Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

“It’s still there,” I confirmed, and she nodded, hope dancing in her eyes. It was such a fucking relief to have some good news that the two of us smiled. “You’re Fae, Blue, and you’re going to damn well stay that way.” I kissed her, picking her up and she latched her legs around my waist.

“Today was fucking devastating, beautiful,” I said. “But you know what keeps playing on repeat in my mind?” “What?” she asked, drawing me closer and fisting her hands in my hair. “The way you looked when you drove that blade into Lionel’s throat,” I said,

“If you had full access to your magic and Order, you would have destroyed him, Blue. He’s a fucking coward who can’t face you like Fae, and if he ever did, he knows he’d lose,” I said fiercely, and she dropped her head to look at me. “You always have so much faith in me.”

“You’re a queen destined to rule. I knew that the first moment I saw you.” “You spent a long time denying it,” she jibed, and I smirked. “I like to think that me being your asshole professor drove you to greatness.” “Oh, do you now?” she prodded my cheek and my grin only widened,

“You’re my saviour, my felon, my sinister knight. And if you don’t touch me this second, I’ll go mad.”

“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.”

“I never thanked you for offering yourself up to break the curse,” she whispered, her mouth falling against the space below my ear as she curled herself into the arc of my body. “I hate you for it, but I love you for it too. I love you so much, I don’t know how my heart contains it all.”

Dante and I had scoured the land up here three times over, and I was starting to think we should head underground too. I turned to him, finding him standing with his back to me, his eyes on the horizon and tension in the set of his broad shoulders. He carved a hand over his dark hair and sparks of electricity tumbled off of him, a Dragon’s rage rising in his skin.

“Ga-hay-hay-be,” I cried, rubbing my face on the skull as tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t say goodbye. He was one of the best Fae I knew. My winged friend, my angel man.

“It’s not Gabriel,” Dante confirmed with a sigh of relief before I realised I was hugging some gross, dead creep. “Ergh!” I slammed the skull down on a rock, then again and again and again, pieces of bone shattering beneath the force. “Double, triple, quadruple die, you devil dick,” I snarled through my teeth.

“Let’s hurry,” I whispered. “Wait, did you hear that?” Dante said, pressing his ear to the muddy wall ahead of us. My stomach growled loudly, and I pressed a hand to it. “That’s just me, bro.” “No, it’s not that.” My stomach growled louder. “Pretty sure it is. I could hardly eat breakfast this morning, I was so worried about Gabe. I only had three dry bagels with butter and jelly on top and two Poptarts. Not even the good kind of Poptarts. They were unbranded, Dante. And I didn’t have any cereal – you know how I love cereal.” “Get over here, Leone,” he barked,

“Dalle stelle,” Dante cursed as he moved closer and I gazed at what I’d unveiled in shock, my mind not able to decipher the leathery, orange-toned skin. It was definitely part of a body, some spandex torn open around it and the silver pipe clutched between what looked like- “Is that a bare ass?” Dante whispered, confirming my worst fears as the pipe continued to whistle and the air expelled from it puffed into my mouth. “Ah!” I reared backwards, spitting on the ground and wiping my tongue over and over against my sleeve. “Why is there a whistling ass in that pile of rocks?!”

“I’ll kill you, you ass whistling monster!” I dove forward, but Dante knocked me back again, looking me in the eye. “He’s on our side, fratello. That’s Brian Washer.” “I don’t care who he is, his ass whistled in my mouth,” I snapped. “He might have seen Gabriel,” Dante hissed,

“I ran out of magic, you see? But I found this teeny weenie pipe among the debris, and I couldn’t reach my mouth to make a noise with it to hail attention this way. So I did what any desperate fellow would do and-” “Why didn’t you just shout for help?” I demanded. “That’s far less efficient. I am well trained in survival one-oh-one. Now.” He held out his hand to Dante. “I must shake the hands of my saviours. Goodness, you are a strapping man…oh - I know who you are.”

