Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

“If I see anything that can help us, I’ll place it here and keep it from Vard,” I spoke to Orion through the connection of our minds.

I let the first vision rush in, seeing Orion in agony after some terrible torture as I had countless times since I’d arrived in the palace. I let Vard have that, grimacing at the awful knowledge of what Orion had been going through and was still yet to suffer through.

Then, among the pain, the cold, hard floor of the throne room and the torment my Nebula Ally had to endure, a glint of something different caught my mind’s eye, and like a cat before a shard of light, I leapt towards it. I continued to feed Vard the images of blood and terror while carving this other vision out and feeling Orion’s mind shielding it too, offering it extra protection from the hungry Cyclops at my back.

and the look of hope in his eyes gave me more hope than I’d had in weeks. When this moment arose, I could sense the time he would have to find his way in and out of that mysterious place before anyone came searching for him. Hours. Three at least.

his desire to find me and break me free. “You cannot free me this way. The tunnels do not lead to me.”

“Nothing, sire,” Vard snivelled, brushing sand from his knees. “Lance Orion’s future holds only suffering.”

As I was hauled away from Darcy and Orion, I held onto the knowledge that I’d given my friend a vision that could hopefully be of some help, though how he would have a chance to get into those passages, I couldn’t yet see. But perhaps that meant Darcy held the answers, for her fate was shrouded in shadow, and maybe this time, that darkness in her would let in some light.

It took little more than a thought for me to keep the water from touching my skin as I walked with her, and I couldn’t help but think back to our first lesson on water magic when Darcy and I had found such simple control of our power so challenging.

“I thought our inner circle was pretty clear,” I pointed out as she continued the tour. “There’s you-” Geraldine squealed and fell to her knees at my offhanded remark.

“Get up,” I begged her, sheathing my sword, and grabbing her arm as I heaved her to her feet. “You can’t seriously have doubted that we’d want you by our sides through all of this?” I asked incredulously as tears and snot ran freely down her face and she seemed in real danger of hyperventilating.

“Dante Oscura and his family have been loyal to us from the moment we met them,” I said as I thought on it. “I doubt they’ll want to serve the crown long-term if we win this war, but I value their input enough to want them with us while it lasts at least.”

I nodded along, feeling somehow detached from the girl who was being shown around this place, the room I would now own, the bed I would occupy alone without a single thing here belonging to the man I should have shared it with.

The second the door closed, a silencing bubble burst from me and I released a scream so loud that I was surprised the entire building didn’t come falling down on top of my head. This was all wrong. I shouldn’t have been here, sitting in a castle surrounded by beautiful things while my sister was missing. While Darius lay cold and alone on the side of some forgotten mountain.

But now I was here, and I was alone, sitting on the edge of a bed meant for two, a band of metal on my finger binding me to a man who would never again look me in the eyes and call me his.

“You need to keep moving,” he said to me in a low voice, his eyes dark and full of the same pain which was blinding me.

sweatpants. I looked about as queenly as the street thief I’d been before I came to this fucking kingdom, and I was more than okay with that.

I stepped over the treasure which was still spread across the floor, not making any attempt to move it, simply taking reassurance in the fact that it was here, safe, like he would want it to be.

We began to fall, the water rushing up towards us at speed, the motion reminding me of a time long ago when we’d done this very thing before, when our problems had seemed so big and yet now seemed so incredibly small in hindsight.

“Then I’ll break in,” I replied with a shrug. “I’m beyond the point of niceties. Darcy needs me, and the only hope I have of finding her is locked within their precious sanctuary. If they don’t want to help me with that, then that makes them my enemies. And my enemies are forming a nasty habit of ending up as soot.” “Savage,” he commented, the corner of his lips twitching with approval. “Whatever it takes.”

“Feeling bloodthirsty?” Caleb asked as he turned his back to the creatures too, matching my pace and striding on at my side. “That’s pretty much all I feel now,” I agreed. There was a pause before he replied, an acknowledgement of the man we had both loved and lost, a ripple in our reality which would never smooth out. “Good.”

I got off on that feeling, the urge for survival, the desire to fight. It was the one thing that let me know I even wanted to live anymore, the automatic reactions of my body which was stubbornly determined to keep fighting even if inside I felt like I was crumbling.

“Little Red Riding Hood was an Orderist piece of shit murderer who killed her grandma when she found out she was a Werewolf and not a Medusa like she’d believed,” Caleb said, looking disgusted. “We know your pretty little mortal versions of the stories too, but all Fae know that nothing is ever as simple as once upon a time.” My concentration faltered at that weird as fuck version of the story every mortal grew up with, but I was distracted again when the pincer beast thing snapped its claws against my defences.

The endings are always brutal and bloody, and no one walks away from them unscathed. Especially not the main characters.”

“Well fuck that,” I hissed. “I’m fighting on the side of once upon a time, and I’m gonna walk away from this a hero, just like the mortal stories promised.”

I thought of him, of the man I wasn’t allowed to think of, the one who I hated so very, very much and had ended up loving so deeply that the loss of him had destroyed me entirely.

Here I was, this broken, brutal thing, a princess without a crown hunting for a lost girl at the ends of the earth, while monsters tried to eat me and all hope was well and truly lost, yet still I fought to live another day.

Eternally fighting and hurting and hoping that this might just be a bump in the road, an agony I had to endure before the end. But what end could there possibly be that could offer me any light now?

I’d thought grief would be louder than this. It felt like there should have been people screaming, thousands of fists hammering at the walls, thunder cracking through the sky. But if anything, things were quieter. More still.

