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“One of us took the Sun from the Moon. We took the queen of darkness’s hope, her one redeeming quality—the guiding remembrance that she is not all shadow.”
“Elara’s light is gone. She has nothing to save her. Nothing to hold her back. It is not him we should fear. It is her.”
Elara’s eyes were hollow as she looked at them both and replied. “Half of my soul is gone. There is no rest for me.”
Again and again, she reached for the matches, a woman incensed as she scraped each one, felt the match flare and closed her eyes. Because she had to pretend his warmth was near her, his light. She couldn’t be left alone in this darkness. And this was where he had left her. In the cold night.
“Then rage about it,” he hissed onto her lips. “Pluck them from the sky like you promised you would. You turned the world to darkness for me and then got lost within it yourself. Your tears will do me no good. Neither will your grief. What I need back is my Elara.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she cried. “How to be in this world without you.”
This is my breaking point
“I will find a way to wake you, my love,” she whispered, trying to kiss him. “Or I will die trying.
The Stars had ripped her dreams from her, forced her to live in a nightmare. And so, a nightmare she became.
She looked over her shoulder once to the message she had left. Thought of the bodies that littered the insides of the tunnels. She’d allowed a few to escape, but the majority… Death had claimed them all.
SHES IN SAVAGE MODE I LOVE IT
His eyes searched hers, and a passing thought murmured to him that this might not be such a bad way to die, with Elara in his arms. That if her eyes were the last thing he saw, it would be a better death than most.
She turned in her seat then, and his body went slack. She was glowing, her hair wild in the wind, and the most beautiful look of freedom adorned her face. He felt that tug in his chest again—his heart he realised—and an absolute overwhelming urge to sob took over him as he felt himself drowning. It was terrifying, this ache that encompassed him as he looked at her.
That for the first time in twenty-six years he felt like he belonged, and that he was exactly where he should be, soaring through the air on the back of a dragun, his hands around a shadow princess’s waist.
She returned, a smile on her lips that hadn’t wavered since she had unlocked her powers. It made her look so beautiful in such a soft way. When she wanted to be, Elara looked striking. Terrifying and intimidating. But right now, her features softened, eyes trusting and opened. Gods…
‘She is who you’ve been looking for,’ it said. It was only a sentence. Seven words. And it was enough to scare him shitless.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked, her eyes twinkling. This feeling, as though I’ve been searching for something through lifetimes and found it right here. Like we’ve met before. Like you have consumed my every moment, both waking and asleep, and I barely even know you, but it feels like I do. I’m afraid of what it means, that someone who I’ve been taught is the enemy my whole life is good and kind and makes me laugh against my will. That I think I’m falling in l—
“The darkness between the Moon and the Sun, a lovely story. And where exactly is this entity now?” He shrugged. “As for the primordial herself, she no longer exists. The only remnant of her is within the darkness left behind, the space in between light and stars. Perhaps her legacy lives on in the evil that resides in a person or the nightmares that cling to a haunted soul.”
He rolled a cigarette as he wondered if she or Enzo would ever remember their lives before—would remember him.
“Yes, that would be your dragun,” he chuckled, admiring it as it flew across the expanse of the ceiling before disappearing into the night. “She was called Dreamdancer, and she’d pull you across the skies while you sprinkled dreamdust onto the world below, helping them sleep.”
“My darling Moon,” she began, reading out the letter, “another day goes by as I watch you across the skies. Must this torture never end, to be so close to you yet so far—to see you upon your throne, unable to ever touch you myself? Until I can, know that every streak of light that I paint across the sky is for you. Every ray, every drop of me, is yours.”
‘All that stands between life and death is dusk.’
Do you look for her in every room? Eli flinched, and it was enough. It was all Elara needed to know. She nodded, flicking her hair behind her shoulders. Then let’s bring Ariete to his knees.
Eli narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going soft on me are you, queen of darkness? It was a favour I owed Lorenzo.” Elara scoffed. “I know you don’t have a heart. But don’t pretend that you don’t feel at all. You were our messenger. Clearly, we meant something to you.”
She was surprised by the sword’s beauty. It gleamed silver foreign words written in italics down the blade. And the hilt was formed in the shape of a roaring dragun, the base of it where its tail snaked bejewelled with sapphires and a silvery-blue stone that Elara hadn’t seen before.
“Then,” he replied evenly, “if P—" “Don’t say her fucking name,” Ariete growled, springing up from where he sat. “Fine,” Eli hissed. “If the Dark is bound and buried, we have nothing to worry about.”
Whomst
“I know her magick,” he murmured. “And if she is awake, then we need to run and hide,” he said, finally looking back at Eli. “Because she already has our hearts, and if she has awoken, she’ll come to collect our heads as well.”
I like her
“Stelle sapium,” she muttered, returning to the mirror. It was an old Aphrodean saying, one she kept with her at all times. “Only the Stars know,” it roughly translated to. Aphrodeans said it to one another when they were losing faith or had no way to see how things could possibly get better. For Merissa, it had kept her company on the nights she sobbed on the floor from heartbreak or felt another part of her heart freezing over. It had been a comfort, a hope that there was something greater out there that had a plan, even when she could not see it.
