Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

This book is dedicated to all those who have drowned in the depths of loss, with memories clutched in your fist like fragments of the sun. May you be brave enough to peer between your fingers, so they might shine again.

“Your soul is bound to mine,” I breathed against his mouth, even though I knew he was no longer there to hear my words, but a dark and unknown energy seemed to stir the air itself at that vow. “And I won’t rest until I make every star in the heavens fall for trying to cleave us apart.”

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

Because we don’t need glory. We only need to know that we are fighting for what is right.

I was fury given wings, grief given strength and power given life.

“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.”

“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. You’re my Source and nothing is going to change that. I don’t want to claim anyone else, this is mine and it’s all I crave.”

All things begin and end with the Element of water, it is life just as it is death, power, and purity. It is both ambivalent and altruistic. Beware the power of washing your soul clean in its icy depths, for once you have taken the plunge into the life of aqua, you will never again be the same.

He leered over me, and I was swallowed by the menacing existence of him, his power an aura I could feel wrapping around my lungs and squeezing tight. “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.”

Two Phoenixes, born of fire, rising from the ashes of the past. The wheel of fate is turning, and the Dragon is poised to strike. But blood of the deceiver may change the course of destiny. Beware the man with the painted smile who lingers close to your side. Turn the scorned. Free the enslaved. Fear the Bonded men. Many will fall for one to ascend. Suffer the curse. The hunter will pay the price. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Keep the broken promise. Mend the rift. All that hides in the shadows is not dark. Blood will out. Seal your fate. Choose your destiny.

It was a crescent moon with a wolf perched upon the curve at its base while a bat hung from the curve above, their faces angled towards one another, but they were just out of reach. Within the moon was a clock with no hands, only a ring of numbers and shattered cogs spilling from beneath it in a beautiful pattern.

Phoenix fire erupted wherever my feet fell, the entire world bursting into flames at my back, and I let it all burn.

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.

She had a world waiting for her and a destiny so great that even the stars weren’t certain of it yet. She’d been born to topple mountains and make the stars quake; she’d been born to ruin and rise.

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

She was my light when I had been so lost in the dark. She was the mirror she made me face, the truth I needed to see.

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.