We were meant to be the lucky ones, the survivors who’d made it through battle. But I had the sinking feeling that the dead were luckier than us. Being left behind while members of our families and friends passed on forever was an unending curse of unfathomable pain.

I didn’t want to smile again, because smiling meant I wasn’t sad anymore, and I should suffer for as long and as deeply as possible. Though I was certain no amount of grieving would ever set the balance of the world right again. They weren’t coming back, and I had the awful feeling that I wasn’t either.

Each of the four immense walls around us held giant carved effigies of beautiful women’s faces which represented the Elements.

DARCY HAS BEEN HERE

“I’m Laini,” she said softly. “I greeted your sister when she visited us.”

“She is better than me in all the ways that matter,” I agreed with him, though he was too far from me to hear.

And if it came down to a question of cost, then I already knew I would pay whatever it took to see the end of Lionel’s rule. I’d already lost almost everything anyway.

“Danger doesn’t get to have anything to do with it. My sister needs me; Solaria needs us. I won’t flinch from a creepy book all forgotten in the dark.” Caleb held my gaze for several seconds, his hesitation melting away at those words and a ferocity taking its place which reminded me that he was one of the most powerful Fae in this entire kingdom. “Whatever it takes,” he said in a low voice, and I swear the lightning-touched scar on my palm tingled at those words. “No matter the cost,” I agreed and together we moved towards the final book.

Not that I had ever tried to escape. Not once we had finally chosen each other. A prickle of sensation rose up the side of my neck, marking my skin with butterfly soft kisses that I could have sworn were trailed with that stubble he never quite shaved off. A sigh escaped me, longing and heartache merging as the ghost of him faded once more, his intention unclear. He’d tell me not to do this. Tell me not to do anything that could end badly or risk my life. But then the asshole would have just done it himself, taking on the risks regardless of the cost that losing him would place on everyone he left behind if it failed.

We stopped before the book and Caleb stilled in that unnatural way only Vampires could manage, almost like he had turned to stone at the mention of the man whose death had destroyed us both. “I don’t think he would have willingly left any of us unless it was the only choice remaining to him. And the one that would save those he loved,” he said slowly.

“This doesn’t feel like he saved me,” I replied, releasing my hold on the ruby pendant bitterly, severing any imagined connection I felt to Darius’s spirit through it and slamming those walls back up around my heart before I could feel any more of the agony which was threatening to consume me. “It feels like he destroyed me one final time. Like this was all some big joke, leading up to the annihilation of everything I was and ever could have been.” “You’re still you, Tory,” Caleb said, reaching for my hand but I shrugged the contact off and reached for the book instead. “No. I’m not. I’m just an echo left behind, a malignant spirit set on revenge, and I’m far beyond the point of salvation. Which means there isn’t anything in this book I won’t use if that’s what it takes to right the wrongs which have been done against me and mine. Do you understand?” There was a threat there, a promise of its own as I drew that line, letting him know that I wasn’t going to back out of anything we found here now. There was no boundary containing me, no leash on my need for revenge. No matter what we found in this book, I wouldn’t be turned from the idea of using it if I could do so to keep the promises I’d made while kneeling in the blood of the man I loved and cursing the stars themselves. Caleb’s gaze was steady as he looked back at me, and I knew then that I wasn’t the only one who had gone beyond the point of salvation. Losing Darius was a burden neither of us could bear without reparat...

I raised my chin and thought of my sister, lost somewhere out there in the wastelands of this world. She needed me and I wouldn’t back down now,

If I could use that power to find my sister, then there was nothing in this world which would keep me from doing so.

Even a destiny mapped out by the stars and drawn into reality by time itself can often be changed. Fate is not the master of this world. Only ether commands the true power, and those who learn to master its call can learn to master the world itself and all those who exist within it.

“You’re a fucking psychopath, you know that?” I muttered and she flashed me a grin that was all bloodlust for a fight. “Says the apex predator.”

the utter fury and betrayal in Darius’s eyes as he realised what I’d done and had commanded me never to come near her with my fangs again. I couldn’t bite her. I wouldn’t.

“Tory, I can’t. I swore an oath to Darius after I hurt you before. You know I can’t-” She punched me so hard, my fucking head wheeled to one side, and I tasted my own blood. “Don’t throw his fucking name at me and talk about promises you made to him. He promised me he’d fight for me. He promised he wouldn’t fucking leave. And look what he did. So don’t go keeping promises to that asshole which will end up getting the both of us killed, when he broke every oath he ever swore by dying on that fucking battlefield and leaving me all on my own.”

The raw pain and heartache in her green eyes ripped at something deep inside of me, but as the weight of several huge bodies collided with the wall of rock beside me, I knew this wasn’t the time to dwell on that.

I did know one thing. Darius had made me swear that oath to protect the woman who stood before me. And he would want me to do anything I could to protect her now too. Which meant I needed to be able to fight.

“We don’t die here,” she said, a queen’s command and for once, I had no problem following it. “Agreed.”

This place was built to withstand the force of any Fae fool enough to try and carve their way free of it. But Tory wasn’t just any Fae. She was a Vega, the most powerful bloodline in known history and a Phoenix too, her magic endless while that fire burned at her back and her will iron as she forced the laws of magic and nature to bend to her will.

The world continued to groan and shudder in protest to her power, and I tried to hide my awe at the incredible magic as she forced a labyrinth built of ancient magic to crumble at her will.

“Thanks so much for your hospitality,” Tory said brightly, striding past them towards the exit where she gave a gobsmacked Laini a salute and struck the call button for the elevator which would return us to ground level at last. “We’ll be sure to visit again soon.”