Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates

Seth:

Dream Team meeting in King’s Hollow. Now. No excuses bitches.

I read over the message in our group chat as I finished up an Arcane Arts paper in my room and released a huff of frustration before replying.

Darius:

I can’t be held responsible for what I’ll do to Caleb if I have to spend time in his company at the moment.

Caleb:

I’m so fucking sorry, dude. But I get it, I’ll just stay away.

Seth:

No! I’ve got a team bonding exercise in mind which we ALL need to be a part of. It’s been twenty four hours. Caleb said sorry, Tory is fine now. I just saw her splashing around at the lake with her Ass buddies…

He added a short video to the group which showed Roxy in a tiny black bikini perched on Milton Hubert’s fucking shoulders as she wrestled with Geraldine Grus who was on Justin Masters’ shoulders too as they fought to get each other to fall in the lake. They were screaming and laughing as they played, but my gaze caught on Darcy who just sat on the beach watching them with glazed eyes. The clip ended just as Geraldine spotted Seth and started yelling at him for being a lecherous lupine and his laughter filled the speakers as he ran away.

He must have filmed that a few hours ago because a storm had rolled in since then and the day had turned decidedly grey and miserable beyond my windows.

Max:

Why the fuck is Grus always hanging around with that pompous Justin prick?

Seth:

I heard their parents are in talks about arranging their marriage…assuming he can’t bag himself a Vega…

A deep growl escaped me at that suggestion and I pushed away from my desk as Max started sending all kinds of colourful insults about Justin over the chat.

Seth:

Well lucky for you guys, my plan will make both Roxy Vega and Geraldine Grus so fucking happy that they’ll definitely wanna bang you.

Caleb:

Nobody says bang anymore, asshole.

Seth:

I’m bringing it back. So fuck you. Also, just get your asses to the Hollow now or I’m going to have to come beat your pretty faces in. Don’t make me invoke the power code…

I groaned as he wielded that stupid fucking power code shit. We’d come up with it when we were seven and super excited about the idea of us ruling the world together one day. Basically, if one of us invoked the power code, we all had to show up. No excuses. I’d tried to get him to change the fucking name of it at least eight hundred times over the years, but he wouldn’t. Fucking power code.

I yanked my shirt off and dropped my pants before throwing my floor length window wide and taking a running jump out of it.

I shifted and sped across campus to the Hollow with the rain pinging off of my scales. It was a miserable day which suited my mood just fine.

I arrived in no time, my claws digging into the wooden rooftop before I shifted back into my Fae form. I glanced over the edge of the roof at the drop to the forest floor and my gut knotted with anger as a blur of motion caught my eye.

I opened the hatch and dropped inside, grabbing a pair of jeans and boxers from the trunk at the side of the room and pulling them on just as Caleb shot into the room.

We looked at each other for a long moment and a growl echoed in the back of my throat as Max and Seth walked in.

“Enough!” Max snapped. “Tory wanted to play that damn hunting game and Cal warned her it was a terrible idea. They learned their lessons yesterday and now we just need to move on.”

I growled again and Caleb looked down at his boots.

“What we need,” Seth said with a cocky little grin. “Is to go on an adventure together.”

“What adventure?” I grunted.

“One that I’ve been working on, oh so fucking hard. It’s gonna make Tory real happy. And probably Grus too because she’s all for Mission: Defy the Stars,” he added, tossing a wink at Max.

“Really?” Max asked, running a hand over his mohawk as he tried not to grin.

“Yeah. Does the name Zane Baxter mean anything to you?” Seth looked my way excitedly and I frowned.

“Roxy’s ex. The one who left her to drown in that car wreck,” I muttered. If that asshole had lived in Solaria, I’d have ruined his life a long time ago.

“Yeah…you wanna go pay him a visit?” Seth waggled his eyebrows enticingly and my spine straightened as I looked at him with more interest.

“How the hell did you find him?” I asked.

“I’ve been taking little visits to the mortal realm for the last month, Coercing humans left right and centre to hand up the info on him. The fucker didn’t have anything official linking him to his current residence because he’s started himself up a nice little criminal empire, but I found him.”

