More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
knew better than to push her, so I simply tightened my grip on the brother I had claimed for my own.
“Take my hand and find me here. I live in the wind and grass, my dear. So when you need me, call my name. You’ll feel me close within the rain. For I, for I, for I, will wait beyond the Veil for you. But please, my love, don’t wait for me. My time is done, my seeds are sown. So live a life of joy and love, and I’ll be watching up above. The greatest show has just begun, my seat is taken, my song is sung. I’ll smile with every smile you take, I’ll laugh with you when times are great. So live for me, and live for you. I’ll see you in the star’s lagoon…I’ll see you in the star’s lagoon.”
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.
And Lionel Acrux may have sat his scaley ass on my father’s throne, but he is nothing but a serpent perched on a pretty seat. I don’t bow to him or his false crown. Do you?”
“No war is won in a single battle,” I went on. “No kingdom claimed with one fight. And though we may have bled for our cause on that field of chaos and carnage, they bled for it too. We cut them in that fight. We made them bleed for us and a thousand tiny cuts can kill just as surely as a single blow to the heart. So I say we keep cutting Lionel Acrux and his shadow bitch bride in every way we can. We cut and slice and carve them up and we keep fighting and fighting them until the bitter end, when I know in my soul that we will claim more glory than any of us ever dared wish for!”
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.
“No one leaves,” I said firmly. “No one uses an Atlas – can something be done to ensure that?” “A magical charge can be sent through the entire camp at the exact voltage needed to destroy any such items which anyone here might have been hiding. Would you like me to set some aside for use by your inner circle?” “Yes,” I decided. “Give a selection to Tyler Corbin. He can work on making sure they’re secure before we consider distributing them again.”
I wasn’t going to take Hamish’s place at the head of this group. I wasn’t going to be the one who led the rebels to their next hideout and planned what battles we may face or how best to strike back. At least not right away. There were things I had to do, things which I didn’t have time to spend discussing with anyone, and things which I refused to bow out of just because I was a figurehead at the prow of this army.
“Darius Acrux is a loss all of us will bear with great sadness,” Dante murmured softly and something akin to a knife twisted through my heart at the sudden change to our conversation and the sound of that name. “His sacrifice for this cause will go down in the history of Solaria and never be forgotten. A morte e ritorno.”
Dante released me and I sagged back in the bath, milky water sloshing over the edge. I withdrew my hand and looked at the scar which now adorned my palm. The skin was raised and reddened, tiny lines spreading out from it across my hand where the electricity had spread away from the wound just a little.
It was raw, savage, beautiful. And it cut through both my heart and lifelines, defying any foretold expectations fate may have had for me, leaving me free to set my own destiny from this moment on.
“When all hope is lost, and the darkest night descends, remember the promises that bind. When the dove bleeds for love, the shadow will meet the warrior. A hound will bay for vengeance where the rift drinks deep. One chance awaits. The king may fall on the day the Hydra bellows in a spiteful palace.”
But I wasn’t powerless. I was Roxanya Vega.
The fire had replenished my magic to its brim, and I was itching for a fight. This would be the start of the end, and I wasn’t ever going to back down again.
Her hair, which had been a bland and forgettable colour before, had been dyed a deep, blood red, the furious set to her features letting me know that it was a promise of its own, to see the blood of her enemies spilled in payment for the losses she’d suffered in that battle. It suited her, the colour matching with the fire which burned unwaveringly within her soul, bright and brutal and wholly her.
“Then I am coming with you. My Maxy boy awaits me, and I shall bay for vengeance on behalf of my dear Daddy while ripping the throats from our enemies as we retrieve him.” The fire in her eyes brokered no arguments, and I found my chest compressing with relief as I gazed into the eyes of my dearest friend.
Me, him, Max and Darius. It had always been the four of us, and it would be the same when we ended up beyond the Veil.
Caleb’s pupils dilated and he fell on the wound ravenously, unable to fight the pull of his Order. My gaze turned to Max, and I found him watching me with all-knowing eyes, a goodbye forged upon his face. 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.
“Yonder, my Queen!” Geraldine bellowed, her arm outstretched before her as she pointed to some spot on the horizon which I wasn’t able to make out.
Maybe that was the gifts of her canine eyesight, or just her instincts, but I wasn’t going to question her either way.
I was fury given wings, grief given strength and power given life.
“Oh, in the valley of the fruit of my loins, sweet Petunia shall rise and claim her salmon,” Geraldine
“What tangled tentacles have you gotten yourself coiled in, Maxy Boy?” Geraldine growled, her Cerberus rattling in her words like the beast inside of her wished to break free.
“When the opportunity presents itself can you shield everyone who counts with your water magic?” I asked, looking to my greatest friend and Geraldine’s eyes sparked with a wild, depraved kind of excitement as her blood red hair whipped out behind her in the wind. “By golly, I’d say I can, milady.” “Good.”
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.
“Get it, Gerry!” my dear, sweet ocean boy called to me, and I ran toward him, flail a-swinging. Oh bless my moonstones, I had missed him something fierce.
“Never fear, young brother of the Callyfang!” I called to Hadley. “I am your rescuer, your knightess in gleaming breastplate!”
