Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

“Remember to own your actions. When wielding a weapon greater than any should call their own, only the strength of your heart can guide it, only the power of your will can contain it. Know yourself and own every piece of who you are. I am sure you won’t ever fail the way I have,” my father called to me.

“Your soul is bound to mine,” I breathed against his mouth, even though I knew he was no longer there to hear my words, but a dark and unknown energy seemed to stir the air itself at that vow. “And I won’t rest until I make every star in the heavens fall for trying to cleave us apart.”

There is only him. Endlessly. Always.

me. This pain, this heartache, this grief, I could bear it for her. And as my mind shifted from the need to find my other half to what else I had to do with the breaths I still drew, I knew for certain that I’d been left in this darkest of places for one reason only. Lionel Acrux would die by my hand. Whatever cost it took.

Married and widowed in the same day.

The other kingdoms were not all welcoming though. To the south, Voldrakia was a savage kingdom, and across the ocean to the east, The Waning Land was a war-torn world where Elementals were divided, and dictators controlled their people.

“Darius Vega is the greatest Dragon who ever lived,” I spoke loud and clear, making Lionel fall deathly still.

YASSSSS

“We must feel the bad as deeply as the sea, for then we are able to feel the joy as high as the moon.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

Darius is dead.

Cries every time I think of this 😭

knocking his shoulder against mine. “Remember that time I peed on you?” he sighed nostalgically. “Who would have thought we’d end up here, Wolfman and Bitchy Flame Eyes striding into yet another adventure side by side with Fish Fury and Batty Betty bringing up the rear-” “Remember the time I punched you in the dick because of that time you peed on me?” I asked in return, and he frowned in confusion just before I swung my fist towards his crotch. Seth leapt back with a howl of surprise before breaking a laugh which made my heart hurt. It was so tempting to let him draw me into his nonsense, to let myself pretend things were okay for a little while before the truth came for them. But I just didn’t have it in me. Neither the effort it would take to pretend, nor the strength it would take to keep the weight of what I really felt from them.

Long live the motherfucking Queens.

🤟🏼 Vega Twins for the WIN

“Fate is unbalanced. The wrath of Clydinius wove your woes.”

“Clydinius wants you to keep the broken promise, warrior of the Vega line.”

“It is time for my end. My death is the gift of Fae, a gift all stars offer in their demise. It is why magic lives in your world, for my magic is your magic.”

“A gift, Libra, son of the hunter, for there must be a balance. A light to counter the dark. Your bond will be safeguarded with starlight from this day forward.”

“My surname isn’t Columba anymore. I’m not a dove, I’m a hunter. An Orion. I am your family whether you want me or not.”

Two Phoenixes, born of fire, rising from the ashes of the past. The wheel of fate is turning, and the Dragon is poised to strike. But blood of the deceiver may change the course of destiny. Beware the man with the painted smile who lingers close to your side. Turn the scorned. Free the enslaved. Fear the Bonded men. Many will fall for one to ascend. Suffer the curse. The hunter will pay the price. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Keep the broken promise. Mend the rift. All that hides in the shadows is not dark. Blood will out. Seal your fate. Choose your destiny.

Stars save me from the unholy demon vag.

I fucking love Seth

“The so-called youngsters in this room have fought and bled for this war,” Max snarled. “We’ve seen death and mayhem unlike anything you’ve ever experienced in your cushy office jobs. We’ve fought alongside friend and foe alike and lost more than just those we loved along the way. We’ve sacrificed our souls to this cause, pieces of us fracturing and breaking off with every heinous act we are forced to commit in the name of fighting against Lionel’s tyranny and oppression. Meanwhile, the three of you spent years sitting across tables from him, turning a blind eye to any signs of what he was up to behind closed doors. He didn’t just seize this opportunity when the Shadow Princess crossed over into our realm – he’s been plotting this for years. He was Dark Coercing your fucking king, the man you were all sworn to serve and protect at all costs, and you didn’t even see it. So don’t try to talk down to Roxanya Vega now that she is standing there before you, bloodied and broken from everything that has been stolen from her thanks to all of those failures. You should be on your knees begging her forgiveness.”

Fuck yes Max !!!

“Seth?” he pressed. “There was a demon vagina,” I whispered into his shirt, the clean, familiar scent of him settling my rampant heartbeat. “What did you just say?” he asked, trying to push me back so he could hear me better, but I burrowed in deeper, clinging to him like a new-born pup.

It was a crescent moon with a wolf perched upon the curve at its base while a bat hung from the curve above, their faces angled towards one another, but they were just out of reach. Within the moon was a clock with no hands, only a ring of numbers and shattered cogs spilling from beneath it in a beautiful pattern.

I need this tattoo

“I have sacrificed!” I shouted and the flames which lit my body blazed like a beacon for all to see. “I have given everything I was and everything I am to this fight. I have cried and raged and pleaded for the heavens to favour us just once, but they turned their games on us instead and took all I had to offer. I never promised to give them any of this. I never agreed to the price they chose, so let my love be unbreakable and brutal and cruel and endless, the harbinger of war and the summoner of violence. Let it be all those things and more because I am done sacrificing myself for the stars and their entertainment. I am done being a puppet in their games. They took from me too many times and now they will have to face the monster they made when they incited me because I. Have. Had. Enough!”

Roxanya Vega left speechless, no venom left to spit, no rage left to break from her. I thought I’d never see the day.

Yet here she was, striding through the barriers of death itself to come for me. Her. Only ever her.

