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August 7 - August 14, 2025
“You taste like the earth and sky colliding, but it’s more than that. There’s moonlight in you, and it calls to me like a song in the night. You’re my Source and nothing is going to change that. I don’t want to claim anyone else, this is mine and it’s all I crave.”
The tiny bedroom I’d been given in the back corner of the R.U.M.P. Castle was big enough for little more than my bed alone, which seemed extra insulting seeing as I’d given every drop of my magic to Gerry while she created the damn thing.
All things begin and end with the Element of water, it is life just as it is death, power, and purity. It is both ambivalent and altruistic. Beware the power of washing your soul clean in its icy depths, for once you have taken the plunge into the life of aqua, you will never again be the same.
The past should be where we learn from our mistakes, the future is open to all new possibilities.”
“I’m not here to save you, No, I’m here to break you. I’m just a lizard who wants it allll. I’ve lied and spewed a load of shit, I can’t believe anyone buys it. It’s time to rise and make a staaand.”
“I’m lame and my friends all knew it. Don’t swallow my Orderist bullshit. The Vega twins will return before too lonnng.” Videos of the Heirs were shown, all four of them standing united, the people cheering them, and the Vegas waving to an adoring crowd. The blazing graphic of the Phoenix burned through it all, giving way to a shining symbol of the bird with outstretched wings, the words Long Live the Vega Queens blazing beneath it.
“Gerry…” Max said sadly, and he let the door swing closed as he moved into the room, placing down his precious pastries and choosing me instead. Oh what a choice to make, for I was not nearly as crumbly nor sweet as a pain au chocolat.
“Is that code for ‘please fuck me’?” He smirked, and gracious, that smile was a mountain which I wished to climb, to bury my flag in its peak and announce it as mine. “I could not be clearer,” I panted. “Take me to Davy Jones’ Locker, and plunder my treasure chest with your sea cucumber.”
Yes, I knew just what pleased him best even when he didn’t know it himself, but my Maxy boy enjoyed a slip and slap just as much as he enjoyed a whip and whap.
“Not everything is about you, Stella,” I said frostily. “I love your son more than you can even comprehend.” “I see that now. I’ve seen his silver rings.”
“The rings don’t change what we felt for each other before the stars offered them to us,” I hissed. “The world decided to validate our love the second we were mated, but we loved each other long before that. The people who really care for us accepted that well before the stars had their say,” I said passionately. “You are not one of those people.”
“It’s just blood.” “So you keep saying,” I growled. “But it’s the most precious blood in the world to me. And having to watch you suffer through her torture is just – just-”
“Are you messing with age-old magic?” I asked sternly. “That’s not very professorly of you.” “Well, it wasn’t very professorly of me when I took a student to my bed either, was it?”
“Or when I had you over my desk, at the Fairy Fair, in the archives-” “We don’t talk about the archives,” I jibed, and he nodded seriously. “Great night, shit morning,” he said matter of factly. “It all worked out in the end though, right?” “Yeah, now we’re Lavinia’s prisoners and the whole world is doomed.” “Exactly. It’s all coming together, beautiful,”
“Not a possession, no. But you are mine. You were mine before we met, and mine the minute we locked eyes. You are mine in this life, and every life we may experience from this point forward. You are mine in every reality you exist, and mine in every reality you don’t. And I am yours in kind, in every way you can imagine. I will gladly be your possession, but I will also be your guardian, your keeper, your protector. And I will do whatever I can to turn you away from danger, because it is impossible for me not to.”
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.
“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.”
“Take that, you cantankerous cretin!” Geraldine’s
“Wow,” I said, not entirely sure what the hell I was supposed to say to that because it sounded seriously fucked up, as well as at least a bit hot,
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.
bitterness. It may have been unrequited, but that didn’t make it invalid. Though that didn’t make it hurt any less.
As my mom would say, “Regret is the enemy of the future.”
So stop this unendurable foxtrot and lay your truths upon the chantry of each other’s fervour this instant!”
We’re now taking pre-orders for next year’s tiny snakes in tiny hats calendar. Byeeee.”
“Tory,” Darcy choked out, and it was like I hadn’t been able to breathe until that moment, like my heart had been frozen for weeks and weeks since the last time our gazes had locked and our souls had been in the same place.
“What is it with the self-sacrificing bullshit you men keep throwing at us? We’re fucking princesses born to the most powerful bloodline in the whole of Solaria, the first Phoenixes born in a thousand years, and we claimed all four motherfucking Elements just to put the icing on the cake. We aren’t damsels in distress, we didn’t ask you to do any of this shit, and I’m so fucking sick of having to clean up the mess your knight-in-shining-armour routines keep causing!”
“Moon Wolves are gifted foresight and intuition not governed by the stars because the moon herself is a celestial being all of her own variety,”
“The power of your love and hatred burned hotter than the sun itself, the constant tug and pull, a war unending and a passion unyielding. You were two stars always set to collide and cast the world on fire because fuck the consequences.”
Oh, to be a moon mate. A Wolf could dream.
A slow, psychotic sort of smile spread across his lips, and I sensed this guy was hiding some serious danger beneath those Disney tats.
“I am merely suggesting you release that slippery salmon which is trying to burst your zipper asunder and take me like a garden in full bloom upon this most mermish of rocks, showing the entire world how my Siren side-piece can make this Cerberus howl.”
“So you…weren’t joining in with them? You were just trying to direct them?” I asked, piecing his words together. “Yeah, I was trying to be an orgy conductor, I waved a stick and everything to make it easier for them to follow my orders.
Wide. Awake. That was me. Sleeping was the game, losing was my name.
“I’m not pouting. I’m just intense and interesting, Sofia,” Seth said. “I’m making the moment more mystical.”
“What, beautiful?” I asked. “Sometimes you’re an asshole.” “Don’t sell me short, I’m an asshole all the time.”
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!”
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. And I was ready to keep the vow I’d made to him all those weeks ago.
I’d broken over her grief for me. I’d shattered watching her fall apart. Yet here she was, striding through the barriers of death itself to come for me. Her. Only ever 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
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“I love you, Roxanya Vega, and I wish I could have been worthy of you.”
“Hello, wife,” he purred, the corner of that sinful mouth hooking up.
“They are so incredibly proud of you, Roxy,” he murmured, the taste of those words on the air making something within me loosen. “They saw what you were doing, what you were planning to attempt and they – my mom, Hamish, Azriel and many others too – they all helped hold the way open for you. They fought back the army of the dead who would have tried to force their way through the rift you carved and made it possible for you to reach me.”
“What are you looking at?” I breathed
“I’m looking at the woman who crossed into death for me,” he replied, his tone rough with a reverence I didn’t deserve.
“I don’t think that you’re my hero, Roxy,” he said, his hand shifting from the rock beside me as he took my jaw in his grasp and ran his thumb down over my lips before shifting his grip to my throat. “I think you’re my villain too.”
“Well, that’s a problem, Roxy, because I won’t ever be done with you,” he swore and goddamn him, I fucking blushed.
Batty Betty: LIES! The bosoms of the true Queens shall never be shrunk!
This was the only place that had ever felt like home to me, and now it was under attack, I was damn well going to fight for it.
“I see that,” Caleb laughed, and Seth broke into a run, leapfrogging over the dead monster and slamming into me so hard that I fell on my ass. He howled his joy, licking my face and laughter tumbled from my throat as I drew him into a tight hug, his earthy scent surrounding me.
“How are you here? What about the curse?” he whimpered. “It’s broken. I’m free,” I said earnestly, and he howled with all the happiness in the world vibrating through that single noise. Hell, I’d missed him. I’d missed all of them.
