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This book is dedicated to all those who are weathering a storm, may you find a sliver of light between the darkest of clouds to forge on towards.
“He had a life before this. He had things he wanted, things he’d earned. He should be living his fucking dreams out playing in the Solarian Pitball League right now. Not stuck here teaching. His mother is a fucking psychopath, his sister disappeared years ago, and he hasn’t been able to make a single decision for his own happiness since the moment my father linked him to me. But somehow, in among all of that shit, he found a girl to love. But you, selfish motherfucker that you are, want to rip that away from him too?” I was shouting in his face, and I didn’t even give a shit. I was sick of my
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Unfortunately, she clearly had been using them and I’d already had to press my magic out towards her more than once to pull her back. But she never seemed to realise it was me. Never thought to check beyond her door for whatever she’d latched onto to pull herself out of the shadows. And I was glad. Because if she figured out it was me, she might demand I stop doing it. And there was no way I could just abandon her to the lure of the shadows alone.
“So, if Caleb makes you happy…” He didn’t finish that sentence and it looked like it cost him physical pain to let it pass his lips. He locked his jaw and his fingers curled into a fist. “Why are you saying that to me?” I demanded. “Because…” Darius blew out a breath and took me captive in his gaze. “Maybe I don’t want to live with the fact that you’ll never be happy now because of this.” “You want me to be happy?”
“Fuck the stars too, Darius,” I breathed, and his muscles tightened around me as he held me close. “Fuck every shining, gleaming one of them.”
“He was falling in love with you, and you ripped his heart out,” Gabriel said quietly. “There is no greater pain in this world than that. Believe me. I know. I’ve lived it.”
“You…I’m free,” Catalina gasped, releasing her grip on me as she backed up, her hands clasping her chest as a radiant smile captured her full lips. “Free of what?” “The Dark Coercion Lionel placed on me…each and every command he ever bound me with is just…gone.” Her eyes were shimmering with emotion, and she suddenly dropped to her knees sobbing as she fought to adjust to what had just happened. “He had you Coerced to do things?” I asked in confusion.
Darius Acrux: @Margurite Helebor, I wouldn’t fuck you again if you were the last Fae in Solaria and my dick would fall off if I didn’t. Don’t talk shit about my Mate. One more word and I’ll destroy you #trymebitch
“You mean…that for no reason other than the pursuit of true and honest love, you wish to fix what cannot be fixed and defy the stars themselves?” she breathed, her eyes widening as she looked at me in a way that I couldn’t quite describe. It was like, she was seeing something in me that she hadn’t thought was there before and I kinda liked the way her deep blue eyes were shining.
No, everything she gave me and everything she took was about nothing more than me and her. And there was a profound kind of purity in it that made me want to drown in that feeling forever.
I gasped as I burned through the final one, my knees buckling as I fell against him, but he caught me before I could hit the ground. “You…” Darius lifted me into his arms, staring at me with wide eyes like he didn’t even have words to explain what I’d just done for him.
“Beautiful Xavier, now let’s see your father feeding you one of the carrots,” Portia encouraged and the Heirs’ laughter rang in my ears. I looked to Father as he strode towards me with his grin starting to look painful and he swiped a carrot out of the bucket, holding it out for me.
“The stars might have decided that you can never be mine,” Darius said roughly, refusing to move away from me. “But I am yours. No matter what. I don’t care where we end up or who we’re with, I’ll always be yours. And I’m going to fix the damage I did to us even if the stars don’t care. I’m going to prove to you that I could have been worthy of you if I’d just listened to my heart sooner.”
“Look, sometimes we want to see the good in people we care about so much that we pretend it’s there, living under all the layers of cruelty. But the fact is, Diego, some people are toxic. And if you keep them in your life, they’ll poison everything good in your world until you end up being just like them. And that’s a far worse fate than going against the grain and making your own path. Even if that means you’re alone.”
“Professor Lance Orion, you are hereby detained by the Court of Solaria for fraternising with a student who is none other than a Princess of Solaria.”
“I deserved it,” he said in a low voice, my heart leaping in surprise at those words on his lips. “I deserved it, Roxy. And I’m sorry. Really, truly sorry for all of it. I know that doesn’t matter now and I know there’s nothing I can do to change this, but I need you to know it. I need you to feel it.”
“And I know it doesn’t change anything. That it can’t change anything,” he growled. “But I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to do everything I can to make it up to you, for the rest of my life if that’s what it takes. I’ll never forgive myself for bringing this curse on us. And I’m never going to stop loving you either.”
“Because that’s what love is,” I said in a low voice, running my finger over a bare patch of skin on my right forearm thoughtfully. “It’s giving everything without expecting anything in return. It’s sacrificing your heart and happiness for someone else and it’s owning all of your mistakes and trying to make them right. Not because you expect to get something in return for it. But because the person you love needs to know how you feel.”
“It’s with regret that I laid a hand on a princess of Solaria,” he spoke evenly, and his words brought a sharp frown to my face. “And it’s with even more regret that I admit that I used her for my own gain. I groomed her, manipulated her and ultimately, I used Dark Coercion on her to force her to be mine.”
His betrayal sliced deeper than a knife. He hadn’t fought for us. He’d dived headfirst into the pits of hell without me. And for what? I felt a cracking in my soul that spoke of the promise we’d made on the stars together. To always fight to be together. He’d broken it. And he’d broken me in the process.
I glanced at the ratty blanket and the memory of burning Roxy’s clothes off of her on her first night at the academy overwhelmed me for a moment.
“Our son will change the world, he’ll be the greatest Seer of his generation,” Marcel breathed as he leaned down to kiss our mother and the conviction of his words let me know that he had no doubt of that whatsoever. He’d seen it.
“That’s where you went wrong, my Queen,” Lionel purred as he closed in on her, his own power humming through the room as she fought to maintain her shield with the last dregs of her magic. “True Fae don’t have friends. Just people we can use or people we can destroy on our way to the top. And I’m afraid it’s time for you and your King to become the latter. You see, with your family out of the way, I become one of the four most powerful Fae in the kingdom. And then it’s only a matter of time before I will find a way to claim the throne for myself alone.”
“Nobody fucks with my girl and gets away with it,” he growled, his lips brushing my ear for a moment and making me shiver.