“I am Geraldine Gundellifus Gabolia Gundestria Grus, and I shall return these shadows from whence they came in the name of my father and his love for Catalina!”
My gaze fell on my Maxy boy, and my heart was clad in sun steel as I focused on this valiant man who had proved he was not a cad, but a gentleFae with the deepest ocean of love in his heart. I would claim him this day, and nevermore would I seek the loins of another codfish.
For he was my one true salmon, and the rivers of our destiny were wide and flowing toward an eternal horizon.
“The Vega line runs true,” Melinda Altair breathed from her position across the altar, and I could hear the awe in her voice as she watched one of the girls who had been born to sit upon the throne fight with such incredible power.
“Five minutes,” I said, cringing away from the presence closing in on us and drawing the power of my gifts back to me. “If we’re lucky.” “Luck has nothing to do with this roll of the dice, sweet salamander,” Geraldine cooed
She was magnificent. Blood splattered and furious, a queen in no need of a crown, her hair a river of blood red, come here like some avenging angel, fighting against hopeless odds without so much as a flinch of fear.
“Nothing in this world could break me the way you can, Gerry,” I admitted roughly. “Nothing could make me falter or blink other than the need to protect you. I can’t watch them lash you to this thing with us. It would rip the last pieces of me free of my body and destroy them more certainly than anything else.”
I shall not yield this position to any but death,
I couldn’t allow for any other fate. Not for her. She was my everything.
A flare of power brushed against mine, as familiar as a summer breeze and ten times as powerful. My father’s Siren spell, his gifts scorching a path alongside my own towards the girl who fought to free us as the Nymphs closed in. She wasn’t going to stop. Not even to defend herself. The rift was almost closed, and I knew that she would sacrifice her own life to see it shut if that was what it took.
The Nymphs screeched, unleashing their rattles as Geraldine took a pouch from her pocket and stuffed a handful of aconite into her mouth before ripping through her clothes as she shifted and fell from the sky right into the midst of the hellish creatures. Her armour shot away from her in every direction, Athena yelling in fright as the pointed breastplate damn near impaled her. Hadley caught hold of her, yanking her tight to his side and kicking the piece of armour away from her like it had been him it had almost taken out.
Her green gaze took in the empty patch of air which had held the rift and she smiled in a feral, terrifying way that instantly made me think of the Savage King who had sired her. “Now, Geraldine!” she cried, the voice of a queen breaking over the sound of battle.
With a shuddering gasp, Geraldine maintained the shield for a few more seconds before stumbling to her knees, the water washing away in a great wave as it melted, revealing the princess of flames who stood among a pile of ash beyond it.
My lips parted as I took in the destruction that Tory had woven with her power, not a Nymph in sight and the closest wall of the enormous manor house which had stood at our backs reduced to rubble too.
Tory Vega stared back at us with her chest heaving and blood still frozen to her side from that massive wound. More cuts and bruises were revealed across her skin as she released her hold on her Phoenix and the fire guttered from her body, her wings disappearing with it, leaving the girl I knew standing in place of the creature of legend we had all just witnessed wielding power beyond all measure. “Stars save us all,” Antonia Capella murmured, her eyes moving to the blue sky overhead as if she might see through the rising dawn to the glimmering entities above.
“Gerry, where are your-” I began, but she cut me off as she caught hold of the back of my neck and propelled me against her body. Her other arm banded around my spine and before I’d fully realised what was happening, I found her dipping me backwards as she claimed my mouth with her own, and I clung to her like a damn barnacle on the hull of a ship.
“Put this on,” I snarled, thrusting the shirt into her face while she sighed loudly like I was nothing but a burden set on this world to torment her. “You and your worries about my wandering petunia will be the end of me one of these days,” she grouched,
“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.” “You remembered,” Seth gasped.
“So,” Dad said, a quirk to his lips and the shift in his mood alerting me to the object of his attention as I glanced over my shoulder towards Geraldine. “It’s the Grus girl then, is it?” “Yeah,” I replied as I watched Geraldine bark orders at anyone close enough to follow them, her upper lip curling back in a canine snarl of distaste as she picked up her breast plate which had landed in a puddle of black blood. “It is.”
Through a curtain of dark hair, I watched Geraldine free the Heirs and their families, offering them healing magic while replenishing her own by chewing on some aconite leaves she’d had in her pocket.
It had never been a home. Not to Catalina or Xavier or…him. This place had been a prison of the worst design. I doubted even all that Darius had shared with me, and what Catalina had implied, came close to a full account of the horrors Lionel Acrux had inflicted upon the three of them while they were trapped here with him.
A look passed between us which said more than words might convey, but as I felt his gifts reaching out for my emotions, I slammed a mental wall of thickest iron into place to keep him locked out. Max frowned in surprise, his gifts withdrawing out of respect for my privacy while his dark eyes filled with questions I couldn’t answer now. I didn’t even have the words to answer them anyway. The words which would break them just as surely as the truth of them had broken me. Darius is dead.
“When you dropped from the sky like that, I could have sworn I was looking at your mother,” Melinda Altair broke the silence,
