Sorrow and Starlight (Zodiac Academy, #8)

by Caroline Peckham

A hand, warm and familiar, latched tightly around mine. It was pulling on something deep within me, yanking on those shadows which danced around inside me like gremlins. Magic was passing between this person and I, dragging out that darkness, siphoning it from me as a low chant brushed my ears.

So is stella killing herself?

“I may not have been able to see much, but I paid attention to them talking, listening to every word, every scream.” Eugene swallowed thickly but went on. “He has been doing multiple experiments on Order shifting – both extracting the essence of a Fae’s inherent Order form and then transplanting that intrinsic part of their being into another.”

Wtf

“I fear that he plans to do that to the lessers. If he can find a way for us to survive the procedure, then he can simply cut our Order forms out of our bodies, remove them entirely and end the problem he has perceived with those of us he doesn’t favour.”

“I heard him saying that he was making them into something more than they were. There was talk of genetic engineering and using the DNA from creatures of the wilds to help create new soldiers for his army.

Again wtf

She smiled as she nodded. “And I think I can do it again.” “You will do it again. And again, and again, and a-fucking-gain.” I kissed her hard and she laughed, the sound so damn rare these days that it almost hurt to hear it. “Now we just need your Phoenix to wake the fuck up.” I pressed my face against her chest. “Get out here, you little shit.” “Why don’t you try one of your motivational quotes of the day on it?” Darcy teased. “You’re a useless bird that couldn’t light a match, let alone start a forest fire,” I growled, jabbing her in the side, and she laughed again. “Your Phoenix is almost as stubborn a student as you were.”

“Only because I want to taste that fire in you,” I said against her skin before releasing my fangs and sinking them into her. And there it was, her power deep and hidden away but still burning. My queen’s fight wasn’t over yet.

Yay

“You lied to me,” I said to my own reflection, though the words were intended for him. “You promised you’d stay.” Nothing.

“You also swore you’d never see me as your queen,” I murmured to the man who wasn’t here. “So I’m willing to bet that this will make you all kinds of pissed.” I placed the glittering silver and blue tiara on my head and smirked in that obnoxious way which had never once failed to get a rise out of him as I felt a prickle of something stirring in the air, the ghost of a memory trailing down my spine like fingertips.

“No wonder you were such an arrogant ass, if Fae treated you like that your whole life,” I muttered to Darius, but once again, there was no kind of response.

“Our probes aren’t little,” Miguel muttered like a dude who had just had his manhood insulted, and a I grinned at him in challenge. “Maybe you can prove that on the battlefield beside me one day.”

Oh yeah, this was a great idea, I just got myself all dressed up like a tasty Nymph party snack, then snuck off in the middle of the night without telling anyone where I was going on the word of a man whose mother-in-law knitted herself into a fucking hat. What the hell had I been thinking? I was like…seventy-six percent dead. Fact.

A strangled cry escaped Miguel as we moved through the crowd and he fell still, causing me to turn and look at the four women who had caught his attention. I could tell from the look of them that the younger three were sisters, their similarities to their mother clear enough too.

Sobbing

His wife fell on him with sobs, kissing him between prayers to the shadows and swearing she had known he would one day return to them.

It hurts

“Hark at this one, gifting out magical flames as if they were ten a penny,” another voice came from directly behind me, and I couldn’t help but flinch as I whirled around, finding a woman there standing so close to me that adrenaline shot through my veins and magic instantly leapt to my palms.

Oooo

“A bat for ether, because they are of air and earth, fire and water combined, and none of them at all. Something other,” Audire hissed, her eyes on my mouth, reading my words as I spoke them.

The skulls hit the edge of the scrying bowl and scattered inside it, tumbling over each other and rattling against the stone while my heart raced at the feeling of his hands on my skin, his breath against my lips, the powerful thump of his heartbeat seeming to pulse against my palm as if my hand were laying over it.

“Darius?” I breathed, something inside me wrenching free as a sob caught in my chest and I looked at that all-too-perfect face of his staring back at me from the depths of the scrying bowl. His expression was hard, the image not drawing any memory that I could place, making me wonder if this was real, a view of him beyond the Veil, wherever that might be.

“You promised you’d stay,” I hissed at him, swiping at my cheeks in an effort to banish the tears which were ruining my view of him. “You promised you’d find me,” he replied, a dark and taunting grin on his lips which looked nothing like the smiles I remembered. “Tick tock, Roxy.”

“It won’t bring him back,” Vidi said, amusement colouring her words. “Not even one of the most powerful Fae in Solaria can do that. There is no doing what you want done. The stars have chosen his fate.” “It won’t be undone,” Audire agreed. “Fuck the stars,” I growled, and the three of them recoiled like hissing snakes.

Vidi’s tongue moved back down my arm as she remained on her knees beside us, her fingers taking possession of my scarred hand and turning it so that my own fingers were pressed to the heated skin of my thigh through the slit in the side of my dress.

Wtf is happening

“We can give you this,” they offered. “A memory dipped in reality. You can partake in it for as long as you like, feel every piece of it, relive each sordid, beautiful memory as if they were taking place in the now.”

Thats torture

“Ruiner of Destiny,” they whispered, and I inhaled sharply, my magic sparking within me as they called on that new and untested flame inside of me, beckoning it closer once more.

“We can’t give you what you seek,” they said, and though I had already realised that, it still cut me open. “The deepest desire of your heart is not one any can grant.” “Then what can you give me?” I demanded, refusing to just leave here with nothing more than I had held when I arrived. “A path,” they whispered, Audire’s lips skimming across the side of my neck and making a shiver dance through me. “One you can tread in search of your answers.”