“Why?” I asked. I mean, I was all for going and messing with the fucker but I didn’t get it.

“Because you wouldn’t just do a strip tease or sing her a song like a normal lovestruck idiot so I had to think outside the box. And deep down, I think that a girl who the stars chose to be your perfect match must really want a badass kind of gesture over chocolate hearts and flowers. So I say we go kick the little gangster’s ass for what he did to her and you can cut off his balls and put them in a box for her…or just take a photo, whatever you think she’d like best.”

“Probably the balls,” I said with a dark chuckle as I grinned at him.

“So it’s a yes?” Seth asked enthusiastically.

“Fuck yes.”

I opened up the chest and grabbed a pair of boots, a black T-shirt and a leather jacket from it and Seth howled as the four of us headed out. Max took a bag of stardust from the emergency stash we kept in the desk as we went and I moved to walk with him as Caleb followed beside Seth. We’d get over this, but at the moment I couldn’t look at him without wanting to beat his face in, so I was glad I had a different asshole to focus on instead.

We strode across campus and slipped through the gap in the shield that Lance had left, my skin prickling as I recognised his magical signature and the Guardian brand on my arm burning with a desperate kind of ache.

I was hardly sleeping, my studies were suffering and in all honesty I just felt like I was existing in this bubble of hopeless nothingness which I couldn’t see an end to. If Xavier and my mom didn’t need me, I wasn’t really sure why I’d even get out of bed in the mornings. Sometimes I got so angry at Lance that I punched myself just so he’d feel it wherever the fuck he was. Why couldn’t he have just stuck to the plan? What did he really think he was achieving by fucking up his entire life?

Self sacrificing fuckwit.

Seth took the pouch of stardust from Max with the smuggest damn look on his face that I’d ever seen and a moment later we were swept away through the stars.

My stomach swooped as the twinkling little bastards surrounded us and we tumbled through them for longer than usual as we crossed between the realms before they finally spat us out in a back alley in some city suburb in the mortal realm.

I drew in a shaky breath as I was suddenly freed from the shackles of my bond to Orion. The connection was still there, but it was dulled by the realms dividing us to the point where I could hardly even feel it anymore. And after weeks of aching for him to be close to me and sleepless nights dreaming of holding him in my arms, it was more than a fucking relief. He’d probably be panicking right about now, thinking I was dead as his connection to me was muted and a twisted sense of satisfaction filled me at that idea. I hoped he was suffering for putting me through this and then I felt like a total douchebag for thinking that. No doubt what he was going through was a hundred times worse.

“Fuck, I should have thought of this before,” I groaned, rubbing a hand over the Libra mark beneath my leather jacket.

The only relief from the bond I’d managed to find until now was dipping into the depths of the shadows and I didn’t like to do it too often. They fed too greedily on negativity and I knew they’d consume me if I started to use them as a crutch. I should have realised sooner that the mortal realm was the perfect place to escape to. Though I wouldn’t have chosen this particularly shitty neighbourhood. There was trash all around us in the alleyway and the scent of stale piss hung in the air.

“That’s the foster home the Vegas were living in when Tory met him,” Seth said as we stepped out of the alley and he pointed across the street to the run down house.

I frowned as I spotted a kid sitting on the porch, smoking a blunt and scowling at us.

“Are you smoking again Brent?” a woman shrieked from inside. “I’ll whoop your hide if I catch you!”

The kid quickly stubbed out his smoke and pushed the door open where the sound of more screaming reached us as she laid into him.

“Have new people moved in there now?” Caleb asked uncomfortably and Seth shrugged.

“Erm, no. Same registered owners. They have five foster kids at a time and err, I guess they go for the loud kind of discipline,” Seth said as we all surveyed the house.

It was…a fucking dive. The white paint was peeling and one of the windows was half boarded over. There was trash everywhere and one of the old wooden chairs on the porch had collapsed. It looked like my idea of hell. Though I supposed I’d grown up in what could arguably be called a palace and I hadn’t been happy for much of it, so maybe I didn’t know shit.

