Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates

I lay curled up in bed with Darcy all night while she cried and raged and eventually fell silent. She wasn’t asleep. Neither of us had gotten any of that, but we were together. And I wasn’t even sure what else I could offer her right now.

Her room slowly lightened around us, but I just stayed with her wrapped in my arms until she finally stirred.

“Darius will get him off lightly,” I murmured for the thousandth time. “Orion’s his Guardian. Even Lionel will help, I’m sure of it.”

“Even if they do, how am I supposed to be with him then?” Darcy asked in a flat voice which sounded so unlike her that I eased back so that I could look at her.

Her green eyes were dull and lifeless as well as puffy and bloodshot from a night spent in tears, but the set of her jaw was stubborn, angry. She’d avoided lessons all day yesterday and I’d stayed with her, knowing she couldn’t bear to face the world right now.

“You’ll find a way,” I promised. “We can figure out somewhere for you to meet in private, or maybe Darius can get you stardust, or-”

“We were never allowed to be together,” she said, her gaze darkening as she pushed herself upright and I followed to sit beside her, pulling a pillow into my lap. “The whole world was against us, even the law.”

“I know,” I said, reaching out to take her hand. “But you love each other. There has to be a way to fight for that.”

Darcy looked at me for a long moment, her jaw tightening as shadows flickered in her eyes. “What would you know about fighting for something like that?” she snapped at me and I flinched at the acid in her tone.

“I don’t under-”

“The stars picked a perfect mate for you and all either of you ever did was fight and goad each other and force each other away.”

“This isn’t about me and Darius,” I breathed, my heart thrashing in my chest. Darcy never lost her temper with me like that, but I wasn’t going to bite back. If she needed me to be her punching bag for this pain she was feeling then I would be.

“No. It’s about the way me and Lance always fought to be together. We’ve always had to. Fate has always been against us, but we knew it was worth the risk. We owned our feelings and acted on them. When have you and Darius ever done that?” she snapped.

“It’s not the same,” I said defensively. “Lance never hurt you the way Darius hurt me. Darius made my life hell, he tormented me and attacked me time after time. He tried to drown me-”

“I know,” she ground out, the emotion in her gaze clear. “But it’s not like you’re entirely innocent in all of the things that have happened between you, is it? You goaded and taunted him too. Besides, you got revenge, you set his room alight, you even made him turn on Milton, you fought back against all the shit he put you through. But you also slept with him, drew him in and then pushed him away-”

“Because I couldn’t just forgive all of his shit,” I snarled, my own temper fraying as she called me out. “He never apologised to me, never gave me any real inclination that he cared at all-”

“Bullshit!” Darcy shouted and I flinched. “He might be a fucking bastard and a ruthless asshole, he might have done all of those horrible things to you and maybe he even deserved a life spent pining for you. But you can’t say he never tried to show you how he felt. You just refused to hear it. And you refused to see it. Because you’re too fucking stubborn for your own good. Even when you wanted him you refused to admit it to yourself, you just hid behind hate and sex and came up with every excuse under the sun to deny your own heart.”

“You know why I couldn’t just offer up my heart to him,” I said in a low voice as her words cut through me like gunfire. “I couldn’t just give him the chance to hurt me with it. I couldn’t-”

“That’s what love is, Tor,” Darcy said in exasperation. “It’s taking a leap of faith. It’s opening yourself up and letting your walls down and allowing someone to see every dark and broken corner of your soul. It’s truth and honesty with yourself and them. It’s raw and brutal and terrifying and real. You can’t just claim to want it, but refuse to allow yourself to be vulnerable to it. That’s not how it works. If you love someone, truly love them, you’ll bear your soul to them and let them be the keeper of your heart no matter how fragile or damaged it might be. And if they love you then they’ll do everything in their power to keep it safe, to nurture and protect it and heal over all the old wounds. So when you said no to him in that snow storm, you weren’t even hurting him. You were hurting yourself. And that’s what kills me the most about all of it.”

“Darcy,” I breathed, my heart aching with pain as she tore apart every stubborn, rational, hateful reason I’d been holding onto to stay away from Darius Acrux.

