Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

“I lost something out here,” I said, not bothering to raise my voice, sure his Vampire ears would pick it up. “Oh yeah?” he called. “What’s that?” My heart. To you.

This here, was the reason I’d inked a clock on my back with no hands. I wanted time to stop whenever I was with him like this,

AWWWWH

Fuck, I had never in my life wished to be rid of my title and the power I owned, but for him, I almost wished I could give it all up.

“You know what, Lance?” “What, beautiful?” I asked. “Sometimes you’re an asshole.” “Don’t sell me short, I’m an asshole all the time.”

Darius had fallen for everything about me that wasn’t royal long before he’d come to accept my bloodline anyway. For him, I was Roxy. The girl who fought back, the one who brought him to his knees and had forced him to challenge the stars themselves once before already. We’d won that time. So I liked our odds now too.

“Lucky for you, you were a Darius,”

So I closed my eyes as I focused on that tug in my heart. The call of my one true love… Ah shit, being poisoned was making me go all romantic.

So no, I won’t sacrifice myself so that the world can have more of her. I’d rather sacrifice the world itself, just so that I can be there to make sure I see her when she rises up to claim it. By her side, where I belong. Two halves of one fucking whole.

it didn’t matter if I was practically mortal, because I was still a Vega Queen, and I wasn’t even close to finished yet.

“You’d better be watching, sir. Because this fight is for the Vegas.”

“This really isn’t the time for marital bickering,” he warned. “It’s not marital if we’re not married,” I pointed out. “We will be married,” Orion said in a growl. “Says who?” I balked. “Says me,” he snapped. “I will wed you the moment this war is over.” “Oh you will, will you?”

“You will marry me.” “You know, people usually ask someone if they want to marry them, not just command it,” I whispered. “You’re already mated to me by the stars, what’s there to ask?” “Just because we’re mated doesn’t mean you get to skip a proposal.” I shot him a sharp look. “So you’d better ask really, really nicely the next time you bring this up. And I am making no promises that I’ll say yes.”

“Love you.” Orion shot me a wink and I melted for him as always. “Love you back. Let’s get home.” “Where is home these days?” “Wherever our family is,” I said with a tug in my chest, missing them all so damn much. We had to get out of here and find our way back to them.

He was the destroyer of me. The ruination of the girl I’d been and the creator of the woman I had become. He was my one true love, without any help or hinderance from the stars. He was more than my Elysian Mate. He was more than my equal. He was my end. And I was ready to keep the vow I’d made to him all those weeks ago.

“Is this our Titanic moment?”

The room I had been gifted here was beautiful, ornate, perfect, and yet there was little which really spoke of me the way I’d seen the rooms that others here did. I knew why. Because none of what mattered most to me was here. Nothing that made me feel alive resided in this place and no substitution of the reality which I’d lost would ever suffice.

No words escaped her, not a single one and I almost smiled at that. Roxanya Vega left speechless, no venom left to spit, no rage left to break from her. I thought I’d never see the day.

She was mine, my one good thing, the keeper of my heart and the shackles surrounding my soul.

Yet here she was, striding through the barriers of death itself to come for me. Her. Only ever her.

“I pledge myself and all that I am to you, my Queen,” I breathed, emotion wracking my core as those words tumbled from me at last, my place in this world somehow fixing there as if I had found the truth of my own destiny, and all that I had ever needed to be. “I would be your sword to fight your enemies, your shield to protect your people, your monster to own and to wield. I would be yours in any and all of the ways I could be, and I should have told you that a long, long time ago. I am your creature, your servant…yours.”

“You’re Darius Vega now. And you weren’t built to bow to anyone.”

Because I couldn’t step back into life. There was no path leading that way, not for me.

Nonono NOOO

“From the first moment I called you by that name, you looked at me and you knew me. You knew yourself. We just spent too long lying about the truth of that destiny.”

There was only her.

And the only regret I had in death was that I had broken her heart in the end.

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

I’ll wait for you for as long as it takes. And I’ll watch over you, Roxy. I’ll be there even though you won’t see me. I’ll never truly leave you. I swear it. I’ll wait for you even if eternity passes me by while I do. I won’t ever leave you.”

“What will this cost you?” “No cost is greater than the loss of you,”

The thump of Darius’s heartbeat rang out in perfect synchronicity with my own because it was my own. One heart. One life. Never to be parted again.

“You and me weren’t a story that was ready to end,”

“I don’t think that you’re my hero, Roxy,” he said, his hand shifting from the rock beside me as he took my jaw in his grasp and ran his thumb down over my lips before shifting his grip to my throat. “I think you’re my villain too.”

There was only him. Now and always. Until our hearts stopped beating and we crossed beyond the Veil once more.

Darius and I had been bad news from the first moment we’d laid eyes on one another, we were toxic, hateful, and limitless. But we were still here, and we wouldn’t be turning from each other now or ever.

“My obsession with you has been tormenting me from the moment we met and will continue to torment me for the rest of time. I can’t get enough, won’t ever get enough.”

Don’t let the world ruin us. We may be different trees but we’re growing side by side, our branches intertwined forever. You support me and I support you. That’s how it’s always going to be. Because that’s what sisters do.”

When all hope hinges on a promise forged of lies, Beware the threaded minds of blood and chaos. Unlikely friends and broken bonds may shift the tide, Cleave open the walls of the lost in the depths of the unholy night. Unleash the souls tethered in the tainted dark, Unite the rising twelve and toll the bells of fate.

“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.”