Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

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.

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.”

because I wasn’t going to leave my other half alone in the world of the living. So death couldn’t have me. But it couldn’t have him either.

He nodded as he realised I wasn’t giving in to this fate, that I wasn’t going to allow the stars to force me from this path. He knew me. And he knew that I wasn’t born to give in any more than he was.

“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.”

“Roxy,” he growled, catching my wrist as I raised two bloodstained fingers. “What will this cost you?” “No cost is greater than the loss of you,”

My legs gave out, but Darius caught me, holding me upright so I could keep going, so I could fulfil my promise to him and my curse on the stars.

“My soul is his,” I said, my words thick with magic as the declaration became an undeniable truth, like it was written into the fabric of the world just as any other law of nature might be. “My heart is his.”

“Let them beat as one,”

“Let them be one,”

“My life is bound to his. His death bound to mine. One heart….” I panted heavily, my legs caving and nothing but Darius’s grip on me holding me upright. “One life…” I collapsed as power ripped me apart from the inside out, but he was there, holding me up, gripping me tight and trembling with the effort it took to do so. He was there. And I would never be without him again.

I hadn’t bound us in death. I had bound us in life and those motherfuckers knew it.

“There is only him,”

There was a cost to this. A cost which I knew I would be forced to pay, but none could surpass my need for him. Just him. Only ever him.

Someone who saw every broken, sharp edge of me and who loved me for every cut it offered them.

One heart. One life. Never to be parted again.

“You’re just a big teddy bear, aren’t you?” I said and it let out a little huff of pleasure as I scratched one of its ears.

My everything. “Hello, wife,”

The true twin to my own now, bound as one by the magic of ether and starlight alike.

“You know I only married you because you were dying,”

my mom, Hamish, Azriel and many others too – they all helped hold the way open for you. They fought back the army of the dead who would have tried to force their way through the rift you carved and made it possible for you to reach me.”

“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.”

There will be a price to pay for bringing you back and the universe knows I won’t allow for it to be taken from our flesh, but that only means it will be carved from something else. And I don’t care. I’m selfish enough not to care about that so long as I have you here with me.

If death takes either of us now, it will collect us both and I’m okay with that.”

“I think you’re my villain too.”

“Do you want me to kneel for you again, my Queen?”

This is the dress of the Queen who owns me heart and soul, and I want to be able to see you in it as often as I can.

There was only him. Now and always. Until our hearts stopped beating and we crossed beyond the Veil once more.

“Is that an order from my queen?” he teased, the deep rumble of his voice against my core almost sending me over the edge. “The first she ever gave me. What will the citizens of her kingdom think of that?” “They’ll wonder why you weren’t capable of doing it without command,”

“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.”

Darius and I had been bad news from the first moment we’d laid eyes on one another, we were toxic, hateful, and limitless. But we were still here, and we wouldn’t be turning from each other now or ever.

“And when you come for me, when I own and destroy your body, you will know right down to the core of you who you belong to, won’t you, Roxy?”

“I’m yours. Always,” I swore, and he growled in approval of that. “Mine,” he agreed in a dark promise, his grip on my hip tightening as he thrust deep inside me. “Always.”

“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.”

“I love you, Roxanya Vega,” he growled, hands roaming up my sides as he withdrew enough to part our bodies and I instantly missed the feeling of him inside me. “I love this freckle right here…” His mouth dropped to my shoulder as he placed a light kiss against it, and I breathed a laugh. “And I love this one, just here…” He moved his mouth lower, placing it against my shoulder blade where my wing would burst from my skin if I shifted, making the sensitive skin there tingle with pleasure.

“I love that filthy mouth,”

“I love the way you call me an asshole,” he said, beating me to it before I could utter the word. “Well, that’s handy, because I’m forced to do it a hell of a lot,” I quipped and he grinned, stalking closer.

“You mean the one I got on your birthday the summer before you came to the academy?” he asked casually, and I gaped at him. “You got that on my birthday?”

“How bored you must have been before I came along to torment you.” “Just a little,”

“So you’re just going to stick to your belief that you waking up on my birthday and heading out to get your biggest tattoo with no pre-planning at all, had fuck all to do with me – even though it depicts my Order and yours in a dance which looks one step away from violence and another away from love?” I demanded. “Just a coincidence,”

his captive, his obsession, his Queen.

We hadn’t slept, our insatiable need for each other and endless reclaiming of what we’d lost keeping us occupied hour after hour. I gave in to all the hopeless want that had consumed me these months, as I buried myself in the obsession which had kept me sane throughout so many horrors.

It felt unreal. Like we couldn’t possibly deserve this after everything we’d sacrificed and yet there we stood, reunited and stronger than ever.

“Just you, Roxy. Only ever you.”

I fisted her hair, yanking her head back as I stole a kiss from her, the blood marking her body making her even more desirable as some power beyond the two of us revelled in the death we’d offered up. She moaned into my mouth as she returned the kiss and I knew she felt it too, this unholy need for violence which was making our joined hearts race with excitement.

My husband

“Holy shit, I heard he was dead,” Milton gasped in alarm. I flexed my fingers and tightened my hold on my air magic before wrapping the monster in it, hurling the thing across the room towards my husband. “He was,” I admitted, a laugh breaking from me