“So, I had a fucking job of it finding the asshole, but I basically tracked down the high school the girls went to then used my charms to ask around about him and after the third guy practically pissed himself at the mention of his name, I Coerced the answer out of him and found out Zane Baxter is a gangster. Sounds like he’s gotten an even worse reputation now than he had when Tory was screwing hi…dating him.” Seth cleared his throat and I folded my arms as I waited for him to get to the point. “Anyway he doesn’t live in the house she used to walk past on her way to school anymore but after a bit of digging I found him.”

“That’s how she met him?” I asked in a low voice. “He saw her walking past his door and just pounced on her?”

“I dunno man, I did some asking around and that’s the story I got from one girl, but there’s no way in hell Tory would confirm it even if I’d asked. If you really wanna know then just ask her about it when we get back.” He shrugged at me and I rolled my eyes.

“Like she’d tell me.”

“Maybe she would,” Max said. “You could just ask and see.”

“I can’t even be alone with her, so how would that work?” I grumbled.

“Try texting, idiot,” he shot back and I frowned at him as the others sniggered like that was so fucking obvious. And maybe it was.

“Or calling,” Caleb added. “You’re not together if you’re just talking on the phone.”

“Video chat,” Seth added with a dirty grin. “You could totally have video sex.”

“Shut up,” I growled, but I couldn’t entirely hide the grin on my face either. Maybe I was fucking dumb. It just seemed like such a step back to start messaging or calling her that it hadn’t really occurred to me, but maybe it should have.

“Come on,” Seth said, leading the way down the street as the woman inside the foster home finally stopped yelling. “And don’t forget we can’t use magic here, at least not in an obvious way.”

“We know,” Caleb replied, rolling his eyes.

We walked eight blocks through the rough area, drawing attention in our expensive clothes, though we must have been intimidating enough to stop anyone from trying to rob us.

“That’s the high school they went to when they lived here,” Seth said, pointing out the sprawling collection of huge grey buildings beyond the chainlink fence. It looked fucking depressing.

“They used to walk here alone?” Max asked in a low voice. “With no magic?”

I pursed my lips as I looked around at the streets. This neighbourhood wasn’t just rough, it was fucking gangland. It was the kind of place where bad shit happened to nice girls and no one gave a fuck about it. The city of Alestria was like this in Solaria and the place was so lawless that Father and the other Councillors basically just left it to gang rule. Though I guessed with his Storm Dragon in his pocket he believed he had control over it anyway. How the hell had the Solarian princesses ended up here?

“Errr, yeah, I guess. Maybe add it to your list of Tory questions,” Seth said with a shrug as we passed the school and headed on.

The further we walked, the more I began to notice marks spray-painted on the walls and doors of the houses. A black circle with a red skull in the centre. Ominous.

“Why didn’t we just stardust closer to our destination?” Max muttered.

“Because I didn’t wanna come here until now so I didn’t know it to stardust in. This guy is a total fucker. He’s like insanely dangerous…for a human. I didn’t want him to see me and get wind of us coming,” Seth said excitedly and I exchanged a smirk with Cal before remembering that he was on my shit list.

Sure enough, the further we went, the more eyes I felt on us, though so far no one dared approach. Max subtly constructed an air shield around us in case of gunshots but when it came down to it, we were going to do this like mortals. Mostly.

We finally turned a corner and Seth stopped beside a fence which ringed a large house with a load of pretty savage looking bikes parked outside it.

Gang members sprawled across the yard, their eyes falling on us as we looked their way. There were gang tattoos on each of them, the skull sitting in the circle, and more than a few of them loosened guns from holsters.

“Are you lost, boys?” a big fucker called out as he looked at us from the steps leading up to the wide porch.

“I’m looking for Tory Gomez’s ex,” I said in a low voice, using the name she’d gone by in the mortal world as I looked him dead in the eye.

His eyebrows rose in surprise at that name and another dude rose from a lawn chair as he looked at me. He was broad, covered in tattoos and had a pretty face which didn’t really tally with his whole gangster vibe.

“Which one?” he asked with a smirk. “I used to date her. That girl was a fucking wild one.”

“Not him,” Seth muttered and my spine prickled at the fact that there was more than one of her fucking exes here. How many did she even have?? And was I a total fucking hypocrite because that pissed me off?

