Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

The only pause I made was to gather things from his old bedroom, treasured photos of him with the Heirs and Xavier as they grew up, a few of him and Catalina too. They were the only hint of joy that had been found in this place, and I left everything else to the flames as I headed further into the house.

I closed my eyes as I felt the ghost of him beside me, the man I loved come to witness the destruction of this nightmare. Either my mind was splitting apart with my grief, or I was simply hallucinating from the smoke inhalation, but I could have sworn I felt the brush of his lips against my neck, his powerful body pressing to my back as his arms encircled me.

I smiled up at the sky. For him. The man who I loved so fiercely and who I felt so close to me then, like he was watching me burn the world down and cheering me on as I did it.

Long live the motherfucking Queens.

she’d turned her hollow gaze on me, and even though she didn’t seem to have the words to say what was haunting her, I knew.

I felt it. I felt the emptiness in the world and the echoing void which would never be filled, its arms open wide as it beckoned me close, and I shook my head as I fought the urge to back away.

Tory’s green eyes swum with emotion and I looked into them deep, finding nothing but pain and darkness there. Loss and sorrow.

There was no world that I could conceive of without him in it. The four of us were blood-bound brothers, we would remain that way until the end of our days which would not come any time soon.

none of them were him. None held that swagger, that arrogance, that damn immortal presence which couldn’t possibly have been torn from this world.

we broke. The four Celestial Heirs no more, a future we had been groomed for our entire lives torn from beneath our feet, and our brotherhood shattered in the most unthinkable way.

“Darius gave everything for this war! He gave everything for love and the hope of destroying the man who made his life hell for every moment that we knew him. And we just stood by and did nothing. We knew what Lionel was doing to him in that fucking manor. For years we knew, even if he couldn’t tell us outright, and we did nothing

Mine. In here, right now, he was mine, and I didn’t care what that meant for after. I didn’t care that this wasn’t the same for him as it was for me because he was submitting to it, giving me what I craved and letting me fall for this pretty lie while I worked to bury myself in it.

I looked to the girl who had been my friend, lover, enemy and so much in between, but I struggled to recognise much of the person who lived within those deep green eyes now.

The challenge hung in the air, an offer I could tell Tory wouldn’t back down from. She was hungry for a fight, hunting for an outlet for all the pain and fury she was keeping contained so deeply within her. She may have been hiding it convincingly from the world, but to those who knew her well enough, that agony was clear to see in the vacancy of her eyes.

The girl who could be queen stood, turning from the room despite the protests of my mom and the other Councillors, not even giving a shit as she turned her back on them and offered up that insult before striding from the room.

“I don’t accept this fate,” she said simply. “I refuse it, and I refuse the guidance of the stars over my life.”

“I cursed them,” she replied simply, like there was anything simple about that idea. “Each and every one of them. I cursed them and I swore to rip my fate from their clutches no matter the cost to me or my soul. I’ll see them burn, Caleb. And I’ll find him again in this life or the next before I’m done.”

“Then I offer myself to you,” I swore in a low and steady voice, whispering my next words because they felt so important. “In any way that I can be of service to you in fulfilling that vow, I offer it. Through blood, duty, honour, or sacrifice, I am yours to command in pursuit of this end.”

“There isn’t a depth I won’t fall to for this,” she warned me, and I nodded. “Then I’m ready to fall at your side.”

Long live the motherfucking Queens.

Darius Acrux Named Among the Executed Traitors in The Battle of The Great King’s Rise, by Gus Vulpecula.

Darius Acrux was one of the strongest people I knew, he was a warrior, a creature as powerful as a deity. And more than that, he was my friend, and my sister’s star-bound mate, her husband. “No, no, please. It can’t be true.”

I couldn’t contain the hurt I felt over losing the man I’d come to love as deeply as a brother, and it was only stoked by the pain I knew my twin was feeling out there somewhere. I should have been with her through this. I couldn’t stand the thought of her facing this alone.

I yearned to be with Tory more strongly than I ever had in my life, and the torment that caused me was unimaginable. She might as well have been an entire universe away for how impossible it was to reach her now. She was no doubt suffering under the weight of a grief so fierce, it must have felt like the sky was falling down on her.

