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August 29 - October 5, 2025
My twin had been left to fight back on the battlefield, and I should have been with her until the end. If I ever got to return to her in this world as someone whole, I would never, ever leave her side again.
you are a Vega. Your blood is royal and more powerful than anything you can imagine. You can move the sky if you want it enough, but you must banish all doubt from your heart, because it will steal that power from you. Do you understand me?”
“We love you, Roxanya and Gabriel to the depths of our hearts,” he said fiercely, the words resounding through the fabric of my being, stitching together some long broken thing. “Always and forever,” my mom confirmed, and tears welled in my eyes. “I love you too. Please stay,” I pleaded, but the vision was already fading. “Remember to own your actions. When wielding a weapon greater than any should call their own, only the strength of your heart can guide it, only the power of your will can contain it. Know yourself and own every piece of who you are. I am sure you won’t ever fail the way I
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Every soft part of me had hardened into this violent shell of the girl I had been with Darius.
I had no desire to rise from it without him to stand with me.
there was one, single thing which kept me here on this cursed earth. One thing which stayed my hand when I thought to take that blade and drive it through my own heart, so that I could make the pain inside it stop and follow my one great love into the beyond. Darcy was out there somewhere. My other half. My soul. My twin.
“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.”
He was mine and I was his. That wouldn’t change even with the shadow of death hanging between us, keeping us apart. There is only him. Endlessly. Always.
hating him and loving him, fighting against the crown I’d been born to claim, then fighting for it in turn. None of it had come to anything if this was the fate we’d been dealt.
Let them watch. I wouldn’t do them the favour of looking back. I would only turn my eyes to them when their time came, and they would feel the wrath of the creature I had become when I did so.
My throat thickened as I recognised the expensive lace of the dress I’d worn to marry the man who now lay dead out on that battlefield. The man who I had stolen back from the stars only to have them spit in my face as they tore him away again so much more permanently than before. Married and widowed in the same day.
My grip tightened on the sword I’d claimed from the depths of the battlefield as I considered it, climbing back up to that hill where I’d left the body of the man I burned for and taking that step to follow him. It would be so easy. And didn’t I deserve easy after all I’d suffered through in this world?
I dropped to my knees beside the body of the woman who had become so important to me. She had been the closest thing to a parent I had ever really known, and I hadn’t ever told her that. I hadn’t told her how much I’d needed the kind of love she offered me so simply, or how much she had come to mean to me in the time we’d spent together. She had become something to me which I’d only ever dared to dream of in the most secret corners of my heart. Catalina Acrux had been my family and now she lay dead alongside the man she’d finally found love with upon a battlefield of slain Fae who I should
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I wouldn’t leave him here either, no more than I would say goodbye. Because this wasn’t goodbye. I would never utter that word to the keeper of my heart, and I would never relinquish the promise I’d made to him with the blood cut from my veins mixed with his own, which I’d taken from the wound that had stolen him from me.
my one and only decree would be to seek out the end to all who had crossed me, and make them scream as they were forced to bow at my feet.
The loss of Darius was suffocating me, the memory of him laying so still on the ground tearing a rift through my chest. He was my best friend, and I loved him more deeply than he had ever really known. We were brothers, raised together and meant to live life side by side. Even when he’d told me about the deal he’d made with the stars for a year of life, I’d been determined to believe there was a way for him to avoid death. But it had come for him even sooner than he’d planned, and now I was left without him, and it was like I’d had a piece of my lifeforce stolen away forever. They’d given him
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I had to make it through this for her. My final light. The girl who was worth a thousand years in hell. I’d wait that long and more if I could be sure I would one day return to her, and that she would be safe, protected from all the darkness of the world.
He was my pillar of certainty when the rest of the world was crumbling, the man who had stood by me after I’d lost everything. He had been one of the few things in this world worth waking up for after I lost Clara, and it had nothing to do with Lionel’s Guardian bond, it was because Darius was a brother chosen for me by fate. He was one of the only good things in this forsaken world the stars had offered me, and now they’d taken him away without even offering me a chance to say goodbye.
“Darius Vega is the greatest Dragon who ever lived,” I spoke loud and clear, making Lionel fall deathly still. “What did you just call him?” he asked venomously, danger thick in the air. “He married Tory. She is more powerful than him, so that made him a Vega,”
I thought of Blue and held her there in my mind before raising my hands above my head. She was the greatest gift I’d ever received, but all gifts had a price. I should have known my debt to the stars wasn’t yet paid. But if anyone deserved this sacrifice from me, it was Blue. She loved me with the fury of a night storm, and I was going to honour that love down to every last raindrop.
If that was destroyed, then would my mate even want me anymore? If I became a shell of a man with nothing to offer the girl who deserved the universe, what would happen to us? Would I even be a match for her in the eyes of the stars?