Probably.

“We’re looking for Zane Baxter,” Caleb added.

“Are you here to collect the bounty then? Because I don’t see her,” the big guy said, pushing off of the steps and fingering a hunting knife which hung from his hip.

“Bounty?” Max asked.

“Well…I guess that’s not the right word. The boss only wants to talk to her, not hurt her,” he chuckled and the rest of the goons joined in. “That girl and her sister just fell off the radar like ghosts when they left their last foster home.”

“And why does your boss give a shit about where his ex went?” I asked, moving closer to him with the other Heirs at my back.

“Because I wouldn’t exactly call her my ex,” another voice called and I looked up as the door to the house opened and a huge guy stepped out onto the porch and looked at us. “I asked that girl to be mine and she said yes. I don’t remember releasing her from that commitment.”

He was tall and dark and had full sleeves tattooed on his arms as well as the gang symbol inked over his cheekbone. His eyes were icily cold and the way he looked at me let me know he’d figured out exactly why I was here.

I snorted dismissively at his words. These kinds of assholes liked to believe they owned the world just because they cast a big shadow in a small corner of it. But it was a huge fucking world and this was a small shithole of a corner.

“That girl doesn’t belong to anyone,” I growled. “Least of all some half rent gangster who thinks he shits gold when all he really is is a tiny little tadpole swimming upstream in a river filled with crocodiles.”

“So you think you’re a crocodile?” Zane taunted, grinning at me like he thought he was a predator.

“Something like that,” I replied darkly, my eyes shifting to reptilian slits for half a second before shifting back again just as quickly.

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he tried to work out if he’d imagined that before he went on.

“And here’s me thinking Tory ain’t afraid of anything, but she sent her pet pretty boys after me without showing her face. You wanna tell me where I should send your heads so she gets them?” Zane asked, moving down a step as he closed in on us.

His gang got to their feet too, some of them pulling weapons from belts as a few kids raced out onto the street to keep watch for cops.

“Are you all so afraid of us, you’ve gotta use guns?” Seth taunted, grinning around at the gang like a psychopath. If they started shooting, we could shield easily enough but it would be a lot harder to avoid them noticing that kind of magic.

“Okay, I’ll offer you a deal,” Zane said moving to stand right in front of me as he pulled a revolver from the back of his jeans. He raised his chin but I was still taller and I smirked at him as he narrowed his eyes over the fact. “No guns. But the last one of you alive has to tell us where she is before you die.”

“Alright,” I agreed because there was less than zero chance of him winning this. “But when we beat the shit out of every last one of you, you’ve gotta make a little video for me, telling Tory how fucking sorry you are for leaving her to die in that car like the cowardly little worm you are.”

His men all started grumbling at that comment, closing in on us from all sides. I’d counted eighteen of them out here already and there were more appearing from the house now they realised a fight was brewing.

“Deal,” Zane hissed and I swung my fist right into his smarmy face with all the power of my Order.

I knocked him clean off of his feet and dove after him with a roar as carnage broke out all around me.

Seth howled as he leapt at a group of the gangsters and Max laughed as he dove into the fray too.

I punched Zane four times before the big fucker from the porch collided with me and the two of us were sent tumbling across the ground. He managed to get on top of me, slamming his knuckles into my jaw and drawing blood before I reared up and head butted him hard enough to break his nose. His blood spilled over my face and I laughed savagely as he fell backwards, shoving myself to my feet and kicking him to make sure he stayed down.

Caleb charged past me with a yell, dancing between several opponents just fast enough for them to miss every time they tried to strike him, but not quite fast enough to give away his supernatural nature. He swung punches that looked soft but packed the strength of his Vampire gifts and the gangsters fell back all around him with howls of pain.

A solid weight collided with me as I looked for a fresh opponent and I was almost knocked from my feet as Roxy’s other ex clamped his arm around my neck and tried to choke me out.

I swung around and ran backwards until I crushed him between me and the wall of the house with a sickening crunch which instantly resulted in his grip falling loose. I left him to slump to the ground as I ran back to the fight.

Half of the gang were down and the rest were looking at us like they couldn’t figure out what the fuck was happening.

