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.

Hours had passed, countless time slipping away while my heart split apart and fractured into a thousand un-linkable pieces. Every soft part of me had hardened into this violent shell of the girl I had been with Darius.

Married and widowed in the same day.

Holding grief within only made it boil, bubble and spit until it burned its way out, so it was better to let it flow free and face it head on. Pain was meant to be felt, just as all emotions were.

She was steel, hard and cold and unmovable in her grief. It had destroyed her, this loss. I could see that, see the way it had carved something vital from her soul and left her barren without it, unable to so much as feel the wind on her cheeks as the pain in her took precedent over all.

I dropped my head forward, pressing my forehead to the pane of frozen ice dividing us, leaning towards the man who owned a portion of my soul. A grief so endless that I couldn’t even comprehend it rushed in on me from all sides.

I’d thought grief would be louder than this. It felt like there should have been people screaming, thousands of fists hammering at the walls, thunder cracking through the sky. But if anything, things were quieter. More still.

He was the destroyer of me. The ruination of the girl I’d been and the creator of the woman I had become. He was my one true love, without any help or hinderance from the stars. He was more than my Elysian Mate. He was more than my equal. He was my end.

“Do you still claim your tattoo has nothing to do with me?” I asked as he crawled further up my body, kissing every freckle he found and giving me a mouth-watering view of his powerful back, stained with more ink than I even remembered. “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.