Shadow Princess (Zodiac Academy, #4)

by Caroline Peckham

“Where have you brought us now?” she asked, her voice strong but her eyes darting around nervously. She thought I’d taken her somewhere to hurt her again and the idea of that carved a fissure right through the centre of me.

“The part where we were kidnapped or how we were forced into that pit? The bit where the shadows tried to drag us down or how we managed to pull each other back away from them? Maybe the part where we finally emerged into our Order forms? Or are you referring to the way Lionel tried to Coerce us to forget all of it?”

“It was our Order,” Roxy said grimly. “Apparently our fire can burn right through bullshit.”

My father had just fed her to the shadows, her Order had Emerged, and her body had been turned into a conduit for the dark power he’d stolen from the Shadow Realm and yet she was still biting at me.

I caught hold of her without thinking about it and dragged her into my arms, crushing her against my chest. My heart leapt as she pressed her cold hands to my skin, and I kissed the top of her hea...

“He had Xavier,” I replied desperately, my heart pounding unevenly as I took in the rage in her. She had to know that it had broken me to watch my father push her into that pit. It had felt like carving into my own heart with a rusty knife and offering up a piece of my soul for him. But the alternative had been Xavier’s life. It was no choice. But I knew she was strong; I’d known she could survive anything and even though it had killed me to watch him do that to her, I hadn’t had any other option that I could choose.

Lance shifted closer to me and as I looked into his eyes, a shadow slid across them before fading away again. I swallowed thickly, feeling the shadows beneath my skin too. They were a part of me now and the most terrifying thing about that was how easily they sat there. Like I’d always had space for such darkness in me and they were just coming to claim their place.

“Lionel said they were Fire Harpies,”

“But he was mistaken. He saw the flames and the wings and made an assumption. Their mother, the Queen, was a Harpy so that had always been a likely outcome for them. They were only in their Order forms for such a brief moment that it was an easy mistake to make.”

“Phoenixes,”

“Not possible,” I replied with a shake of my head. “There hasn’t been a record of someone having the Phoenix Order in…” “Over a thousand years,” Lance murmured, still staring at Gwen like the world began and ended with her.

Phoenixes were practically a myth. No one was even sure they really had existed. They were supposed to have been the most powerful Order of all, their flames capable of all kinds of insane things. Some people even claimed they’d been immortal but if that was the case then where were they? How did a species die off if they couldn’t die?

“We have to keep this a secret,” Lance said, looking at me.

“Because if the things I’ve read about Phoenixes are true - even half true - then the two of you could be more powerful than any Fae who has walked the earth in the last millennia. You’re like the Fae of old, legendary… I don’t even know what your limits would be, but I do know that you pose an even greater threat to Lionel now. If he finds out about this before you’ve learned to harness these powers-” “He’d kill you,”

“So, we should hide what we are?” Gwendalina asked, sharing a worried look with her sister. “Until you have a better grasp on your gifts and can defend yourselves, I think it should stay between the four of us,” Lance agreed. Roxy glanced at me, and my gut lurched as I realised that the look in her eyes was mistrust. She didn’t think I’d keep their secret.

We were like magnets, destined to gravitate towards each other or repel each other, but nothing in between. And I didn’t know how to flip it back to how it had been just before my father had shown up. It should have been the last thing on my mind, but in that moment all I wanted to do was take hold of her and pull her into my arms. My heart was still beating out of rhythm with the shock of what had nearly happened to her, and I just wished that I could fix it somehow. I wanted her close even though the moon was gone now, the Eclipse over and its effects waning. But it didn’t seem like she felt remotely the same way anymore.

“Lionel used your bodies as vessels for the shadows. That amount of dark power passing through you could leave its mark, a scar on your soul…”

“At least you don’t have to bear the burden of harnessing the shadows,” Lance said gently. “They only passed through you. They didn’t take root.” His gaze found mine and I knew he was worrying about us having to deal with it. I agreed with him. But we were also prepared in a way. We’d been dancing with the shadows for years when we practiced black magic and if they might give us an advantage in a fight, then I’d accept the weight of carrying them.

Father hadn’t bestowed this gift on us for any altruistic reasons like wanting us to have more power too; he’d made us into accomplices. By holding the power of the shadows, we were just as guilty as him. He’d bound us to him with them, made sure we couldn’t go to the authorities unless we wanted to end up imprisoned too.

I bristled at her tone, a growl rattling through my chest as I looked down at her and she just stared right back into my fucking eyes. Why was she always baiting me? And why did some fucked-up part of me like it so much?

I blinked in surprise as the fight went straight out of her and she bowed to her sister’s suggestion. I’d begun to think that girl didn’t know how to do anything other than argue. It seemed like that was just how she was with me. At least most of the time. For a moment I remembered laughing with her after racing on my bikes and wondered if there was any chance she’d ever look at me like that again.

Before they could leave the room, I stepped forward and caught Roxy’s arm. I needed to say something to her, apologise, try to explain myself, I wasn’t quite sure what yet. But I wanted to do something to combat the hate that was rearing up in her as she looked at me.