As I looked across the crowd, one guy yanked a gun from his belt and fired at me. I dove aside before he’d even aimed properly and the bullet slammed into one of the motorbikes behind me instead. I rolled over, flicking my fingers at the bike with a deadly grin as I sent it up in flames, using the bullet as an excuse for the blaze.

The guy fired again, but I’d already constructed a wall of pure heat around me and the bullet melted into nothing before it got close.

Max leapt on him before he could fire again, snatching the gun right out of his hands and beating him around the head with it while crowing like a cockerel as blood flew.

Zane was back on his feet and he turned to me with a look of utter rage, grabbing a lawn chair as he passed it and swinging it at me full force.

I raised an arm to protect my face and the metal framework slammed into me hard enough to knock me back a step. But with my Dragon strength it was nowhere near enough to take me down like he’d hoped.

His lips parted and a frown pulled at his brow half a second before I slammed my fist into his face again. And that felt so fucking good that I almost groaned in satisfaction.

The rest of the fight was finishing up around me and I fell over fucking Zane with his fucking cocky attitude and his shit tattoos that looked like he’d done them himself and that smug fucking look on his fucking face that said he still seriously believed he had some hold on my girl.

He fought back hard, busting my lip and bruising my ribs, but he was no match for me and I soon had him bloody and battered beneath me.

I looked up and found the other Heirs closing in around me with triumphant grins as they finished up their parts of the fight. I felt closer to them now than I had since I’d been Star Crossed. And I realised that that was my own fault. I’d been pulling away from them because I didn’t know how to deal with what had happened to me and Roxy, but they hadn’t just let me retreat.

Even this fucked up little outing was planned to try and help me and I had to wonder how many people had friends who would go even half as far as this for them.

Caleb pulled his Atlas from his pocket and set it recording as I grabbed the front of Zane’s shirt and dragged him back up to his porch where I sat him up against the door so that he could make his apology.

“Tell her you’re sorry,” I snarled.

Zane looked at me through eyes which were already swelling over and spat at my feet.

“Did she ever tell you about how we met?” he asked, laughing darkly, like he didn’t even care if we killed him. And maybe he didn’t. People like him didn’t expect to live long lives. He probably expected us to finish him now that we’d won.

“I don’t give a shit,” I growled.

“She used to come walking past my house every damn day wearing tiny skirts and low cut shirts, whatever she could to catch my eye-”

I punched him hard enough to knock out a tooth and he laughed through the blood pissing out of his mouth.

“And you know how I got her to come over and see me?” he asked, grinning up at me.

I growled at him as magic tumbled to the surface of my skin but Max placed a hand on my arm, pressing his calming influence over me to stop me from killing the bastard.

“I whistled. Fucking whistled and patted my knee and she came trotting on over and sat right in my lap. Not even seventeen yet and bigger balls on her than half of the guys in my gang. That’s when I decided to keep her. And as far as I’m concerned, she’s still mine.”

No amount of calming influence would have stopped me from punching him then. I rammed my fist into his gut and he lurched forward, wheezing against the pain as he clutched his stomach.

“If you were going to keep her then why did you leave her in that car to die?” I snarled and his gaze flickered with fear for a moment like he’d sensed what I really was.

“I wasn’t going to die to save some bitch, no matter how hot she was,” he muttered and Caleb punched him before I could.

“Tell her you’re sorry,” Caleb demanded, pointing the Atlas at him again.

“Fuck you,” Zane spat, lifting his chin like he’d rather die than speak the words he’d promised.

I could see he wasn’t going to do it, his damn pride meaning more to him than his fucking life. But he wasn’t worth killing. Castrating? Maybe. But killing? Not worth the headache. Still, I wasn’t going to leave here without Roxy’s apology.

“Tell her you’re sorry,” I commanded, my voice thick with Coercion.

Zane’s eyes widened as his lips parted and his tongue was forced to speak the words though he didn’t want it to.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, his eyes glazing over as if he was being transported back to that moment. His hands trembled slightly as he went on. “So, so sorry for what I did. I was weak and a coward and I have nightmares about leaving you there like that. I was just so scared…” A tear slipped down his cheek and I glanced at the other Heirs in surprise before releasing him from my control. I’d forced him to apologise, but the rest of that shit was him. Maybe deep down he wasn’t a total fuckwit. But either way, he was a fucking coward who had almost caused her death.