Ewwww

“Gabe,” I gasped, sharing a look of fear with Dante. “What happened next?” “Well, my boy, he said something about needing a new Seer, then there was a bit of a kafuffle, a twinkle of stardust and I believe the king took whoever the poor fellow was prisoner.” “It was our Gabriel,” I said in despair. “No,”

“Gabriel? As in Gabriel Nox?” Washer balked. “Are you saying he was Merissa’s son? That he is the half-brother of the Vega twins?” “Yeah, duh,” I said, and Dante rounded on me “That was a secret, Leone.” “Ohhh,” I said in guilty realisation. “Well, it’s still a secret, right bro?” I looked to Washer. “Or I’ll smash your nuts in with a hammer. Nuts that might be more accessible than you even realise.”

I needed Gabriel to see a way for me to do this, to tell me what path to take while I struggled to think of a single one which could even come close to setting me on the path I had sworn to follow. Where are you, Darcy?

I knew I should have been weighing in more but between the loss of Darcy and Gabriel, my grief over Darius, and the unfulfilled promise which still lay scarred across my palm, I couldn’t find it in me to sit for hours and argue with them over every small decision.

“Because certain members of this group refused to so much as begin discussions of anything vital until you had arrived,” Tiberius said tersely, the weight of his irritation colouring the air and I arched a brow at him as his emotions pressed at mine. “Are you unable to control your Order form or are you purposefully trying to rile every person in this room with your gifts?” I asked. “I think we would do better to question your capabilities of controlling your gifts after witnessing that outburst of them at the Acrux Manor,” he replied in a level tone.

“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.” Caleb coughed a laugh which he tried to hide at a hard look from his mother, but Seth’s lips hitched with amusement too and some of the unease I’d felt over the power dynamic in the room shifted.

“I believe so. We had already come to the decision to publicly denounce Lionel as our king and join the rebellion, we were just working to secure our families’ safety before making our position clear to the citizens of Solaria. We came together with the intention of fleeing his wrath and finding you, but before Melinda could send a message to you to tell you we were coming, we were summoned to Acrux Manor, our families used as bait to draw us there. We suspected a trap, but Lavinia used her shadows to poison our own bodies against us and choke the very air from our lungs the moment we arrived. We awoke with our blood and magic spilling into that fucking thing outside Lionel’s home.”

“Stella Orion was there crafting dark magic,” Antonia said. “She had a knife unlike anything I have ever seen before, the blade cast of moonlight and shadow combined. It looked to me as though the cost of wielding such a thing was steep though – the bitch was half dead when she was hauled away to rest, as Lionel put it. Maybe the stars will have been favouring us and we’ll find out she died to pay the price of creating that heinous thing.” “The stars,” I scoffed, hatred burning hotly through to my core. “They don’t favour anything aside from their own twisted cruelty.”

“Thank you,” I breathed, my grip on his arm turning into a reassuring squeeze. “You don’t know how much I appreciate you telling me this and…I’m glad you survived.” Washer’s face crumpled and I sucked in an alarmed breath as he threw his arms around me, embracing me tightly. “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.”

“But Gabriel can’t shut off his access to visions, can he? Not entirely.” “He tries not to see some things,” Leon agreed as he came to sit beside me on the throne intended for Darcy, as if he hadn’t even realised it wasn’t meant for him. “Like he doesn’t like to see visions of my sex life, but they still force their way in. Unless of course that’s because he really does want to see them.

“Lionel will put him into the Royal Seer’s chair,” I said, knowing it in my soul. “He’ll force him to have powerful visions whether he wants to or not and he’ll use Vard to pluck the truth of them from his mind.” Silence followed my words as the weight of the truth fell over everyone, the reality of the weapon that Lionel had gained when he took Gabriel sinking in on us with terrifying clarity. “Is Gabriel truly that gifted?” Melinda asked, her fearful eyes moving to Caleb then back to me for confirmation. “He’s the most powerful Seer of our time,” Xavier murmured hopelessly,