He might have been younger than me by a few years, but our friendship had always been encouraged since we were kids. I’d seen him take his first steps, had caught him when he’d fallen, and he’d always been one of the best friends I’d ever had. I couldn’t explain it, but it was like we were meant to be friends,

“I’d love you in any form, poisonous or otherwise,” I said, reaching for her, but she recoiled from me further, and hurt slashed through me. “Look at me,” I commanded, but she didn’t. “Blue

I would love him here and now, tomorrow and always. Wherever I went, wherever the stars took me, that love would never die. Even if I did.

“Darius, if you’re watching all of this, then I really hope the stars have told you their plans, that this is all just a storm that’s about to clear up so I can see blue sky again. And if that’s true, is there any chance you could send me a sign?”

Darcy had to be saved, and I had to find a way to get her back to Tory, because together those two were the only answer Solaria had now.

“Blue,” I growled, furious that she would even voice such a future. “I will save you.”

“Then I will find a way to tear my own magic from my flesh and join you in the mortal world,” I said, the words falling easily from my tongue. “Where you go, I will follow. Have I not made that clear enough to you yet?”

“When we get out of here, I’m going to have you like this every damn day,” I said heavily. “Because I spent too much time at the academy being cautious, letting time slip by where I didn’t see you at all. We’re gonna fuck, and laugh, and love each other, and I’m gonna make you smile from the moment you wake up in the morning to your last moments of wakefulness at night.”

“We’re gonna make it to that future, beautiful.”

No one took a member of our family and got away with it. I’d grown up in the roughest city in Solaria, I’d

my fingers brushing against the ice of the coffin to my left, my head turning that way as I looked to him for an answer I knew I wouldn’t get.

It was a certain kind of agony coming here, lying with him without truly being with him at all. There was no answer, no sense of him in the heavy presence that accompanied the cold body in those walls of ice. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t anywhere anymore.

“God, I wish I could hate you the way I used to,”

The shattered pieces of me cut deeper with every step, like I was abandoning him or failing him with each moment that passed without me doing anything which would help me keep the promise I’d made to him.

My sister was out there somewhere, needing me and lost in the dark, and I had no idea how to even begin the hunt for her.

There was no chair left vacant for Darius. I stilled, a lump rising in my throat as my hands curled into fists at my sides, fire racing along my limbs and begging to be set loose.

I hadn’t been up for playing the role of pampered princess before the world had fallen apart at my feet, and I wasn’t going to start pretending now.

“A controlled outburst,” I pointed out. “A control which I have never once let slip the way you’re allowing your power to burst from its dam right now. If I had, then there would likely be a lot of dead corpses smouldering in my wake at all times.”

“I felt them dying all around me,” he breathed into my ear. “They were afraid and in pain, but all of them, each and every one, was proud to be fighting this fight for you and your sister. For a better world.”

“Vengeance, death, to find my family and to refuse the fate dealt to me and my husband.”

“Darius became a Vega the morning of the battle,” Xavier murmured in explanation, grief making his voice catch as he spoke. “I’ve never seen him as happy as he was when he took those vows.”

The ruby pendant hanging around my neck seemed to heat against my skin as I battled to keep control of myself, my fingers moving to touch it, and I could have sworn I felt an imposing shadow moving over me. A shiver ran down my spine, the scent of smoke and cedar filling my lungs as I inhaled, and I swear I could almost feel-

“There’s a bunch of Dragon treasure that belonged to Darius too – we left that in your room for you.” My heart twisted at the gesture, no words coming to my lips to convey how much I appreciated that act.

hey man, maybe we should talk about how you made me come so hard I nearly blacked out the other night? Or, hey bro, remember how I said we were BFF BJ buddies, well I’m actually so in love with you that I wanna tattoo your name on my cock, and I know you won’t ever feel that way about me, but hooking up with you is slowly breaking my heart because I know I can never truly, really have you.

I just wanted to remain furious at Darius, because the second I let the mask slip, I was gonna have to feel it all. The loss, the pain, the grief. I didn’t want it. I wasn’t strong enough to survive it. But despite how much I tried to escape it, I still fell into a chasm of despair that I doubted I’d ever escape from.

I’d already had the best pack I could imagine. I’d had the Heirs, Darcy, Tory, Orion, even crazy-ass Geraldine Grus. They were my family, and some of the best times of my life had happened in The Burrows. It shouldn’t have taken losing everything to realise that.