“She’s never coming back here,” I said as Caleb cut the recording. “So you might as well get over her.”

Zane just stared at me as I turned away from him and with a casual flick of my fingers, I sent the flames from the burning bike to hop onto the next one in line. And the next. By the time we made it back to the street, all of them were blazing and the injured gangsters were scrambling to crawl away from the inferno.

Seth offered them a cheery little wave as we walked away and held a hand up for a moment before grinning as he disbanded a concealment spell and his Atlas suddenly appeared in his grasp.

“I used air magic to suspend it above the fight,” he said with a wild grin. “I filmed the whole thing.”

We all laughed as he played the start of it back for us and I watched for a moment as the four of us tore through the gangsters like a pack of psychos. I knocked my shoulder against Cal’s and he slung an arm around me as I smirked at him. I could forgive him for his stupidity yesterday for punching Zane on its own. He hadn’t meant to do it and so long as he kept his fangs away from Roxy from here on out then we weren’t going to keep having an issue. He gave me a squeeze and sighed in relief as the tension between us melted away and I felt some of the pain in my heart dissolve too.

I ran my hand over my face to subtly heal the damage from my injuries and used my water magic to clean the blood from my skin.

The others did the same, Max helping Seth and Cal with his water magic before Seth directed us into another side alley.

“You wanna make one more pit stop while we’re here?” he asked enticingly.

“Where to?” Caleb asked.

“I thought we could go to the Vegas’ old apartment and take photos of us there to tease them with.”

“Why?” Max asked with a frown.

“Because I got the address while I was searching for shit on the assholes we just beat up and I think it would be a shame not to go see it. They moved to the other side of the city, presumably to be as far from that loser as possible. Come on, aren’t you curious?” He gave us the damn puppy dog eyes and we all caved.

I had to admit that I was interested to see where they’d been living before they’d come crashing into our lives and changed everything. I’d never spent a lot of time in the mortal realm and definitely not in areas like this, so I was intrigued to discover more about the place that had shaped them into the Fae they were today. Whenever I tried to picture them growing up, I just came up blank and I already felt like I was getting a better understanding of Roxy’s defensiveness just by gaining this glimpse into their lives. Seeing more could only help me understand her better.

Seth tossed a handful of stardust over us and within moments we appeared in a darkened stairwell which must have been part of an apartment block.

“Is this it?” Max asked, wrinkling his nose at the damp smell which hung around us.

“This is the address I got. I only came close enough to make sure I could find it again last time so I can’t be sure until we go in.” Seth shrugged. “Their old apartment is on the fourth floor. Orion sealed it up when he brought them to the academy in case they needed to come back for anything but as far as I know, it’s still how they left it the night they arrived in our lives.”

My heart ticked a little faster at the thought of that. Of getting a glimpse into the girl Roxy had been before she met me. Before I’d pushed and provoked her into showing me nothing but her claws and teeth.

We headed up the stairs and at the sound of our heavy footfalls, the other residents turned and fled, scurrying back to their own apartments as they hoped to avoid our attention.

Seth finally turned off and led us down a corridor with sticky carpet and a broken light to the door at the far end with an upside down seven hanging from it.

I felt the familiar essence of Lance’s magic fluttering against my skin as a repulsion spell urged me to turn away and go for a piss. It wasn’t particularly strong as it only needed to work on mortals so I broke it apart easily. Max reached for the door handle and unlocked it with a little bit of air magic directed inside the lock mechanism.

The door swung open and Seth giggled like a naughty school kid as he pushed his way inside first and the rest of us followed.

The apartment consisted of a single room which couldn’t have been more than forty square foot with a tiny adjoining bathroom to our left.

There was a beaten up two seater couch pushed against the far wall beneath a window that was zigzagged with cracks and let in a steady trickle of cold air from outside.

Caleb tossed a Faelight up and the room brightened to reveal flaking green paintwork clinging to half of the walls and crumbling masonry exposed on the rest of them.