The Wheel of Fortune—a ship’s wheel that looked to be inscribed with symbols of the Stars upon it as it sank through a dark ocean.
BOOK COVER
“You are the thing I love most about her,” Enzo whispered. “Elara’s shadows, you, are what made me fall in love with her so deeply. It’s Elara’s darkness that I love. It was her shadows that drowned out my flames, that brought me peace for the first time in my life.”
Enzo inhaled the scent of Elara and committed it to memory. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “And I need you to know that you saved me.” His voice broke as light began to flare from his palms, flowing into the shadow. “You taught me how to love the darkness, how to welcome it. In the moments where I needed to run from my light you were there, ever patient. And I love you. I love you for making Elara who she is. I love you for taking her fear and pain when she couldn’t carry it alone. And most of all, I love you for allowing me to love you.” “It is an honour to be loved by you,” the shadow
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If he was going to die, truly die, it would be here. In a place surrounded by memories of his great love. He tried to remember the last words he had said to Elara, and that dread clutched him again as he realised he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember the last words he had whispered to his soulmate.
He was at peace, leaving his legacy like that. That even if no one else knew that there had ever been a Sun, that he had slumbered within a mortal—when his Elara looked at the Light, she would know he was with her.
He couldn’t reach her. He had tried before, the two orbiting, always orbiting. But for now, he would take what he could, felt blessed enough just to watch her. And as she whispered something to the crow, which then took flight across the skies to him, Enzo knew he was home. He felt the last parts of his soul glimmer, the river beckoning, and with a final sigh, he sank beneath the water.
He was standing on a balcony—one that looked like his in Helios. But this time, instead of the space between Stars that he used to pray to, shone the Moon. Her silver light bathed him, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, soaking in Elara. He’d been talking to her all along, praying to her. All those nights out here as a broken little boy.
He wanted to explain that it was too late, that his mind was already lost, his soul nearly gone too. But he couldn’t find the words, could only say, “I love you. My angel, I love you.”
“To a new world,” she whispered. Eli smiled, linking his own little finger with hers. “To a new world,” he replied.
The two were like streaks of light, two fallen stars streaming through the night-sky towards each other. The distance closed, Elara breathing raggedly, three yards, two, one. They collided, Enzo wrapping her in his arms, one hand in her hair as he squeezed her to him, a harsh breath escaping him.
“Hello, princess,” Enzo whispered, his smile trembling. “Hello, Lion,” she whispered back, cradling his face.
“Holy gods,” Leo breathed, and she opened her eyes briefly. Light was shining from her, silver and sparkling as it cast across the room, and Enzo… Enzo was completely gold, the Sun personified as he continued to kiss her.
He was her sun, the point that she orbited around, her light. And as he held her, the force of his emotions plain through his touch, she felt the withered, cold parts of her that had decayed the moment he’d left spring to life. Like a dying rose given light, she bloomed. And in that, she felt a stirring in the pit of her stomach, a silver magick rumbling awake. She felt the power trapped within her veins roar, felt it alchemise her bloodstream and turn it to pure magick—this power that she had pulled and begged and pleaded with, and finally, with a gasp, it was awake.
“I said…don’t take your eyes off your reflection. You’re going to watch how beautiful you look as you ride my fingers. You’re going to see what replayed in my mind every damn night that we were apart. And you’re going to realise why I am so sickeningly in love with you.”
He could feel every buffet and current beneath the wave, understood its changeable ways as deeply as he understood himself. It was what made him the most powerful lord in Neptuna. Well… Pirate lord.
You have my attention
Seeing you a little bit violent over me is making my cock painfully hard.”
Enzo kissed the tears trailing down her face. “I love you,” he said after each one that he kissed away. He wished he could kiss her pain away too, wanted to hurt himself for hurting her. But Elara was forgiving him, and that was enough.
“Don’t move, princess,” he said. “Take the pleasure. All of it.”
‘Beware the Dark, beware your shadow, find me on the eve of All Hallow’s, even now she watches and waits, come find me ‘fore it is too late. In the land of chaos, on this date, seek me there to stop Lady Fate.’
Enzo slammed into him, flinging his body into the mast of the ship. “Oh, Adrian. You don’t know much about me. I really have quite a thing about people speaking to my soulmate in a certain tone.”
The titan was glorious; Adrian couldn’t look away. A burning god, Enzo was, coated in flame and light, moving with the grace of a seasoned warrior as he punched flame after flame into Scorpius’s skin.
“I know you’re scared. I was too. But you’re free now. You’re one of us. You’re the Water. And I’m so happy that you’re alive.”
“Celebrate your wins, Adrian. Even if your losses seem bigger.”
Say something nice to Adrian. She heard a cold laugh in her head. And why would I do that? He lost an eye? I lost a heart. We all lose things, Elara. He’s not special.
