Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

“Nothing in this world could break me the way you can, Gerry,” I admitted roughly. “Nothing could make me falter or blink other than the need to protect you. I can’t watch them lash you to this thing with us. It would rip the last pieces of me free of my body and destroy them more certainly than anything else.”

“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.”

“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.”

The memory of him was like a burn that wouldn’t heal, the pain of it constant and flaring into agony with little to no provocation. It stole my breath, stole my capacity to go on and it left me with nothing at all aside from the desire to douse the fire that had caused it before I headed into the flames myself and begged for them to end me too.

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.”

“But I think I’ve always been waiting for 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.”

The wind stirred around me, fingers ghosting along my arm, and I closed my eyes as I tried to lean into that fictitious feeling of him.

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.

“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.”

That kiss was hello and goodbye, a bittersweet reunion, and a promise of everything we should have had. It was a breath of life into the silent cavity of my chest, a wordless plea for me to return to her, for the world to somehow make sense again purely because we were together.

Even as I felt the heat of her skin against mine, there was no denying the coolness that came from me. Even as my lips devoured hers and she released a sound so full of love and hurt that it burnt me, there was something still dividing us. I inhaled her air, and she consumed my soul, but that line remained. It remained, and it grew until our kiss broke apart and we were left staring at each other, facing the fact of our reality.

“Roxy,” I rasped, the feel of her so hauntingly perfect as I drew her into my arms, the warmth of her fire breathing the echoes of life into my lungs as if it were real, as if we might truly have been standing on the precipice of a future together.

Rose petals fell from the sky, dropping against her skin and coating her in them until she was clad entirely in their blood red colour, her wedding dress appearing on her as I was gifted a moment reliving that unreal memory when she had given herself to me entirely, beyond all reason, utterly mine, no matter how little I had deserved it.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” I breathed though I couldn’t mean it, not really. Not while she was there in my arms, real, and raw, and beautiful, her heart thrumming with all the life we should have lived together, the thump of it against my hollow chest almost making me feel like my own heart still pounded within me, the way it always had for her. “You know I can’t leave this place.”

and I looked into her green eyes, trying to show her what she was to me, what she had been. My salvation. I would have died a thousand deaths to be gifted this moment in her arms, to look at this perfect creation and see so much love for me burning within her. She had tried to deny death itself for me. There was only her.

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. And still she’d loved me. She’d been the only one who ever could have looked at all of the darkness in me, who could have seen beyond what I had done and found something worth loving within it. She’d been forged for me by something so much more powerful than fate. And the only regret I had in death was that I had broken her heart in the end. I hadn’t been able to keep my promise. And though I’d tried, I’d fought to get back to her with all I had from the moment I’d found myself here, I knew that there was no going back. This was goodbye. And the song was ending. “I love you, Roxanya Vega, and I wish I could have been worthy of you.”

“I’ll wait for you,” he swore to me. “Right here. 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.”

“You are going to fight this,” I ordered him. “You will fight it with all you have and if the price of that fight is the end of us both then I will gladly take that over death or life without you.”

“I’m looking at the woman who crossed into death for me,” he replied, his tone rough with a reverence I didn’t deserve. “The woman whose heart found it possible to love me even though I could never be worthy of it. You cursed the stars themselves for me and forced them to bend to your will. You risked dark magic and death before your oath was fulfilled, you bound your own heart to mine so that you could haul me back here to you.”

“I’d kill a thousand enemies if it brought me to this,” Darius rumbled in my ear, like he could tell what I was thinking without me needing to voice it. “I’d paint myself in blood and stain my soul beyond repair. Anything to bring me here, anything to have you in my arms like this.”

“Before the stars ever got to have a say in it, I would have picked you for my own,” he told me, his words interspersed with kisses to the side of my face, my jaw, my neck. “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.”