Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

I had to make it through this for her. My final light. The girl who was worth a thousand years in hell.

“Darius Vega is the greatest Dragon who ever lived,” I spoke loud and clear, making Lionel fall deathly still.

“We must feel the bad as deeply as the sea, for then we are able to feel the joy as high as the moon.”

“Nothing in this world could break me the way you can, Gerry,”

“We can’t die,” Cal said a little breathlessly. “We’re Bitey C, Wolfman, and Fish Fury.” “You remembered,” Seth gasped. “Of course I fucking remembered.” Caleb scruffed Seth’s long hair

I just want to make sure we’re clear on that before you go making any dumb decisions like falling in love with me.”

We all know how this goes hzhxhjskksns

He was the epitome of the most reckless, soul-bursting love I had ever known.

“I wish you didn’t have to see me like this,” she murmured, and a growl rose in my throat. “I’m poison.” “I’d love you in any form, poisonous or otherwise,”

I’m nothing.” “You are everything,”

“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.”

My twin was my other half. My brother my wings of guidance. My mate my soul-bound love.

“She can’t have anything more from me than pain. I’m all yours. She can’t touch my soul; it’ll be whole and waiting for you when this is over. So let me bleed for you, my Queen. It would be a fucking honour.”

“Is she good to you?” “She’s every good thing I forgot existed in this world.”

True love is built on everything that exists outside of the word. It’s showing up when you’re needed, no matter the inconvenience. It’s knowing someone, truly knowing them, and accepting everything they are even where you differ or clash. It’s making effort despite the differences, it’s apologies when they’re owed and forgiveness even when it feels impossible.

I can bear any pain to the ends of the earth and back for Darcy,

“Blue,” I growled, furious that she would even voice such a future. “I will save you.” “What if it’s already too late?” she said in fear. “Then I will find a way to tear my own magic from my flesh and join you in the mortal world,”

“You always have so much faith in me.” “You’re a queen destined to rule. I knew that the first moment I saw you.” “You spent a long time denying it,” she jibed, and I smirked. “I like to think that me being your asshole professor drove you to greatness.”

I love that they can still joke rn UGH MY BABIES

I love you so much, I don’t know how my heart contains it all.”

I only had a fire Element, but I didn’t need earth to get underground. I’d dig my way to the other side of the world for Gabriel.

I’d had the Heirs, Darcy, Tory, Orion, even crazy-ass Geraldine Grus. They were my family, and some of the best times of my life had happened in The Burrows. It shouldn’t have taken losing everything to realise that.

if the moon and stars offered me one, unconditional wish, it would always be him.

“She is better than me in all the ways that matter,”

Not a single lie was told

Venus is a dirty, conniving, skank bitch who invented unrequited love and thinks it’s funny to fuck with Fae emotions whenever she likes.

Venus smirking back at me from her position in the sky, her glow positively mocking. Whore. “I’m gonna bring the moon with me and we’re gonna fuck you up.”

HES SO UNSERIOUS LMAO

“Forget the mountain,” he said, like he knew. He always knew. I smiled, looking at him and nuzzling his face. “You’re not ever gonna be alone again,” he swore, and my smile reached as high as the moon.

“If you have to go, please be the last one. Please stay until the end. I can’t lose you. Not you.”

“You taste like the earth and sky colliding, but it’s more than that. There’s moonlight in you, and it calls to me like a song in the night.

Oh, woe is me and I am woe.

“The world decided to validate our love the second we were mated, but we loved each other long before that.

“You’re back,” I whispered, relief flooding me, and he carved his fingers through my hair as he held me close. “I’ll always come back to you, Blue,” he promised, taking away the fear in my heart.

“Is that what you want? Marriage, kids, some fairy-tale house? It doesn’t have to look like that, I can paint our picture with whatever brush you choose, and make it look however you imagine.”

“You are the only thing in this world that I’m wholeheartedly optimistic about, Darcy Vega, because I know I’ll fight to death and beyond to keep you.

It didn’t seem real to me that someone with so much fire in their soul could be gone from the world. A part of me didn’t believe it at all.

You and me both

“Are you messing with age-old magic?” I asked sternly. “That’s not very professorly of you.” “Well, it wasn’t very professorly of me when I took a student to my bed either, was it?”

“You are the most precious thing in this world to me.

“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.”

“Cute? Dogs are cute, like your little lap dog, Seth, but I’m-” “Ohmagod,” I gasped, cutting over him. “You just said Seth is cute.”

We had promised never to part, and I couldn’t break that promise. Even if I did turn to stone, I would find a way to walk, to follow her wherever she may go.

It was an unbearable world in so many ways, but so long as she remained in it, it was where I would stay too.

“You’re a useless bird that couldn’t light a match, let alone start a forest fire,”

“Hey, I was a delight to teach,” she said with a grin. “You were a delight to punish,”

I should have known I was his that first moment I saw him, lounging on that red couch, draped in arrogance while he stole the air from every inch of the room. I should have known it when he was taunting and tormenting me, should have known when his eyes trailed me everywhere I went, and when I dreamt of him despite myself night after night. I’d been so fucking blind and so fucking stubborn, but I had been his throughout it all.

He was my friend, and I was his. And there was no truer love in my life than that.

I moved to sit beside him, and he stilled, his eyes shifting to me as a tug on his shadow hand had him caressing my cheek lovingly, the way I had seen my pet do to his blue-haired princess.

She rlly just wants love :(

“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.

“What is it with the self-sacrificing bullshit you men keep throwing at us? We’re fucking princesses born to the most powerful bloodline in the whole of Solaria, the first Phoenixes born in a thousand years, and we claimed all four motherfucking Elements just to put the icing on the cake. We aren’t damsels in distress, we didn’t ask you to do any of this shit, and I’m so fucking sick of having to clean up the mess your knight-in-shining-armour routines keep causing!”

PERIOD

I needed her like I needed air in my lungs, and I was breaking more and more every day that I was forced to remain without her. She was my rock, my sanity, the one thing I had always and would always fight to the death and beyond for, and without her, I was nothing but a ruinous shell of the girl she loved in return.

“Fuck danger,” I snarled, closing in on her. “All I want is you.”

“You were one of the things that made me glow. But now you’re gone, and you took all of my light with you.”

She was it for me and I was for it for her. That one, immovable thing. That tether to the here and now.