“That’s a mighty high claim,” Tiberius scoffed and I straightened. “It’s no claim. Gabriel is my brother. My mother’s son. She brought him to the palace with her when she arrived here to marry my father and they hid his identity, claiming he was their ward until after they could produce legitimate heirs. They never got the chance to tell the world the truth of his heritage, and when they were killed, my mother entrusted Ling Astrum to hide him from Lionel’s wrath. Gabriel is the greatest Seer of our generation and I can only assume that Lionel discovered that fact somehow and decided to steal him for his own benefit,” I said plainly, sick of all the lies and secrets. I was proud to call Gabriel my brother and I wanted the whole world to know exactly who he was.

“A hound bays for vengeance where the rift drinks deep,” Geraldine repeated in understanding, her eyes watering with tears. “He saw me. Little old nothing me.”

“What promises have you made?” Tiberius asked me and I raised my chin as I answered. “Vengeance, death, to find my family and to refuse the fate dealt to me and my husband.” “Husband?” Antonia gasped, and Geraldine’s cries of pride turned into a wail of anguish at the news. I, however, turned to stone beneath the weight of that question, ice spilling through me, but I refused to release the flood of emotions threatening to break free. “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.”

“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. Darius had loved that damn gold almost as much as he’d loved me, and the thought of it laying buried beneath a battlefield forevermore had been eating at me constantly, despite knowing I couldn’t spare the time to recover it myself.

“What are those?” Melinda asked curiously, watching her son as Caleb picked up his twin daggers, a smirk on his lips. “Gifts from the true Queens to those who fight at their backs,” Geraldine said dismissively. “At their backs?” Tiberius growled, taking Max’s metal bow from him, and inspecting it. “Beside them,” Caleb corrected, but it did little to wipe the looks of suspicion from their parents’ faces. “It seems like we’ve missed a lot during these months,” Melinda murmured slowly.

“The king may fall,” I repeated hopefully. “The Palace of Souls has been locking Lionel out of countless rooms ever since he claimed it for his own. That sounds pretty fucking spiteful to me.”

“When is the peak of the meteor shower?” Seth asked excitedly, the desire to see Lionel fall hyping him up so he was practically bouncing in his seat. “Twelve days, eighteen hours and seven minutes from this very moment,” Geraldine cried. Fuck knew how she knew that so accurately, but I damn well trusted her when it came to nonsense royal traditions.

“Gabriel sent you that message for a reason,” Dante said, seeming to see that desire in me even as I realised he was right. “He knows that is when you will have a real chance at success, bella.” Twelve more days. How was I supposed to wait twelve days to end this?

“Your Majesty, if I might say something!” Geraldine cried, leaping from her seat onto the table and looking to me to allow her to speak, though she already held the attention of the entire room. “You don’t need my permission,” I said, my mouth lifting a little at her theatrics.

There were the stones that Orion had found for the Zodiac Guild, and the books he’d been using to research them, alongside the diary his father had left him. The Map of Espial laid beside them, the night iron spyglass with its gruesome shadow eye still locked in place, waiting for someone to use it at leisure. Diego’s gross soul hat was there too, grandma and co presumably intact within, though I wasn’t going to be putting the thing on my head to check. A few more of Orion’s books were there and some other trinkets I didn’t care to sift through right now.

“Where would I find out more about this magic?” I asked, wondering what else I might be able to learn of the old ways. It certainly seemed to me that wielding power which predated the blessing of the stars might be of use when fulfilling my promise to destroy them. Geraldine’s eyes fell to the map, her finger pressing down on the Library of the Lost for the briefest of moments before she rolled it up tightly and tossed it back in the box, dispelling the silencing bubble and acting as if she had never said a single word to me about any of it.

The tension between us was unbearable, but I didn’t know how to fix it. Was I supposed to just walk right up to him and say, 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.

Beyond it, Xavier was revealed, his eyes heavy with shadows and a dejected look about him that made me wonder if he would ever smile again.