I swallowed a lump in my throat as the stained floorboards creaked beneath my boots.

“This can’t be the right place,” Max muttered as he crossed the space to the tiny kitchenette.

I watched as he pulled open a few cupboards and found nothing within them aside from a single tin of beans.

Seth was frowning around at the empty space like he was expecting to find something else hidden here somehow, but it was clear there was nothing.

A single chest of drawers stood to the left of the room with a partially broken drawer revealing a few items of clothing poking out.

“I think we should just leave,” Caleb said in a quiet voice, his brow tight as he shifted uncomfortably.

I agreed with him. We were intruding by being here. This wasn’t some joke, this was private, a look at their lives before they’d come to Solaria which they hadn’t offered to share with us. Lance had told me they were living in a shitty apartment in a rough neighbourhood and struggling to get by, but my imagination hadn’t been capable of conjuring this level of poverty. I couldn’t understand it, couldn’t figure out how the daughters of the Savage King had somehow landed in this shithole. What would have happened to them if Lance had never shown up?

“They don’t even have a bed,” Seth said with a whimper in the back of his throat. “Do you think someone took it or-”

“I think the couch folds out,” Max murmured. “And there’s a blanket, so…”

I glanced at the ratty blanket and the memory of burning Roxy’s clothes off of her on her first night at the academy overwhelmed me for a moment. She’d been furious, and at the time I’d mostly put that down to the fact that she was naked in front of all of us. But I remembered her snarling something at me about the money she’d had in her pocket. It hadn’t really meant anything to me at the time, money was nothing to me, I had more of it than I could ever need or spend and I’d never really known anyone who wasn’t in the same situation.

But as I looked around this cold, dirty room with no food in the cupboards and a fucking couch for a bed I realised exactly what I’d done to her that night. I didn’t know where she’d gotten that money, but I could figure it out. She’d already shown me that she was a competent thief and had been utterly unapologetic for the fact. And now I knew why. That was how they’d survived. And I’d looked down on her for it. When really I should have seen how strong that made her. When had I ever had to fight for my survival like that? I’d never once gone hungry in all my life.

Shame licked down my spine and my jaw tightened as the depths of my own total fucking clueless dickhead behaviour were revealed to me and I was filled with enough self loathing to coat my tongue with bile.

My gaze caught on a heap of paperwork which was abandoned on the coffee table and I lifted a page from it, glancing down at the photograph pinned to the top. The twins must have been around seven and despite their identical looks, I could still tell them apart. Darcy’s arm was in a cast, her gaze soft and hopeful while Roxy held her other hand with a defiant look in her eyes and a pout to her lips that promised trouble. There was a summary of the care they’d received with one of their foster families attached to the picture and a brief recommendation for an experienced family to be selected to take them in next due to their difficult personalities.

I knew exactly why mortals would have found them difficult. Fae were built to push boundaries, fight for what they wanted and butt up against authoritative figures at every opportunity in their quest for power. The twins had been passed from home to home for being Fae. In our world, their behaviour would have been praised, but here they’d been subject to punishment and lost their chances at having a family because of it.

I glanced at the rest of the paperwork and realised this must have been the information Lance had gathered on them before coming to collect them. There were school reports, hospital records, more social services files detailing other homes they’d been in. Even a few police reports with mugshots of Tory Gomez and a brief description of things she’d been hauled in over, though it didn’t look like any charges had ever been brought against her. I guessed it had only been a matter of time though. And then what would have happened to them?

I bit down on my tongue and shoved the papers together, pushing them into a thick envelope so that I could take them with me and give them back to Roxy. I didn’t know if she’d even want them, but it didn’t seem right to leave them here.

Caleb caught my eye and wordlessly grabbed a bag from beside the chest of drawers and filled it with their clothes. It was still pitifully empty when he was done and there wasn’t anything else here.

“Let’s go home,” Max said in a low voice and Seth whimpered as he glanced around at the barren apartment one last time before pulling the stardust from his pocket.

“We’re not telling anyone else about this,” I said as we all looked at each other.

“No,” they agreed and a moment later we were swept up by the stars and transported back to the academy.