Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

“You also swore you’d never see me as your queen,” I murmured to the man who wasn’t here. “So I’m willing to bet that this will make you all kinds of pissed.”

I closed my eyes as I tried to summon him closer, tried to believe he was really there with me for just a few seconds.

“Forgive me, my Queen!” he begged. “Sever my useless head from my neck. Remove my entrails and use them to spell out a curse upon my entire family. Take my eyes and feed them to any rodent you so desire. Chop up my-” “Ew. Dude, stop,”

“No wonder you were such an arrogant ass, if Fae treated you like that your whole life,” I muttered to Darius, but once again, there was no kind of response.

“I’ll swear on the stars not to do that,” I said, though if he knew of my contempt for the glittery assholes in the sky above, he might have realised how thinly I would hold to any word made in their honour.

Oh yeah, this was a great idea, I just got myself all dressed up like a tasty Nymph party snack, then snuck off in the middle of the night without telling anyone where I was going on the word of a man whose mother-in-law knitted herself into a fucking hat. What the hell had I been thinking? I was like…seventy-six percent dead. Fact.

“Don’t blame him for the hell he endured while he was gone from this place,” I said firmly, knowing all too well what it felt like to be forced under the control of someone you hated. And I’d endured a far shorter span of it than he had.

My husband was a Dragon large enough to swallow men whole,

my voice a cold, unfeeling thing as I reined my emotions back in, stomping down on the ones that cut me deepest while burning through those which forced me to feel the loss of him so sharply. I couldn’t fall apart. Not here. Not in front of these people who needed to see nothing but an unbreakable monarch when they looked at me.

“It is death to most who try to wield it.” “I’m not like most people,”

“What does your heart bleed for, Princess of the Flames?”

the golden eyes of a dragon scorching through my soul as they tore my breath from my lungs, seeing me the way no one else had ever seen me, knowing my heart inside and out, owning me, claiming me, ruining me.

“Darius?” I breathed, something inside me wrenching free as a sob caught in my chest and I looked at that all-too-perfect face of his staring back at me from the depths of the scrying bowl. His expression was hard, the image not drawing any memory that I could place, making me wonder if this was real, a view of him beyond the Veil, wherever that might be.

“You promised you’d stay,” I hissed at him, swiping at my cheeks in an effort to banish the tears which were ruining my view of him. “You promised you’d find me,” he replied, a dark and taunting grin on his lips which looked nothing like the smiles I remembered. “Tick tock, Roxy.”

“I can’t follow him into death,” I snarled. “I’m needed here. He’s needed here.”

He seemed so real, like he was right there before me, waiting for me to do something, change something, take something.

I was lost to the memory of Darius, the countless words he’d spoken to me, declarations he’d made tumbling through my mind and drowning me in the loss of him.

Memories of the two of us together in heat and passion and hatred all merged. I couldn’t just recall them; I could feel them. The heat of his skin against mine, the power of his body claiming me, each thrust, each lick of that sinful tongue, every kiss and conquest and burst of pleasure he had ever given me.

It would be a beautiful death, lost in the arms of the man I loved. But not a real one.

“The deepest desire of your heart is not one any can grant.”

image after image from my own memories of flesh claiming flesh. Tattoos slicked with sweat and a wicked grin designed purely to ruin me.

“I still fucking hate you half the time, you know that, right?”

But I was used to feeling lust with that intensity in the presence of the man I loved. The passion that had blazed between us was unrivalled by any other in this realm and all realms. None burned with the intensity which had consumed us, and none could surpass the need I felt for him in all forms.

I gave myself to the heat roaring between Darius Acrux and the Vega princess who he was forbidden to love. Gave myself to the ties I had made between him and myself in life and in death, through marriage and the destruction of our Star bond, through hate, betrayal, vengeance and violence. I was his and he was mine. And as the ghost of him wrapped his hand around my wrist and tugged me closer, I gave up any attempt to remember that this was just a memory playing out in my mind.