“I don’t care what the Councillors say, I’ll never take his place as an Heir,” he said, his eyes darkening and revealing the pressure they were clearly placing him under. It was a fucking joke to put him through that while he was still struggling through losing his family, but then again, I wasn’t surprised. I’d seen my mom and the other Heirs’ parents act in the name of duty all my life, and politics rarely took emotion into account. “I know, man,” I said gently. “He’s only been gone for a few turns of the earth and all they care about is their precious power balance being restored, the future and all the fucking horse shit they think is still a possibility.” He stamped his foot. “Even if there was some small chance of us defeating Lionel now and the Council regaining power, I would die before I stepped into my brother’s place.”

I didn’t have a pack among the rebels, the Oscura Wolves all too deep in their own clan for me to take part in that. There were other Wolves who’d come to me, offering to form a group with me, but I’d rejected them all because I’d already had the best pack I could imagine. I’d had the Heirs, Darcy, Tory, Orion, even crazy-ass Geraldine Grus.

It all seemed so fucked now. Darius was gone, Tory was heartbroken, Orion and Darcy were lost, and Max was trying to forge this new, sweet thing he had going with Geraldine amidst a world of despair. Then there was Caleb.

The problem was, that someone couldn’t be just anyone anymore. The person I wanted to comfort me was the one person I couldn’t have.

I missed King’s Hollow. I missed when things were simple, but mostly I missed a time that didn’t even exist. A place where all of the people I loved were safe, where we weren’t at war with each other or a false king, and where my best friend was as fiercely in love with me as I was with him.

Caleb and Tory stood arm to arm, looking out over the mountainside, talking within a silencing bubble of their own. They were facing the opposite direction to the way I’d come, so they probably had no idea I was here. That anyone was here. And something in my gut twisted like knotweed as Caleb dropped his arm over her shoulders and drew her close. Tory wasn’t a hugger. I knew that from first-hand experience of trying to get snuggles out of her, but the way she melted into him and rested her head to his chest had my lungs refusing to work.

“Create a wall of thorns, vines, trees, anything you can to block their path. We can take it in turns to cast and use the full force of our combined power for each move we make,” Tory said, and she gasped as her magic merged with Caleb’s. Caleb released a noise that was almost sexual as her power poured into his, and jealousy burned hot in my flesh.

Melinda looked to her son and Caleb dropped my hand in an instant, his power leaving my body just as abruptly and I missed it immediately. His mom kissed her fingers, holding them out toward him in a gesture of love before heading off after the others. I was relieved for him, and though I was jealous of that pride Melinda had shone his way, I’d never begrudge him of it.

“Well grab a grape and call it a date,” Geraldine said, slapping her thigh. “That was a jolly good show. My lady Tory, did you see those devilish danderkoots tumbling into that ravine? What fun!” “We should go finish the fun,” Tory said darkly, glancing over her shoulder to look at the rebels making their way down the mountain. “There’ll be plenty still alive.” “Ohhhh, by my cockles, you do have a streak of savagery in your lady waters, does she not, Maxy boy?”

Tory followed me, instead choosing to fly as she set her wings free at her back, the bronze feathers glinting beautifully in the sunlight. “Do you have to do that?” I snipped at her. “Do what?” she muttered. “Be so…feathery.” “Feathery?” she echoed dryly. “What’s your deal, Seth?”

“You know the Shadow Beast from the battle everyone keeps talking about?” “Yeah…” “Well,” Tory swallowed, pain crossing her features. “It was Darcy.” Confusion knitted my brows together and I shook my head dumbly. “What was Darcy?” “The Shadow Beast,” Tory pressed. “I don’t understand.” “It’s Lavinia’s curse,” Tory said thickly. “Darcy was the one killing those people in The Burrows. Darcy was the one who shifted into that beast at night and fucking ate people. And Darcy was the one who was forced to turn against her own people in the battle, rip through our ranks and kill again and again and again. That fucking Shadow Beast was one of the most powerful monsters I’ve ever seen. And it has hold of her.” I stopped walking, a cold, horrid shock sliding down my spine and holding me there.