Through this suffering I might be destroyed, but she would be saved. So I would be a willing sacrifice on the altar of our love.
“If you wish to do more than wet the weeds with your tears sweet Sofia, please go and help that fellow search. I will do all I can to aid my dear brother until you return with what he requires.”
I felt it then. A severing of something vital within me. Before my gaze even fell from the utter, broken grief in her green eyes to take in the three huge objects which lay behind her. Three coffins carved of ice.
my Queen Tory’s dear love, her fierce and gallant man brought to the gates of the stars by his monstrous flesh and blood. Her dear Dragoon, Darius.
She was steel, hard and cold and unmovable in her grief. It had destroyed her, this loss. I could see that, see the way it had carved something vital from her soul and left her barren without it, unable to so much as feel the wind on her cheeks as the pain in her took precedent over all.
Broken. My queen, my lady, my dear friend had been broken by all she had now survived, and as I looked into that darkness in her eyes, I had the terrifying feeling that there was nothing on this earth that could ever fix her again.
The truth was, I didn’t know how to do any of this. I was just a lost princess who had grown up in the wrong place and now stood before them after losing almost everything I held closest. I was broken. I could feel the reality of that deep within the cracks which had shattered through me after all that had been destroyed on the battlefield. But I was still standing here before them.
not allowing my eyes to turn towards the coffin which contained Darius Acrux, the man I had hated and loved so eternally. This is not our end.
I was here and somewhere utterly else at once, and I didn’t think there was enough of me left to try and reunite those pieces, even if I’d had half a mind to attempt it.
“It’s to remember the oath I made with his blood and mine, to the stars who sat by and watched this fate play out,” I growled low in the back of my throat.
But I refused to let them surface, instead focusing on the memory of eyes as dark as sin itself, and the love of a man I had barely begun to claim as my own, the echo of his touch escaping me all too soon.
But I wasn’t powerless. I was Roxanya Vega.
Oh man, I’d fucked up big time when it came to him. Was this really how we went out of the world? I was meant to have eternity to figure shit out with him, but now it felt like there was a ticking clock above my head and we were down to our final seconds.
“Death was always gonna be the last one we faced. And if it’s now, then that’s far sooner than I wanted. Fuck, I thought we had forever. I thought the four of us were invincible when I was a kid, pretty sure I still felt that way until now.”
But just in case the stars have other plans, then I want you to know I’m fucking privileged to get to face it with you,”
“Maybe there’s more adventures waiting for us beyond the stars,”
By the moon, I loved that face, every inch of it. He was one of the best friends I’d ever had. He was the glue that held us all together, the one who made everything alright. And it had nothing to do with his Siren gifts. It was him. Purely him. His loyalty knew no bounds, and he would walk from one end of this universe to the other for his brothers. His family. I’d damn well do the same for him too.
He nodded to me, no words needing to pass between us. It was an acknowledgement of all we’d ever been to one another, and a promise to follow each other into whatever came after death.
I was too angry for subtle, too full of rage for calm, I had no patience for clever, nor the time for caution. I was fury given wings, grief given strength and power given life. Whoever awaited us in that place would be better off running than trying to stand against the hell I brought with me now.
I wanted to feel this. I wanted an outlet for the fury in me. So if I had to carve my way through every single creature who had sworn allegiance to Lionel Acrux before making it to him, then I would do so. And I didn’t give a fuck what fate had to say on the subject.
Tory moved like a viper, striking left and right, ducking the fierce blows of her assailants before driving her gleaming sword into their chests.
Tory was locked in battle with the Nymphs to our right, holding them back through fury and violence alone.
“I thought we were goners. Real, for true goners,” Seth said. “We can’t die,” Cal said a little breathlessly. “We’re Bitey C, Wolfman, and Fish Fury.”
I threw my arms around him as the reality of that sunk in. One less name on my list of the lost. Three less in fact. And as Seth bounded over and threw his arms around the two of us with a bark of relieved laughter, I let myself hold them tight, my wound singing with pain as they crushed me between them, my heart feeling lighter than it had since I left that battlefield behind.
I had people who needed me and an oath to fulfil.
“Remember that time I peed on you?” he sighed nostalgically. “Who would have thought we’d end up here, Wolfman and Bitchy Flame Eyes striding into yet another adventure side by side with Fish Fury and Batty Betty bringing up the rear-” “Remember the time I punched you in the dick because of that time you peed on me?” I asked in return, and he frowned in confusion just before I swung my fist towards his crotch.
My heart sank as she took that distraction from me, the physical pain having been a welcome reprieve from the agony raging within my soul,
“I was a thief long before I set foot in Solaria,” I said simply. “And nothing has ever stopped me from claiming my prize before.”
I thought of every horrific story Darius had shared with me about his upbringing, of every punch and kick, every lesson and punishment. I thought of the man who had been forged within this hell, his heart brave and true despite all he had endured.