“That’s what I have with Lance,” she snarled. “It’s messy and terrifying and to anyone else it wouldn’t even come close to perfect. But it is perfect, Tor, he’s everything to me. And now he’s been torn away from me and there’s nothing I can do about it. Everything has been against us from the beginning. But there was never anything stopping you and Darius from being together apart from the two of you. If either of you had just pulled your heads out of your own asses and been honest with each other then none of this would have happened to you! And that kills me. Because I would give anything to have that freedom with Lance.” A choked sob escaped her and I shifted forward, reaching for her to pull her into my arms again.

“No,” she hissed, flicking her fingers at me with a blast of air magic so that I stumbled off of the bed, dropping the pillow to the floor. “I don’t want you here telling me everything will be okay. If you want to fix something then go and tell Darius how you feel. I don’t want to sit here with you moping about me and Lance while you refuse to even try and fix your own shit.”

“I can’t fix it, Darcy. It’s too late!” I protested as her air magic shoved me back towards her door.

“You might not be able to be together. But you can be honest with each other,” she said forcefully. “And if you want any chance of moving on from this fucking mess you’ve made for yourselves then you’ll be brave enough to do that.”

“It’s not about being brave-”

“Yes it is! You’re so caught up in proving how strong you can be and improving your magic that you’re forgetting that true strength comes from facing down the things you’re most afraid of. So Fae up, Tory. And go face your problems.”

Her magic knocked the door open behind me and before I could reply, I stumbled out into the corridor and the door slammed in my face again.

I stood gaping at it as I hesitated, not knowing whether I should just knock her door down to get back to her or do what she wanted, but at the sound of the door locking, I gave in.

I blew out a deep breath as Darcy’s pain threatened to drown me and turned to jog away down the stairs.

Shadows flickered over my vision and danced along my fingertips as they called me to them. I could just go back to my room and let them have me for a few minutes. Just sink into the euphoric oblivion of their embrace so that I didn’t have to feel any of this.

The more I used the shadows, the more they called to me and the greater my control over them grew. There was a dark kind of comfort to be had in them and after spending the night with Darcy without using them, I could hear their call more sharply than usual. I knew I should be worried about what Orion had said about how addictive their call could be, but I wasn’t. I was only dipping into them at night and even then it wasn’t for all that long. The more I used them, the greater my control over them grew. And as they could be exactly what we needed to defeat Lionel, I wasn’t going to let him get ahead of me with them. The shadows licked around my wrists and I pushed them back with a grunt of effort. No matter how tempting they may have been, using them while standing in the middle of Aer Tower was a bad idea.

See, I’m in total control.

I didn’t want to think about the words Darcy had thrown at me, but they were ringing around my skull, forcing my attention to fix on them whether I wanted to or not. I knew I was stubborn and pig headed and unforgiving, but having the closest person in the world to me cut me with those weapons hurt.

No, it wasn’t hurt. It was a bitter kind of acknowledgement. Because as much as I might have hated having her strike me with those words, I couldn’t really deny them. But was I really going to track down Darius and do what she said?

I huffed in frustration, jogging down the steps in Aer Tower until I made it to the foot of the stairs.

I’d stolen some of Darcy’s clothes last night so I was dressed in a pair of leggings and an oversized sweater instead of my uniform.

I paused outside as the cool morning air gusted around me, tugging at my hair and making a shiver race along my shoulder blades as the urge to shift tugged at me.

It was still early, the sun low in the sky and birdsong filling the air. In fact, at this time I’d usually be out running with Darius…

My gut twisted as I realised I’d missed our run for the first time in over two months. I’d had somewhere more important to be, at Darcy’s side, but I chewed my bottom lip as I wondered whether or not he’d shown up expecting me, only to find I wasn’t there. Surely he’d have figured out why. But the idea of letting him down kinda…made me feel bad.

I wondered if he would have gone without me or if he’d have just gone back to his room.

Why do I even give a shit?

I stalked away from Aer Tower, growling with frustration as I shoved my hands through my hair, tugging at the knots in it as I tried to figure out what to do. Did I really care enough about hurting his little Dragon feelings to track him down and explain my absence? Was I seriously considering doing what Darcy had told me to do and facing him with everything I’d never even admitted to myself?

Gah. Fucking Dragon asshole!

