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didn’t know how she managed to make giving no shits look so damn good but she seemed to do it effortlessly.
“We get it, you spun the story,” Darius said, his voice harsh. “Now call The Daily Solaria and get them to take down the photos.” “Why?” Tory asked, her gaze locking on him coldly. Darius ground his jaw and folded his arms. “You don’t need to have half naked photographs of you everywhere to make the story work.” “From the man who published a picture of me in my underwear without asking me?”
He was acting like some kind of overprotective boyfriend and I got that Dragons were all possessive and shit, but there was no solar system in which he could claim possession of Tory Vega.
“You don’t have a fucking sex addiction,” Darius snarled. “Don’t I?” she asked innocently. “What other possible reason would I have for screwing so many waste of space assholes?” Her gaze flicked from him to me for a moment and I straightened my spine.
“You think you’re so fucking smart don’t you?” Seth said, taking a step towards her and she got to her feet, glaring at the three of us like she didn’t give one shit that we were all standing before her like this. “Yeah, I do,” she replied.
We were shoulder to shoulder and yet I’d never felt more distance between us. It hurt like hell. She wasn’t just my sister, she was my other half. And without her, an entire piece of me was absent, leaving a bloody wound behind.
A symbol appeared in silver and blue, like two interlinked moons. “You’re Nebula Allies,” she gushed and a smattering of applause sounded around the room. “But of course you are, I could have predicted it myself.”
more. It didn’t even surprise me that we were Nebula Allies. How could we not be? No matter how different we were, our souls were the same.
He wanted me to be nice? I’d rather gouge my eyes out with the sharp end of a stick.
“Woops, my bad. I thought you were on fire, little Vega.” I saw red. Rage coiled up inside me and sprang free. I couldn’t hurt Seth but I could throw my fury at one of his asshole friends. Fire burst from my hands and Max threw out a hand to shield himself. I fuelled it with a flare of Phoenix power and it flashed hot in his face before he got it under control with his Element.
snort escaped me as I realised I’d burned his eyebrows clean off and several of the girls started pointing and frantically jumping up and down. “What?” he gasped as I started laughing.
Seth. I laughed louder so he could hear me and his shout of fury came in response.
But I was like an addict; every time I pulled myself away from them, my reality closed in too sharply around me and I was drawn back to the strange comfort they offered me. I’d never been particularly good at making friends.
There were only so many times you could listen to people swearing they’d write and call you only to never hear from them again before you began to get cynical about the reality of those friendships.
“Haven’t you taken enough from me already?”
Every session meant enduring insults and name calling. Not to mention the fact that they constantly tried to sabotage me and cut me from the better roles in the routines. It meant that any chance I may have had to actually enjoy
Lucky for me, Orion didn’t seem to have an issue with the things I chose to write on my body despite the fact that Marguerite complained about it to him every single session. “Professor!” she called on cue, folding her arms and pouting angrily. “This is getting beyond a joke!” Orion shot towards us from the far side of the stadium, clearly hearing her with his bat ears and tilting his head as he inspected the slogan I’d chosen for today. Suck my dick and bite my balls! Orion snorted a laugh and I smirked at Marguerite tauntingly. “She doesn’t even have a dick!” Marguerite moaned. “Wanna
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“And ten points to Ignis for creativity,” he added, smirking at me. My lips twitched with amusement.
“Oh no. I’ve thought of something better than that. I suggest that we have two cheer squads. One led by Marguerite and the other by Tory.
I’d felt so lonely recently that even a few minutes of feeling like the most important person in someone’s world meant a stupid amount to me.
“Because if you’re going to drown then I’m going to drown with you.”
Walking away from Roxy Vega felt something akin to being kicked in the balls.
Or more accurately, she didn’t look at me. Because I sure as hell looked at her enough. I woke early in the mornings and waited for her to appear in the common room just so that I could be sure the shadows hadn’t consumed her in the night. I noted the bags under her eyes and the way she always sought out Milton Hubert right after she grabbed a coffee with three sugars.
Which somehow was even worse than having to watch her with another guy. Because it was just another sign of how much she was struggling.
I’d asked the students who were housed in the rooms closest to her dorm to keep an eye on her and report anything strange back to me. A few of them had told me she woke up in the night screaming pretty regularly. But when I’d tried to ask her about that, she’d taken it as some kind of attack and had just started placing a silencing bubble around her room every night so that no one would be able to hear her scream anymore. I knew because I often walked to her door in the middle of the night and pressed my hand to it, reaching out with my own magic until it brushed against hers and reassured me
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And the pain of her rejecting me out loud, of having to hear her spell it out would just break the pathetic little part of me which still liked to cling to the idea that it had actually meant something to her. Because it had meant more to me than I could easily put into words. And despite the agony that it caused me to look back on that moment and realise it was well and truly gone, I wouldn’t trade the memory of it for all the auras in the world.
“She came and sat on my bed and she just…cried. She stroked my hair and sung me that lullaby she always used to sing when we were kids.