I felt like we were on a merry go round that wouldn’t stop turning. We kept coming back to this point and maybe I should have accepted it. Because I couldn’t keep trying with her and having it thrown back in my face. So if she wanted us to hate each other then I’d have to play my part in it. Because I couldn’t keep away from her, that much was becoming abundantly clear. So I’d just have to keep being her villain.

“I think he wanted to help,” I said gently. “It wasn’t enough,” Tory snarled and for a second darkness seemed to curtain her eyes. I frowned, a rush of powerful energy spilling into my body as if it came directly from where our hands met. A deep well of darkness seemed to open up inside me and as I pictured Darius’s face, I hated him too. I hated him so much I could feel it burning a path right through to my soul. And I wanted to drown in this dark feeling until it consumed me.

I couldn’t help a smile as I headed to the door, tiptoeing outside, and wondering what kind of welcome party I was going to get from Darius this morning. But his anger never seemed as strongly aimed at me as it was at Tory. And sometimes the look in his eyes seemed so much more impassioned, like it wasn’t just fury he felt toward her.

“Lionel won’t ever get near you again,” he swore, and I shook my head. “You can’t promise that, Lance. And I don’t want you to. I’m not your responsibility.”

“Flying didn’t burn off any of that anger then?” Orion asked and Darius turned to him with a dark look.

“And it did burn some of it off, actually. This is me happy by comparison.”

“Well at least I got an extra hour of sleep while you were gone,” Orion said with a yawn. “Dude you totally star-fished the second I got out of bed,” Darius said with a low laugh. “Wait, did you two share a bed?” I balked and the two of them turned to me like they’d just remembered I was there. “We fell asleep talking,” Orion said in an extra stern voice like I was suddenly his student again.

“What else do you think our Order can do?” Tory wondered aloud. A smile pulled at my mouth. “Let’s hope it fights off shadows.” She nodded seriously. “Shadows and big fat iguanas.”

“I really goddamn hope so, Tor.”

I reached across the bed and ran my hand down Geraldine’s side, a groan of longing escaping me at the feeling of her exposed skin beneath my fingertips.

I wanted more; I fucking needed it. I’d never experienced anything like I had last night. I was used to controlling and boosting the emotions of other Fae while we screwed; girls went wild for the extra shot of lust I fed them. But Grus wasn’t like that. She was fucking immune to me. Strong enough to block me out and make me work my ass off to satisfy her.

Fuck, why hadn’t I ever looked at her properly before last night? I’d been so blinded by the royalist bullshit she spouted all the time that I’d missed the perfection of her curves. I’d never seen such beautifully, round tits before and when she’d ridden me, I’d had to fight the whole fucking time not to explode before I’d given her what she needed. I’d never had sex like it. And I wasn’t going to let her go any time soon.

“Why ever would I want to roll in your haystack again, Max Rigel? I can add a notch to my bedpost when I get back to my own room and go right on back to the important things in life.” “Important things?” What the fuck is happening right now?

“I…are you worried I’d be embarrassed to tell people about us?”

“Why in Solaria would you be embarrassed?” she asked, widening those big blue eyes at me, and capturing me in them. “I’m the one who’s got to play the shame game. Whatever would anyone think if they realised I’d bumped bottoms with an Heir?” She said the word like it was dirty.

“What? Just…wait. Are you saying you’re embarrassed about last night? Didn’t you feel what I felt? That sex was fucking mind blowing.” “Yes, yes, you were perfectly adequate,”

“Adequate??”

“Wait. Slip of sanity? Are you saying this isn’t going to happen again?”

“Of course it isn’t, silly sausage.”

The door shut with a harsh click, and I was left with a sinking hard-on and no idea what had just fucking happened. Hurricane Geraldine had torn through my bedroom, and I was left reeling in the wake of her departure.

This was not going to stand. There was no way she didn’t feel this connection between us. No way in hell. So I was just going to have to work on her until she’d admit it. Because now I’d had a taste of Grus, I wasn’t going back. That girl was going to be mine.

Darius was in a foul mood as he slumped down in a chair and nursed his coffee with a scowl. I moved to sit on the arm of his seat and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “She’ll come around.” “She won’t.” He shrugged me off. “She’s always hated me, and why wouldn’t she?”

“You’re not just Tory’s enemy, Darius, you’re your own. It’s like every time you punish her, you’re trying to punish yourself too.” “Thanks for the pep talk, Dad,”

Darius had offered but as we’d been sharing a bed at the time, I’d figured that was a bad idea. The Guardian bond always made me feel weird shit when I fed from him.

I lunged forward, digging my fangs into his neck and his arm wrapped around me immediately. The bond between us flared and as his blood spilled onto my tongue, a low groan of need escaping me. His grip became firmer, and his hand slid into my hair as I took what I needed, devouring every drop while my heart pounded and I clutched his shoulders in an iron hold.

I didn’t even know which feelings were my own when it came to Darius anymore and I hated to think that some of the love and trust we had with each other might not even be real.

“But in the meantime, it’s imperative we look out for the Vegas. Now more than ever before.” Darius shook his head at me. “You sound like you’re on their side.”

And I’m not fucking blind, if you think I don’t see beneath this asshole bullshit you throw at Tory Vega, you’re wrong. I know you care for her. And we have to protect her and her sister from your father. From the Nymphs too.”