Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

I was Roxanya Vega.

It had always been the four of us, and it would be the same when we ended up beyond the Veil.

I would claim him this day, and nevermore would I seek the loins of another codfish.

I couldn’t allow for any other fate. Not for her. She was my everything.

she sighed loudly like I was nothing but a burden set on this world to torment her.

But if destiny was kind enough to allow me to be her whipped bitch, then I was all for it. I was hers in any way she would take me and damn the consequences.

I was the Dragon Lord, Lionel Acrux, and I was the true Savage King.

“Fate is unbalanced. The wrath of Clydinius wove your woes.”

“Clydinius wants you to keep the broken promise, warrior of the Vega line.”

“Listen to me, Blue. I loved you when your soul shone with all the starlight in the night sky, and I’ll love you now when your soul is the blackest you’ve ever known. I will love you whole and I’ll love you in pieces. It doesn’t matter, light or dark, I am here. That is what mates are for. It’s what I’m made to be for you by the stars themselves, so stop trying to shut me out.”

‘I’ve got you, sweetheart.’

“Hang on, I speak semi-fluent ASS,”

“Just because I love her, doesn’t mean I love you any less. I’m not abandoning you by wanting her.”

And she’s your happiness.

“I just want you to go out there and grab that fish boy by the balls and tell him he’s yours, bad choices in politics be damned.”

The urge to count each and every piece tugged at me, and I looked over my shoulder sharply, almost expecting to see him there, bitching about the golden trinkets which were scattered across my floor and threatening to beast-out if it wasn’t all carefully counted and polished immediately.

“Not a possession, no. But you are mine. You were mine before we met, and mine the minute we locked eyes. You are mine in this life, and every life we may experience from this point forward. You are mine in every reality you exist, and mine in every reality you don’t. And I am yours in kind, in every way you can imagine. I will gladly be your possession, but I will also be your guardian, your keeper, your protector. And I will do whatever I can to turn you away from danger, because it is impossible for me not to.”

“Ruiner of Destiny,”

“Maxy boy?” I asked, and that scoundrel of a sea lion looked my way with a frown on his brow. “If I were in mortal peril, would you risk all to save me, throw yourself between me and death, give up everything just to see me survive?” “Of course I would, Gerry,” he said, his eyes softening like the wet kipper I had suspected he was. “Thank you for admitting that most crippling weakness,” I replied. “As such, I shall be in a differing group to you, ensuring that the mission is put before anything else and nothing is risked on account of my worthless existence.”

“Dude, are you in love with your dead best friend’s widow?” Leon hissed in a whisper so loud even the clams in the distant sea could surely hear him. “’Cause that’s fucked up.”

I looked into the mirror and smoothed out the voluptuous folds of my virginal white dress, taking a moment to comb my moustache.

Twinkle Stud.

Oh my stars…I’m a switch.

“Fear the Bonded men! You cannot win! Death is coming! The prophecy has changed!”

Im so over this shit

“There’s no hope for me this day!”

So this was all filler

I was a fucking idiot for thinking she would be able to fight it.

My life had been small, insignificant maybe, but it had been mine. And I’d only just reclaimed it.

All the rebels are dead.

Such a waste of life from the authors

and it is me fulfilling Lavinia’s deal.”

Eye roll

All twelve symbols, some seeming thicker and darker than others, implying more souls with that star sign had been bonded to him.

Well this just got completely unbelievable

Could this night get any worse?

So done with this

No, no, no, I can’t die like that in the clutches of a monster vag.

There was a presence at my back, footsteps hounding my own. But I didn’t turn. Because I knew who was stalking me into the dark, and I had always enjoyed his brand of violence best.

“I love you, Roxanya Vega, and I wish I could have been worthy of you.”

Stealer of life. Twister of destiny. Beware the cost. Turn from this path. Stop before you unbalance the scales. His ascension will bear a price.

“Hello, wife,”

I tightened my hold on Bernice, trying to focus on how it had felt to give in to the desire between us at last. I’d offered her a bell and she had let me fasten the choker which held it around her throat. The tears in her eyes had told me she knew she wouldn’t be wearing it for long, that the future we might have hoped for wouldn’t come to pass now.

The purity I’d found between her thighs as I drove myself into her had eased the burden on my soul a little. I’d lost myself in the feeling of her body as the bell she wore rang with every thrust of my hips, letting everyone know she’d been claimed at last. And the way she’d mooed as she came for me, loving every inch of me, had made me explode inside her with a bellowing moo of my own. She was my cow now. The first of my herd and even as she lay sated and sleeping in my arms, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for that fact.

“You will pay in blood and carnage,” a voice hissed on the wind, and I got the feeling the stars were watching this all too closely.

“All you have ever truly possessed lays here with you now,”

“The power of the fallen has awoken, greed and glory blazing as one. All fates hang in the balance as the flames rise from the hollow, But the Dragon still may prosper if the paths of the enemy are thwarted. Beware the one whose name is Nox, and seek the treasures of the ancient ring. Use the stolen, ally with the might of your maker. Not all starlight gleams.”