I tugged Darcy’s sweatshirt off and rolled my shoulders back as I dropped it in the long grass by my feet. I was wearing a razor back crop top beneath it so my wings had room to spring free as I called on them and I sighed as my Phoenix fire burned away the last echoes of the shadows. It was like waking up as the shadows receded and my mind cleared, the cool air shivering around me as the heat of my flaming wings affected it.

I took off right away and started flying along our usual running route, wondering if he would have gone without me as I kept my eyes on the path.

I slowed down as I soared over The Wailing Wood, my gaze catching on several colourful bodies as I spotted a Pegasus herd moving between the trees at a slow pace as they grazed.

Just as I was about to fly on, I saw him, my heart leaping as he ran along the track at a fast pace, his shirt off and skin gleaming with sweat as he sprinted up the track.

I beat my wings hard to get ahead of him then dropped down between the trees, landing on the path and banishing my wings just as he crested the hill before me and fell still.

The corner of his mouth twitched as he looked at me, a question lighting his dark eyes.

My gut churned as I looked at him, my heart pounding and my palms growing slick. He looked good enough to eat with sweat coating his golden skin and making the light shine on his tattoos as his muscles tensed from his workout. My gaze slid over every perfect curve of his abs down to that irresistible V which disappeared beneath the low slung waistband of his black sweatpants.

I forced myself to stop eye fucking him and looked up at his face. His black hair was messy and the stubble on his jaw thicker than usual and the dark rings beneath his eyes made me wonder if he’d even slept at all. I guessed the stress of Orion’s arrest was hitting him almost as hard as Darcy and I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should really be coming here to talk to him about this now.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his gaze slipping for a moment as he looked at the ruby pendant hanging around my neck. I hadn’t taken it off since he’d given it to me and I shifted uncomfortably as he gazed at it. Why would I keep wearing it if it didn’t mean something to me? And if I was being really honest with myself, I knew it did mean something. The stone warmed between my fingers when I held it and the feel of it reminded me of his fire magic so intensely that it gave me goosebumps. I’d woken up with my fingers wrapped around it more than once.

He looked back to my eyes and my heart thundered as I tried to force my tongue to bend around the words Darcy had told me to speak to him. But it was damn hard. After everything we’d been through, everything he’d done and I’d done, I just…

“Why didn’t you ever just apologise?” I asked him, lifting my chin as my voice caught in my throat. Because if I was seriously going to consider being honest with him about how I felt then I needed him to do the same.

A frown tugged at his brow and he moved closer to me before pausing again just far enough from me that he couldn’t reach out and touch me. The ground trembled beneath my feet and he growled as he glanced down at it, the stars instantly working against us even when I just wanted to talk to him.

I stumbled as the ground bucked again and huffed irritably as I strode around him and nodded towards the Pegasus herd at the bottom of the hill he’d just crested.

The herd moved between the trees further down the path and I led the way to stand between them as I moved off of the path and pressed my back to a huge oak so that we were no longer alone and the stars would leave us to talk. I tossed a silencing bubble over us and offered Sofia a tight smile as I spotted her in her pink Pegasus form. She glanced between me and Darius and nodded her horsey head before stomping her foot on the ground to signal the rest of the herd to stay around us too.

I need to tell that girl I love her more often.

Darius moved to stand before me and I looked up at him as I waited for my answer.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed as he took me in.

“My father raised me to be brutal, ruthless and merciless in my quest for power and dominance,” he said eventually, holding my eye so that I couldn’t look away. “When you and your sister returned to Solaria, it was the first time that I’d ever been forced to face a threat like that. Someone who might actually be able to stand between me and what I was born for. Father and the other Celestial Councillors put a lot of pressure on us to make sure that you would never rise. We thought if we could get you to withdraw from the academy, prove to everyone that you had no chance of ever matching us then we could just forget about you. Move on. Claim the throne the way our parents had after your father was killed and just carry on like you’d never returned at all.”

“I understand that. But it doesn’t answer my question,” I said in a low voice, fighting to hide the hurt of all the things he’d done to me, though I was sure I was failing miserably.

“I guess, I…” He took a step closer to me so that I was forced to tilt my head to look up at him, the air between us heating with his fire magic as mine rose to the surface of my skin to meet it. “I just didn’t think any apology I made could be enough to right all the things I’d done to you. And if I’m honest, I didn’t think you had any interest in hearing it even if I tried.”