“One night to taste what you have tasted, to linger in your lust,” they purred, and the movements of their hands on my skin began to merge with the memories of his, his callouses rough against my softness, the bite of his stubble a sinful scratch I could never get enough of. “Then we will give you a path to take. One wicked and steeped in sin. One which might lead you to the answers you seek or which may end in your own departure from this world. Hope. Though only the briefest flicker of it, at that. Do we have a deal?”

She was smeared in bright red blood, not the blackish, tainted blood of the Nymphs Lavinia controlled, but blood as red as any Fae’s, like proof itself of her taint on the shadows.

“Roxy.” The deep growl of his voice had me frozen for three eternal seconds before I snapped my head up and found him there, his shirt already off, those tattoos I loved so much peering back at me like the deepest temptation.

Vidi’s hand remained on mine, though she was careful not to touch me aside from the back of my hand as she guided my movements, her blood dripping down my thigh from the still-bleeding wound on her wrist.

This is crazy

He rolled us over, laying me on my back, and I blinked up at him as I panted there, my heart leaping in horror as he faded away and the frozen stone of the table beneath me replaced the illusion of our old bed.

Fuck

I unfurled it carefully, my heart hurting with the loss of him all over again while I tried not to give too much thought to the hedonistic memory orgy I’d taken part in last night.

This is what im saying

Seth shifted beside me, and I looked to him, my eyes falling down his body instantly, tracing the defined curves of his abs before dropping to his cock. Flashes of memory spun through me of the two of us alone, mouths meeting, hands wandering, passion burning-

For a second i forgot this chapter was caleb

“Sorry, man,” the guy breathed, backing up a step and offering a peace sign which instantly froze my blood in my veins. “It’s fine,” Seth replied dismissively, the peace sign he gave him in return making a stone drop into my gut as I fought against any outward reaction. I narrowed my eyes on the Bear Shifter and his puffed-up chest, noting the shitty pornographic tattoo on his right bicep and scowling at it as I considered shooting after him and showing him what a real predator looked like.

LMAO

I slid my fingers around his waistband, tracing my way from his spine to his hips, following the curve of the fabric along his sides then across his lower abs all the way to the line of hair beneath his navel. My fangs snapped out as I hovered there, too close to him for propriety and yet too far to take what I was really aching for.

This. Is. A. Wendys

“Fucking…stars…balls,” he panted in my ear, his chest heaving against mine while I took my fill of him, my cock stirring at his nearness, my mind on the feeling of his mouth wrapped around me as I pushed my hand a little lower.

Youre outside thre is a battle! Your moms are there

“Almost?” I teased. “Well, I have a pathetically prevalent obsession with cock, but aside from that…”

“No one else can handle you the way I can, pretty boy,” he taunted instead, knocking my hand from his throat before grabbing me by the front of my shirt and whirling me around so my back slammed into the door with a solid bang.

Hot

The sound of the toilet flushing reached us, and Max returned to the room, a scowl passing over his face as he looked from me to Seth.

They are too close

Whatever pathetic magic had been placed here to try and keep me out would dissolve in the face of my might eventually though, I was certain of it.

Threw up

I had summoned Francesca Sky to me, the FIB agent a beautiful specimen who had often crossed my mind since our last meeting. It was time I got a taste of sweet, warm flesh again. And hers was a delicacy I would spend many hours enjoying.

Stay away from her

I would soon find my way into the palace treasury and lay claim to all the priceless jewels that were hidden within. Mine. All mine.

No you wont

Gabriel Nox’s mind day after day now and had produced little of substance, telling me all he could see in the Seer’s head were visions of a giant nest shaped like a falcon and fine sticks inlaid with gemstones.

Leon is a genius

“No, no, no. Hang on.” Vard pressed healing magic into her skin, but blood was dripping from the woman’s mouth, her ears, her eyes, the thrashing of her body only gaining in intensity before she fell all too still, eyes wide and death stealing her away. I clucked my tongue in annoyance. “What did I tell you about wasting my time?” I snarled,

the subject’s name as Will Oli, his Order form a Vampire and his Element fire. Beneath it was the name of a monster which I knew lurked in the bowels of this world; Obscuro, a beast of twisting darkness with rows of sharpened teeth that could skin a Fae in minutes.

A shriek erupted from the cage at the illumination of the bright light, my heart leaping as a creature of smoke and flame shot towards me with the speed of a Vampire, death flashing before my eyes as I caught sight of a feral face hidden within the thick smoke.

Hate it

I chuckled to myself, puffing on my cigar again. She was learning her place in this world, and it was at my beck and call. I liked the way it sparked a fire in her, and I’d enjoy extinguishing that fire just as much. She was my plaything now, and she liked it too. She would admit that to herself eventually.

Gross

I was going to need tonight if I was ever going to pull this off. I brushed my fingers over the colourful stone, casting a concealment spell to divert anyone’s attention from it.

Ooooo

But I was pretty sure she was angling at something else, because towards the end, she’d kept asking about one man. The man who I’d seen a future with once. The man who was the reason I was sitting outside this palace now, about to do the unthinkable for.

Girl hes taken

It was him. Forever him.

Taken.....

Lance Orion may have been mated to another woman, but I had loved him first, and I wasn’t going to let that love turn to bitterness.

Im sayin...

None of it had made any sense until I’d been delivered the final piece of the puzzle in the form of one of the worst nights of my life. Finding him under the stars, newly mated to Darcy Vega, watching him kiss her like she was the lifeblood of his soul, like he could no longer see anyone or anything else. Yes, my heart had broken the moment his illegal affair had come to light, but it had been crushed and set on fire the night he had been mated to her.

Ok and...

Why did I let the years tick by? Why didn’t I Fae up and confess the truth to him? Or better yet, why didn’t I cut things off and give my heart time to get over him?

Good questions