragor’s wedding had set searing through me.

His fingers unclasped the buckles securing the shoulders of my battle leathers, tugging them open and revealing more of my flesh as this rampant heat built between us, this need to banish the months of tension which I had so adamantly denied existed with me and him.

“I don’t want you because you’re hurting over him. I want you when you’ve fallen for the trap of me and ache for no hands on your flesh barring mine. I want you in my cage, little lamb, begging me to take you because there is no other who could satisfy the ache between your thighs or the desperate needs of your lonely heart. I’ll have you all. But not while he can still claim you as his creature. I need you to be mine.”

I looked at the girl in the mirror across the room, her leathers peeled open, her features written for poetry, body designed for temptation, and I hated her. She was as empty as the vast expanse of the sea. Just as brutal, just as powerful, just as easy to ignore when your feet were on dry land.

I was simply being reminded of precisely what and who I was. A tool for a prince, a fantasy for a passing moment, an echo of a girl and a shell of a Fae.

The kiss of a killer painting my lips in malevolence. His touches were nothing like Harlon’s, his hands possessive, firm, toxic.

my eyes moving across them, hunting for the one among them who ignited hellfire in my soul, losing my ability to focus again. Kaiser,

Something had happened between us that night, and I was tormented wondering what exactly it was. Some magic had passed from me to him unbidden and had affected him in a way I couldn’t even guess at.

As my star sign, I knew the turbulence of a Pisces’ emotions. When we hurt, we were in torment, and when we smiled, we felt joy with the entirety of our hearts.

“Hm, and likely the stars blessed you too. The constellation of Orion is linked to you, I’d bet. Woven into the fibres of your soul, a talent for smithing as our hunter of the sky possesses so well.”

“You forge with fire that feeds on air, your metal comes from the belly of the earth, you cool your blade with the water of the ocean. You cannot forge without the four elements. You cannot breathe, you cannot roam, you cannot live without them all.”

Any other gifts you possess in crafting, I want. I will give you cloth and metal and the finest smithing tools in Wandershire.

I’ll be taking a nap in the meantime. Nemean Lion Order, me.

Nemean Lions were known for their Charisma, a magical sort of charm their kind worked on people to get what they wanted. They were compelling, likeable, manipulative and oh-so-charming that falling for them could seem as simple as taking a breath of fresh air.

Between the strange magic that had passed from me to Kaiser, and the way I seemed to make it through magical boundaries that I should never have been able to cross, I was left wondering what kind of power was brewing in me.

beside a statue of Gemini, the two winged queens holding swords that were raised towards a window in the curved ceiling above me.

“Let’s wake him first, let him see the creatures he scorned have come to reap justice from his bones,” Grey said keenly, reaching forward to wake him and making my heart judder from what he’d said.

“For the Void,” Reaper Lily said in reverence, kissing two of her fingers and painting some shape in the air. My mind jarred at that word. The Void? As in the weapon mentioned in the Elysium Prophecy? Was she just showing her devotion to it, or had there been more meaning to her words?

“Why?” I whispered, confounded and horrified by what I’d seen. “The Reapers are hiding things. And Ogden was a non-believer,”

It had been cold blooded, meaningless, and no matter what side of the war you stood on, most Fae hoped for a warrior’s death. Ogden had had that stolen from him…but why?

Her desires stabbed at me as I probed for them. Revenge was pretty prevalent, along with seeing all those who doubted her fall to ruin, a need for glory… I sighed and looked away. You and me both, Everest.

I smiled darkly, but it felt painted onto my lips, the injustice of this act leaving an ashy taste in my gut even if the Fae being put to death was nothing but a random fireborn bitch.

All I knew for certain was that the Reapers were keeping secrets far more destructive than the power of healing, and if they did so under the guidance of the stars themselves, then I was afraid of what that meant for all of us who followed so piously in their paths.

“Succubus means sex to so many fools that they forget our power is actually desire. Lust is great fun and all, but there’s nothing like making some asshole jump off of a bridge because he desperately wishes he could fly.”

“What do you plan on binding me to?” she asked. “We will swear not to kill one another by any means while we reside here at Never Keep – that includes selling each other out to the Reapers by the way – if one of us breaks it, our blood will fester in our veins and rot will claim our flesh.”

“They’re not dogs; they’re wolves. And they require a firm hand to keep them in line – me included.”

I simply let my eyes fall out of focus and tried not to think of the piercing blue eyes which would be waiting to inspect me the moment I disembarked, because I had never been able to hide anything from Dragor.

“The Sky Witch is off limits,” Prince Dragor snarled, clearly the force behind the man’s fall. “Imagine there is a wall placed around her which none can scale or the next time your head will make a far more forceful contact with the flagstones.”

It made him unpredictable, capricious, volatile. I couldn’t play him the way I could so many others and that was no doubt why I was so intoxicated by him.

Dragor was in his thirty-fourth year and undoubtably the prize of the family bloodline as the one most likely to claim the crown from his father when the time came.

But as we lingered by my door, the place where he had brought me to ruin for him and spat furious words in my face about Cayde, I couldn’t help but remember being pinned beneath Cayde’s weight just days ago, his mouth on mine, cock driving against me through the confines of our clothes.

The words of the Elysium Prophecy, known by all to foretell the end of the war had been painted within the clouds themselves.

War of the four, divided and torn asunder. Flame, sky, rock and sea collide, While the stars bless the valiant souls of battle. Seek the Void, for it shall guide the victor to their glorious path, A weapon of purity, and the gift of null. In a web of lies and cruelty, fate will favour the ruthless storm of destiny, And a bountiful empire shall be reborn under one all-powerful rule, Garnering the fortune and favour of the almighty sky.

“Alexandrius requested honesty within our union. She holds no objection to me claiming a…well, we haven’t discussed your preferred term. Concubine? Courtesan? Mistress?”

“I’m a possessive creature,” Prince Dragor replied, as if I weren’t there, as if my opinion on it meant nothing. “I detest disloyalty and I have commanded hers without fault. She bows to me and me alone, don’t you, Vesper?”

Was this the man I had yearned after for so many years?

“I do not think this arrangement will suit me,”

“Your loyalty is to me, your duty is to serve. Don’t allow petty jealousy to make you sound like a fool, Vesper,” Dragor sneered. “You have sworn yourself to me, have you not?” “Yes.” “And you further vowed yourself to me too, didn’t you? You swore that a wall would exist surrounding you which none barring I would hold the means to scale.” “Yes,”

“Would you break a vow made to your sovereigns then? Would you try to escape the binds of your own word?”

“Technically, I haven’t fucked her yet,”

“I’ve been prolonging the anticipation. Besides, I want her begging for it.”

And yet now, as I looked at him drinking from that tiny fucking tea cup, tittering with this vapid woman he didn’t even know and placing her at his side for nothing more than money and influence, I felt I was seeing him clearly at last.