I had missed this, missed him so incredibly, and somehow, for this stolen moment in time, he was here, the shattered pieces of me gluing themselves back together, tears of pure joy rolling down my cheeks.

“It’s you,” I murmured, my fingers tracing the length of his jaw, savouring the bite of his stubble as I devoured the sight of him and drank it all in. “Only you.”

“By the stars, I love you,”

“I love you,”

There was only him.

It should have been putting me off, but I was lost to him the way I always had been, my need for him far greater than any shyness or embarrassment I might have felt at the thought of us being watched like this.

he was here and he was mine, and if it only lasted one night, then I’d still take it.

“Is it totally conceited of me to hope you might be waiting for me?” he asked, hesitation, hope and need in his dark eyes. “Yeah,” I agreed on a breath

“But I think I’ve always been waiting for you, so maybe you’re right.”

He was gone. Only the ghost of his touch lingered on my body, love bites and scratches marking my skin like it truly had been real.

I’d sworn that I would do whatever it took, and if that meant fucking the ghost of him in my memories until I passed out, then it didn’t seem like the worst thing that could have been asked of me.

Because we were going to rescue Darcy and the others from The Palace of Souls, we were going to kill that Dragon motherfucker, and once we did all of that, I was going to find the place known as the Damned Forest and keep my promise to the heartless stars once and for all.

I swear to fuck, I almost wish I was gay for the sake of those women alone.” “Almost?” I teased. “Well, I have a pathetically prevalent obsession with cock, but aside from that…”

I’ll admit that I pretty much just gave in to the call of their magic and promised them the world if they would only help me find my way back to him.”

“I may have spent an entire day and night engaging in what could objectively be called a memory orgy where the three of them all lived through a hell of a lot of mine and Darius’s sex life by bringing my memories to life and watching me fuck him repeatedly until I blacked out.”

I honestly don’t know if I was just laying on a stone table masturbating the entire time while the three of them all pawed at me and got their kicks from the show.”

“Aside from you, who effectively fucked all three of them,” I pointed out, and she scowled at me.

“Witnesses who were getting off on it,” I pointed out. “Yeah,” she agreed with a shrug, like that was the least of it. “So what did this orgy get you? A night with him?”

But it was Darius. I would go to the ends of the earth with her to bring him back if that was what it took, no price would be too steep.

“Ew. No. Give me a green Dragon asshole to bleed out in payment and I’ll be all over it, but I’m not murdering a baby bunny. What else?”

He sacrificed himself for a Vega princess, a girl who he had spent months agonising over because of her threat to the Celestial Heirs, and in particular, Darius Acrux.

Finding him under the stars, newly mated to Darcy Vega, watching him kiss her like she was the lifeblood of his soul, like he could no longer see anyone or anything else.

“Oh sure, let’s just go with Tory’s plan. She’s so pretty and has such perfect hair and has magical tits that can-” “Dude, are you in love with your dead best friend’s widow?” Leon hissed in a whisper so loud even the clams in the distant sea could surely hear him. “’Cause that’s fucked up.” “No,” Seth blurted, looking horrified while Tory wrinkled her queenly nose at the suggestion.

“It’s not our fault we’re naturally radiant,” I said. “Naturally arrogant, you mean,” Tory corrected,

She was wearing leather pants, plus a scowl deep enough to cause real bodily damage, and was looking all kinds of badass herself – she just needed to work on her signature pose and she’d be good to go. I could see it now on the front of a magazine. Bitchy Flame Eyes in beast mode.

“You know I can’t leave here without Darcy and Orion. And I know you aren’t going to let all of those people out there die for the sake of staying with me. We can’t all be in two places at once, and I’m not walking out of this palace without my twin. I’ll die here before I abandon her. So you need to go, and you need to go now. There’s no point in trying to argue with me over this,” I said firmly, opening the door with a press of my hand.