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August 29 - October 5, 2025
“Your dick is so hard, Caleb.” Okay, so maybe that wasn’t what she’d said, but that was all I could see right now.
“Can someone speak a language I understand and point me at an enemy so I can kill it?”
She’d lost her star-bound mate, I didn’t wanna be the dick who made her life even more difficult than it was right now. “Sorry,” I murmured, and she shrugged like she didn’t care about my apology, about anything.
“We’ll find Darcy,” I said, knowing that was the only thing that could bring any kind of light back to Tory now.
Tory backed up, looking like she wanted to disappear from the world, and I half expected her to take off and fly away into the sky, only Caleb took hold of her arm and kept her there. Of course he did. Because he was her anchor now. Her rock in a stormy sea.
thinking of my brother and how he should have been a part of that group. The loss of him left me raw and I worked hard to force that thought from my mind, knowing that if I dwelled on it now, I’d break all over again.
Tory’s wings were a blazing beacon of fire, trailing embers through the sky to mark our path and guide everyone on ahead of us all.
I’d seen what had happened to my brother when he’d continued acting like he hated Tory Vega for so long. He could have had so much more happiness in his life if he’d just…if he’d…
Tory jumped down to land on the sand before me, and with one look I could tell she knew where my mind was. She nodded a little, sadness filling her eyes before she moved
“He’s not there,” she said darkly, her eyes moving to the mountain we’d left them all on before she pressed a hand to her heart. “He’s here.”
I rushed forward and wrapped my Nebula Ally in my arms. He clasped me tight, a weighted sigh leaving him. “Hey Noxy.” “By the stars, Orio, are you alright?” I asked, drawing back but keeping hold of his shoulders as I searched his expression.
“Yeah, I hear what you’re saying loud and clear,” Orion said. “You’re Lavinia’s little bitch.”
“Darius never knelt for me either, but I didn’t want him to. Not in the end. All I really wanted was for him to be mine, and I had far less of that than I might have done if I’d just accepted what he was to me sooner.”
“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. “You…mean to take…little old me…as one of your chosen…most honoured…most beloved-”
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.
Like he was there, his chest pressed to mine, our souls linked as one, reaching for each other even through the barrier of the Veil. Could he see me? Was he watching me break for him with knowing eyes, wondering where the girl he had fallen for had gone in the wake of his end?
the scent of him seemed to wrap around me, that smoke and cedar rolling along the back of my tongue and making me think of all the kisses we’d shared from brutal to tender and everything in between.
I looked over my shoulder sharply, almost expecting to see him there, bitching about the golden trinkets which were scattered across my floor and threatening to beast-out if it wasn’t all carefully counted and polished immediately. I shook my head to dispel it of the ghost I was imagining, knowing that no spirit would ever be enough to fill the void in me even if I did find one lurking close to me.
“I am Roxanya Vega,” I called out, the loudness of my voice a harsh break to the peace. “Daughter of the Savage King and the Greatest Seer of their generation. I wish to gain entry to the Library of the Lost.”
Caleb broke a merciless laugh. “I suggest you stop believing in nonsense like that, Princess,” he said, his voice low and rough. “That’s not the way Faery tales go. The endings are always brutal and bloody, and no one walks away from them unscathed. Especially not the main characters.”
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. 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.
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?
Darius Acrux died fighting for the rights of the Fae who he had committed his life to protecting. He was a true and honest man and he fought to bring down a tyrant. We all know the truth which hides beneath the bullshit of these lies, and the citizens of this kingdom are just waiting for the word to rise up and end this reign of tyranny once and for all.
have called myself the master of dramatic arrivals by any means, but I had to admit that the sight of me on my knees covered in lake water, blood, and gore, panting through my exhaustion and clinging to a sword as if it was the only thing capable of keeping me upright in this world, was likely an all-time low.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,”
“I’ve had one hell of a time recently. I’ve been captured and tortured, brutalised and traumatised. I’ve been married and widowed, fought and defeated. And to top it all off, I have been without the other half of my soul for over a week now. To put it lightly, I’ve reached my limit. So I’ve come a long way in search of this place and the knowledge you hold here. I’ve made that journey – and helped you out with what I would call a considerable monster infestation in your lake by the way – and now I’m standing here before you, covered in fuck knows what, my power depleted and my tether on my
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“This might be a good moment for me to interrupt the Savage King’s daughter before she insults every one of you so thoroughly that any sympathy you may have been convinced to feel is long since forgotten.
“She is better than me in all the ways that matter,” I agreed with him, though he was too far from me to hear.
“Maybe try not threatening the people who just agreed to help us, yeah, sweetheart?”
He got it. Knew how fucked up I was inside and how close to the edge I was all the damn time at the moment. Fury was my preferred method of coping, but the chaos of my inner turmoil was a fickle thing, and I couldn’t be certain of the ways it would lash from me when it got too much to handle.
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.
“I would give anything to speak with him one last time, Tory,”
that one soul in particular who had been dragged to the other side before his time, forced to abandon the life he had only just claimed for himself after suffering through misery at the hands of his father for far too long.
“Why do I get the feeling you want to go in there?” Caleb asked as I took a step closer to the narrow gap. “Because I’m a fearless badass and you know it,” I suggested but he just snorted. “More like reckless to the point of idiocy, but sure, let’s squeeze through a creepy gap in a wall where anything could be waiting to drag us into the depths of this place, never to be seen again.” “That’s the spirit.”
the ruby necklace Darius had gifted me, the stone heating with hidden fire, and I drew in a long breath. A breath seemed to brush against my neck, in that curve where it met with my shoulder, precisely where he had taken to kissing me in the mornings when he woke, his body pressing to my spine as he reeled me into the net of him. 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
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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.
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,”
“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.”
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?”
“I am a Vega princess and Caleb is an Heir to the Celestial Council. Solaria is in desperate need of the magic hidden inside these books.”
a flash of memory spearing through me as I remembered what I’d done to her the last time I’d bitten her. The sound of her spine breaking as she fell from the roof of King’s Hollow, 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.
“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.”
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.
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.”