“I’m sorry,” I growled as I locked him in my arms and a part of me wished I’d never have to let go. “I’m sorry too,” he agreed, his beard scratching my cheek in the best way.
“I love you like a brother. You mean more to me than most real members of my family.”
“Shall we watch a movie?” Lance asked, switching on Faeflix and hunting one down.
She was the only constant I’d had for every Christmas since I could remember. It didn’t matter what house we were in, which foster parents did or didn’t celebrate with us. It mattered that every Christmas morning, we’d wake up and share it together. Me at the crack of dawn and Tory an hour later once I’d finally dragged her out of bed.
He wore smart trousers and a crisp white shirt, his hair styled and a dark blue flower in his hand which was the same colour as my hair. It looked like a lily, the petals large and the dusty white pollen shimmering.
space around me. We were beneath a huge weeping willow, the thick fronds hanging around the edges of the wide clearing underneath it. Frost coated the branches in sparkling blue and a chandelier of pure ice hung down above us with orbs of golden light glimmering within it. Beneath it was a table and two chairs carved from ice and covered with thick fur blankets. Food filled every corner of it and a bottle of wine stood at the heart of it. The ground was covered with a fluffy white layer of snow and a frozen stream ran through the heart of it like a sheen of glass. “It’s too much, isn’t it?”
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His throat bobbed and a vulnerable kind of smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve not really dated a girl before. Not like this. Not the proper way. But with you, making you smile like that…it’s everything. A few months ago, I would have looked at myself now and thought I was losing my fucking mind. You make me wanna dress up trees, Blue. I’m one hundred percent a lunatic for you. And I don’t give a damn.”
Now they’ve slept together he might eventually-” “Wait – what?” I gasped, my mouth dropping right open. Holy crap, she screwed Darius?? Orion’s brows arched. “I assumed you knew.” “Tory won’t talk to me, how could I know?”
“Do you remember when you threw me off Aer Tower and I caught you in the stairwell?” I nodded, biting my lip at the memory. “That was kinda hot in hindsight.” “Fuck hindsight. Do you know how many cold showers I’ve had to have because of you?”
“This is where you grew up?” I asked, suddenly itching to head out from under the willow tree and see it for myself.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.” He bared his fangs as he smiled and my heart dissolved like a tablet fizzing in water.
“I loved it.” “I love you,” he countered and the world paused as the weight of his words slowed time itself. “Lance,” I inhaled, a feeling of raw happiness threading itself into my heart.
“This isn’t the way I was going to say it and I’m still not sure that I should have…” His brows pulled together. “I don’t know how long we have, Blue, but my heart will be yours whether we’re together or not.”
“The thing is, Seth, you keep expecting us to just roll over like trained dogs. When are you going to realise we’re never going to break?”
But I wasn’t fragile, I was a weapon forged in fire. And it looked like he’d realised that at long last.
“That’s not because they were older than you, it’s because you have terrible taste in men,” she growled and my eyes widened as I realised she cared about this enough to actually go to bat for him over it.
“Now you,” I snapped, glaring at him. “Tell me what you want from my sister and don’t you dare fucking lie about it.” Orion looked at me for a long moment before his gaze slid to her. “Darcy is everything to me,” he breathed. “She’s all I think about and all I want. I see so much good in her and she somehow brings out the best in me. And if you feel that you can’t keep this secret for us or like you have to tell the authorities about what’s going on between us, then I understand. Because you want to protect her as fiercely as I do. But even if we’re torn apart, even if I went to Darkmore
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There was no way he could fake that look in his eyes. No way he could lie that convincingly. He loved her. And as I looked at her and took on the wild panic in her gaze, the desperate need for me to understand, I realised that she loved him too. This wasn’t some sordid affair. It was real.
“Love,” I breathed simply. Because what else even really mattered in this world? I stood looking between the two of them again as I tried to figure out what else to say and suddenly wondering how I hadn’t seen it before. “Okay… But what the hell are you going to do now?”
before, but Orion looked like he was trying hard not to grin at her words so I was guessing he liked the sound of it.
Darcy laughed harder and suddenly she threw herself at me. “Can you forgive me, Tor? I was just so afraid of what Seth would do. He can’t figure out that you know about us – he’s been using this to drive us further and further from each other. I didn’t know what to do, but it cut me apart being away from you. I’m so, so, sorry.” She squeezed me so tight that I could hardly breathe and I crushed her back with just as much force.
“I’m sorry for not trusting that you had a good reason to lie to me,” I whispered back. “And I swear on everything I am that we’ll find a way to make Seth Capella pay for this.” My gaze slid beyond her as we pulled apart and Orion shifted uncomfortably as I looked at him. “You get one shot to do right by her,” I warned, pointing at him. “And if you fuck it up, if you hurt her or break her heart, then I won’t just kick you in the balls. I’ll castrate you.”
“Fucking hell, I think she actually would,” he muttered, like I was insane. Darcy offered me the brightest smile in the world as she answered him. “Yeah, she totally would.”
