Shadow Princess (Zodiac Academy, #4)

by Caroline Peckham

He’ll be more powerful than the other Councillors. He could claim the crown for himself alone.

“Apparently our fire can burn right through bullshit.”

By holding the power of the shadows, we were just as guilty as him.

“Shall we keep this little noodle blip to ourselves?” she asked as she pulled on her panties. “What the fuck is a noodle blip?”

“But you’ll still protect them because you’re a good man, Darius. And there is more to the world than power, no matter what society teaches us.”

It was my nature to sit in solitude on occasion; my Order form required it.

“What the shit does that mean?”

“You can trust Gabriel,” I said firmly. “He’s my Nebula Ally.”

“Besides, he’s my Ally. The stars chose him as my soul friend, so he won’t betray my trust.”

Besides, if he succeeded in making me forget about Darius, I was all for it because that asshole had hurt me too many times for me to be looking at him the way I did sometimes.

Who wants to be shackled to some chair when you could be free? Fuck that.”

“I’m just looking out for you, Cal. I wouldn’t want to risk her setting my dick alight,”

“Maybe I should swear off the Heirs altogether and find myself a nice, normal bad boy. You know, the kind who hangs out in biker bars and beats people up for fun.

Diego straightened in his chair, his gaze sharpening as he stared at me, his lips parting like he’d noticed the dark magic which came alive with my anger.

“Well…I will admit he knows how to water the lawn,” she said.

She was a damn savage and she’d caught Max Rigel in her net before tossing him aside like last week’s trash.

“It’s cute that you think you can just switch off your attitude problem,” Darius taunted. “But if you really can play nice then I can too.”

He was an arrogant, entitled, selfish prick and expecting him to take ownership of any of his bullshit was like expecting the moon not to rise because it had offended the sun.

There are good reasons for it to be outlawed. If the shadows hadn’t taken root in you, I never would have taught you any of this.”

And I swear that if you get into any difficulty with it, I’ll do everything in my power to help you.” “So will I,” Darius added, and my skin tingled at the intensity of that vow.

“Fuck that. This is the most pathetic birthday I’ve ever seen. Those pants are stained for fuck’s sake. What the hell has happened to you, man? You used to be cool!”

Yeah, they’d cost a small fortune but if I wasn’t going to spend money on my friend for his birthday then what the hell did I even have so much of it for?

“Fuck, Gabriel, when you said we were coming out with your friends, I assumed it would be people we didn’t know. Not tweedleass and tweedledipshit,”

“Believe me, if we’d known this place had such low standards, we wouldn’t have come here either,”

Fuck you, bourbon. You do not get a say in this.

was drunk. So fuuuucking drunk. And horny. Plan of dreams: Step one…get Blue naked. Oh, shit wait, I need more steps.

“What’s it made of?” “I dunno, man. Cotton?”

“You smell like freshly baked bed... I mean bread.”

He does not need to feel my boner. Not again.

“You guys can’t even imagine how much fucking sex I had last night,” he said. “We know,” Darius put in. “You’ve been going on about it all morning.”

“Lady Petunia had her taste of forbidden fruit, but I’ll be guiding her towards safer pastures in the future.”

Not that I’d ever tell him, but his overconfident bullshit was a pretty big turn on.

“Yeah. So, live music kinda weirds me out. I just find it so cringe when people sing at me and then there’s the whole awkward social pressure to applaud and jump about in appreciation for how great they are. Even if you don’t think they’re great. It just makes me feel kinda…sick.”

“I think the stars picked you for me, Blue. I think you’re my Elysian Mate.”

Darius narrowed his eyes at me as he dropped his hold on my hair and folded himself into my seat, leaning back and spreading his legs like his balls were so fucking big he couldn’t possibly close them.

“Because we don’t get to choose our obsessions. And you’re mine.”

I personally found it hard to forget the casual way he referred to me as a whore or the general creepy ass fact that his hat had his grandma’s soul knitted into it. I mean, what the actual fuck? You couldn’t pay me to wear something like that.

Not that I gave a shit what some dried-up soul crust thought of me, but I still didn’t want her near me. The idea of her grossed me out.

His muscles bulged from the workout, the Phoenix and Dragon tattoos which danced with each other on his back gleaming with sweat.

“Don’t worry, Father will kill them before that day ever comes. Why do you think I work so hard to keep them beneath us?”

He’s been hiding this shit for so long that I don’t even think he knows how to drop the mask anymore.”

We were a force of nature individually, together our power was cataclysmic. “Shit,” Seth groaned heavily.

“Holy huckleberry, I’m as excited as a banana with its peel off!” Geraldine

“Oh, give me a gander!” Geraldine exclaimed. “I do like an eyeful of man meat from time to time.”

If you can’t laugh at yourself from time to time then you’re going to end up spending a lot of your life taking offence over things that really don’t matter.”

it. So do your worst…or don’t. I can’t control what you choose to do, but I can choose what I do.”

And why should I even have been justifying myself to him anyway? I’d told him the truth of it and if he didn’t want to hear it then that wasn’t my problem.

“Oh, I get you. Your reputation means more to you than having a laugh or happiness or basically anything fun.

Especially, especially while he was wearing that fucking soul hat.

“What? Have you got a hat fetish or something? Because maybe you should be molesting Diego in that case instead of me!”