I swallowed a thick lump in my throat, wetting my lips as I tried to figure out what to say to that. His eyes chased the movement of my tongue and my heart pounded as he closed in on me again. I leaned back against the tree, the rough bark rubbing against the bare skin along my spine as he caged me in. But I didn’t have the slightest inclination to escape him.

“I shouldn’t have said it meant nothing to me after we were together in the Shimmering Springs,” I breathed, my voice so low I wasn’t sure he’d catch it, but the way his eyes flared with heat said he had.

We stared at each other for the longest moment. All of the hurt and pain and the echoes of every horrible thing that had ever passed between us sitting there in that space.

“I should have realised that you were meant for me sooner,” Darius said in a rough voice that betrayed just how much this distance between us hurt him.

“Some part of me did realise it,” I replied. Because I couldn’t deny the pull I’d always felt towards him, that ache in me which begged me to forget every horrible thing he’d done to me and just claim him for myself.

But as easy as that might have sounded, I wasn’t that girl. I’d been hurt too many times before in too many ways.

“Me too,” he breathed in this hopeless kind of way which didn’t detract from the heat that was building between us at all. “But I was…weak I guess. I took the route my father wanted. The easy route.”

“It will always be easier for you to hurt me than be there for me. It’s who you are. You’re a power hungry creature who would sacrifice anything to get what you think you’re owed out of life.” That bitter edge to my tone was back. That spite and anger, the blame.

Darius didn’t flinch away from my words, but the way his brow furrowed made my heart ache, like he saw some truth in them too and hated that fact.

“I know. But if you’d said yes to me I would have spent my life trying to make it up to you,” he breathed, shifting closer to me so that I was overwhelmed by the size of his huge body. His muscles flexed with tension and his dark gaze burned with all the things he wished he could have had with me. My gaze hooked on that black line surrounding his deep brown irises, that mark which bound him to me and bound him away from me all at once. And as he looked into my eyes, I knew he was looking at the same thing. This mark the stars had branded onto us the moment we’d failed their tests. His forehead was almost touching mine, the space between us falling away inch by inch as he drew closer, leaning his forearm on the tree above my head as he boxed me in. 

“How could I have said yes to you after everything you’d done to me?” I breathed but not angrily, my limbs were trembling, my heart pounding and my soul aching for his. “I lie awake at night and think about it, think about you, wishing I could have made the other choice. But I couldn’t. As much as this is killing me, I know it’s killing you too. And there’s a fucked up part of me that revels in that, in knowing that I’m causing you pain just like you did to me.”

Darius reached out slowly with his free hand, his fingertips trailing a burning line across the side of my face before painting a mark down the side of my neck. I shivered at his touch, still craving more of him despite all of it.

“I deserved it,” he said in a low voice, my heart leaping in surprise at those words on his lips. “I deserved it, Roxy. And I’m sorry. Really, truly sorry for all of it. I know that doesn’t matter now and I know there’s nothing I can do to change this, but I need you to know it. I need you to feel it.” His hand landed over my heart and my flesh burned and ached for him even as my broken heart pounded beneath his palm. I was sure he could feel the shattered pieces of it fighting so hard to stay together, feel every bruise and burn and wound on the battered thing which still pounded for him. Even after everything. All of it.

Thunder rumbled through the heavens as the stars gave us a warning but neither of us so much as flinched, not caring what they thought of us and what we were doing.

“I’m sorry too,” I whispered, because I could see it in his eyes. I could feel it in his flesh.

He was broken as well. This man who’d tortured me, cut me open, battered and bruised me all for a throne I’d never wanted in the first place was burning up over this rift between us. He was sorry and he was hurting and there was nothing either of us could do to fix it.

He drew in a deep breath, his forehead pressing to mine so that the cedar and smoke scent of him overwhelmed me.

I could feel eyes on us from all around the clearing as the Pegasus herd looked on and the ground beneath our feet began to tremble and quake, but I didn’t care. Let them watch us. As far as I was concerned, we were the only two people in the world in that moment.

“It doesn’t change anything though,” I said slowly, even though the words tore into the small piece of me which had fought so hard to survive Darius Acrux. “I made my choice. We don’t get another shot.”