I drew the glimmering sword from my hip in a fluid movement before placing its tip against the ground between us and dropping to one knee in front of her. A tremor rumbled through the Veil as my knee hit the ground and I clasped the pommel of my sword as I bowed my head before her, my limbs trembling with the magnitude of this action, of what I had known and should have admitted for a long time now. “I pledge myself and all that I am to you, my Queen,” I breathed, emotion wracking my core as those words tumbled from me at last, my place in this world somehow fixing there as if I had found the truth of my own destiny, and all that I had ever needed to be. “I would be your sword to fight your enemies, your shield to protect your people, your monster to own and to wield. I would be yours in any and all of the ways I could be, and I should have told you that a long, long time ago. I am your creature, your servant…yours.”

“You once told me that you would never bow,” she said, her fingers brushing my jaw in the lightest of touches which set my entire body quaking beneath her. “You told me, that I would have to break you, just as you once tried to break me, and you laughed at the idea of it.”

“He has no place here,” she said firmly. “And he is not your father. He bears no responsibility for the man you became despite him. He can’t have a single piece of credit for that. He can’t even have your name anymore.” “My name?” I asked, a frown furrowing my brow and she nodded as she traced the back of her hand along my cheek, the metal of her wedding ring brushing my skin and filling my chest with more pride and love than I had thought anyone capable of. “You’re Darius Vega now. And you weren’t built to bow to anyone.”

“Fuck, I wish I could,” I swore to her, drawing her tight against me and inhaling the summer and winter scent of her. It was all things and nothing at all. This essence of immeasurable power which hummed with so much of everything that I was little more than a mortal kneeling before a goddess. “I wish I could come back with you more than any man has ever wished for any fate in all the history of all the world. I’m yours, Roxy, heart and soul and everything beyond, I’m yours. But even that can’t free me from this place. What I lost can’t be returned. There is no healing the body I once owned and there is no returning through the Veil now that it has closed at my back.”

“I love you, Roxanya Vega, and I wish I could have been worthy of you.”

“You are going to fight this,” I ordered him. “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.” Darius’s jaw locked as he took in that command, the warrior I knew him to be blazing in his expression as he nodded in agreement, his fingers tightening on mine. “I’ll give you all I have,” he swore and I nodded.

“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,” I replied as the world hissed, the acidic whispers of the stars closing in on us. Stealer of life. Twister of destiny. Beware the cost. Turn from this path. Stop before you unbalance the scales. His ascension will bear a price. “I don’t care,” I snarled, and the truth of my words shut them up, the pure honesty I wielded sharper than any blade. Let them come for me. What more could they even take?

“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.” Darius gasped as he felt the weight of that power too, his knees almost buckling as he stumbled towards me, but I was there, waiting to catch him and he caught me too, his hands clasping my face between them, his forehead pressing to mine as we held each other up. “Let them beat as one,” I choked out, the power I was wielding catching in my throat, the words burning on my tongue as my body fought to contain this magic. “Let them be one,” I demanded, painting another line on his skin, the rune I had found hidden in the Book of Ether, so ancient and so powerful that it didn’t even have a name. it hadn’t even been drawn in one piece, each line separately marked out with instructions on how they should be combined and clear warnings never to attempt it, for the power it held was a force beyond any that our world had ever known. But I was beyond our world now, in the chokehold of death and clinging to love with a fist of iron. And I had made an oath to the stars to make them pay for their curse on our love, so it was time I showed them just how serious I had been. “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 i...

“What are you looking at?” I breathed when he remained there, his gaze roaming over my features and his body so achingly close while not being close enough at all. “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.” “You and me weren’t a story that was ready to end,” I said, my hand slipping from his chest, past his neck and finally cupping his jaw. The bite of his stubble raked against the scar on my palm as I looked into the roiling gold of his eyes, his Dragon shifting beneath his flesh, watching me, assessing me. “I have spent my whole life knowing I wasn’t ever going to be the noble knight our kingdom needed,” he said slowly. “The other Heirs were always much better suited to being valiant than me. I was the one who crossed into the dark, the villain who was needed to absolve the stains my father was leaving in his wake. And with every choice I made to follow that path, I came to accept that no one would ever be able to love me the way you impossibly love me. I gave up on hoping for anything even close to this. I gave up on the idea of love at all. Until you. My beautiful, burning saviour-” “D...

away. “Once, in a time long lost, there was a star among us who idolised the Fae. Clydinius of the Seventh House.” I frowned, recognising that as the name of the fallen star the first Phoenix queen had spoken with, the one who had gifted her the Imperial Star. “He watched them rise, he watched them fall, he saw their love, their wrath, heard their laughter and their mourning cries. But with each passing century, this star grew tired of it all. And a forbidden desire grew within him, a terrible desire not meant for stars.” “What was it?” I breathed, every resounding word spoken creating a pulse in the air. “Clydinius believed Fae were not worthy of the greatness we gifted them, for it was wasted and spoiled in the hands of your kind, every empire rising only to surely fall. So Clydinius came to the Court of Caelestina where the fates are woven thread by thread, and destiny spins upon a coin of iron. There, he spoke treasonous words, expressing the very desire which could unbalance the bedrock of the world. Clydinius wished for us all to descend from the heavens, to claim a place upon the earth and walk among the Fae as gods. In response to this declaration, Arcturus of the Sixth House cast Clydinius from the sky, where only one fate awaited him. Or so we thought. For we were fooled… Clydinius had wished for this all along, and instead of releasing his powers upon impact with the earth, Clydinius made a deal with a Fae, breaking all the laws of old and blaspheming against th...

“Come forth, daughters of the flames, twins of Gemini, wielders of the four Elements. You were born to right this wrong of old, and it is time to keep the promise of your elders.”

When all hope hinges on a promise forged of lies, Beware the threaded minds of blood and chaos. Unlikely friends and broken bonds may shift the tide, Cleave open the walls of the lost in the depths of the unholy night. Unleash the souls tethered in the tainted dark, Unite the rising twelve and toll the bells of fate.