Darius gazed intently at me as he continued to lean forward with his forearm pressed to the tree above my head, his other hand sliding back up over my chest, caressing my neck before he was holding my cheek in his grasp. He cupped my jaw with his fingertips and teased them into my hair, causing goosebumps to blossom all over my flesh.

His magic shifted to the surface of his skin and the deep heat of it called to my own power like they were one and the same, destined to be together always. My walls fell away and his magic tumbled beneath my flesh, filling me up and burning in the best possible way.

A soft moan escaped me and his dark eyes flared as he kept me captive in his gaze. Being this close to him hurt in the sweetest way and made my broken heart bleed.

We were standing so close to each other that I could feel the heat of his body pressing against mine. My hands seemed to move of their own accord as I reached for him, my palms sliding up and over his hard chest before landing against his pecs like I intended to push him away. But I didn’t. I just touched him as his magic washed through me, blinding me, intoxicating me, branding my soul as his from the inside out. 

My gaze was still hooked on his eyes. Our foreheads still pressed together and his lips so close to mine that I could almost feel the movement of them as he spoke.

“I love you, Roxy,” he said in a rough, dark voice which held no room for lies or falsehood, no space for tricks of cruelty. Only the truth. I could feel it just as keenly as I could feel the rush of his magic beneath my skin.

A tear slipped from my eye, searing a burning trail along my cheek as it spilled from my flesh and fell between us.

How many times had I ached to hear someone say that to me? How many times had I wondered if anyone even could love me like that? I might have denied it to myself more times than I could count, but I’d been aching for this for a long time. Needing it more than I’d ever wanted to admit, more than I’d ever needed anything. And not just from anyone. I needed it from him.

“And I know it doesn’t change anything. That it can’t change anything,” he growled. “But I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to do everything I can to make it up to you, for the rest of my life if that’s what it takes. I’ll never forgive myself for bringing this curse on us. And I’m never going to stop loving you either.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, I didn’t know how to process it, what to do with it. Did I love him? How could I love a beast who’d tortured me? What would that make me if I did? Just a broken, fractured, beaten, stupid girl who’d fallen for her tormentor. But maybe I was all of those things. Maybe I was worse because I’d hurt him too while placing all of the blame on him. Maybe we were just two sides of the same coin.

His lips brushed against mine and another moan escaped me as I tilted my chin to meet him.

It was the faintest touch of his mouth to mine and yet it felt like an earthquake was taking place in my soul to rival the one rocking the ground at our feet.

My lips parted and he leaned in, his body pressing against mine and his presence overwhelming me until he was all I could see, smell, feel, taste and it was just too good to pull away.

A crash of thunder sounded overhead as my arms slid around his neck and I moaned as he drove me back against the tree, his lips moving with mine as a desperate kind of hunger passed between us.

The Pegasus herd whinnied and squealed as lightning flashed bright enough to show through my closed eyelids and my heart pounded as I drank in the fragile moment before it burned out.

A huge groan sounded and the earth beneath our feet shuddered as the sound of more panicked Pegasuses reached us and people started shouting our names.

Tears slid down my cheeks as I kissed him harder, my whole body tangling with his as I threw an air shield up over our heads, pouring my magic into it as I fought to buy us just a few more seconds.

He kissed me like he’d die if he didn’t, like the only reason his heart was beating at all was so that it could be mine, and I kissed him like the world could cave in around us and I wouldn’t even care so long as I was still in his arms when it ended.

Lightning flashed beyond my closed eyelids again and we were surrounded by screams and whinnies, a stampede of hooves racing to escape us as an echoing groan tore from the trees to our right.

Something slammed into the shield above us with a force so hard that I gasped, falling back out of Darius’s arms as the two of us looked up to find the enormous trunk of a fallen tree bearing down on my magic right above our heads.

“I meant what I said,” Darius growled passionately before stepping back, breaking the contact between us and fracturing my shattered heart once more.

He backed away and I did too, holding his gaze as we made it to opposite sides of my air shield and out from beneath the falling tree.

I released a shaky breath before dropping my shield and letting the tree crash to the forest floor where we’d just been standing.

It hit the ground with an echoing boom which sent dirt and gravel flying up in a cloud between us and stole my view of him across the clearing.

By the time the dust settled, he was gone. And I was left with a desperate ache in my heart which I knew would never go away.