Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

Geraldine had been up half the night wielding her earth magic plus Max’s power – which he’d donated to her cause through some kind of bagel-based bribery if I was understanding her correctly. An entire night and morning had passed while I did nothing beyond sitting on a rock at the far edge of the island we’d ripped from the edge of Solaria, staring out into the depths of the inky water surrounding us on all sides.

A flame burned beside me, an ever-present companion to my solitude as I let my power recharge and occasionally sent a blast of magic into the sea to change our trajectory at random. But while I’d sat there wallowing in the distance growing between me and my sister with every passing moment, Geraldine had been hard at work. And as the brightest rays of sunlight had spilled down onto me marking the zenith of the sun’s arc, she’d come running towards me in her Cerberus form, barking a command for me to join her while her tail wagged in a frenzied way, giving me no choice but to agree.

She’d even given me a ride back here, the lolloping gait of her enormous canine form bringing a breath of laughter to my lips despite all I had to wallow over. As we crested a hill near the centre of the huge island, my breath caught in my lungs and Geraldine finally fell still.

“What…how?” I breathed, sliding from her back and landing beside her so that she could shift and give me the answer to that question.

Geraldine returned to her Fae form, a broad smile on her mouth as she set her bare feet on the grass and planted her fists on her hips.

“My lady, may I present the R.U.M.P. Castle, the crown jewel upon the head of Solaria, the wandering castle to the true queens and the seat upon which you shall sit while guiding the home to the rebellion during the War of Shadows and Heartache.”

“I thought you were calling it the War of the Reborn?” I muttered, remembering that small fact, but Geraldine swiped a flippant hand through the air.

“It’s a work in progress,” she explained, gesturing for me to focus on the view ahead, and I stilled as I really took it in.

My lips parted at the castle she had created in the dead of night, turrets of stone and ice carved above an enormous drawbridge that crossed a moat filled with flowing water, which I seriously doubted had been there before.

There were flowers blooming in deepest red and midnight blue up the sides of the stunning building, their petals shifting in a breeze I couldn’t feel, making them look like living flames as they danced with the motion.

The building had nothing on the size of The Palace of Souls, looking more homely than imposing, though I guessed it would still house plenty of Fae.

“There aren’t words for this,” I said in a low voice as Geraldine took my arm and drew me forward, marching at a fierce pace.

As we closed in on the drawbridge, Max stepped out of the trees, his jaw ticking as he threw a wall of water up around us, blocking us from view. He stepped straight through it a moment later, bone dry despite the torrent he had just carved his way through and holding out a dress for Geraldine to put on.

“Oh you nibleberry nagfish,” she sighed as she took the thing from him and tugged it on. It was white and a bit on the small side for Geraldine’s voluptuous curves, meaning her tits were practically exploding from it and her nipples were still visible through the material.

“No,” Max snarled, lifting his hands to try and cover her again but she knocked him aside with an impatient huff, casting two shells of ice over her boobs to cover them a bit better while rolling her eyes at him.

“Honestly, Maxy boy, anyone would think you are afraid I might wander from your dingle dangler at any given moment with the way you go on,” she sighed, wafting him out of her path and tugging me along with her through the wall of water.

It took little more than a thought for me to keep the water from touching my skin as I walked with her, and I couldn’t help but think back to our first lesson on water magic when Darcy and I had found such simple control of our power so challenging.

“After much nattering from the rabble, I was coerced into creating some additional sleeping space down here for some of the lower ranking members of your court and our wafsome allies,” Geraldine explained as we crossed the drawbridge and stepped into the entranceway of the castle.

Max tried to follow us inside, but Geraldine barked at him to remain yonder while she escorted me around my new abode and threw her magic at the drawbridge mechanism to make it slam in his face while he shouted his objections at us from beyond it.

Geraldine sighed like she was some long-suffering wife, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, then casting a silencing bubble to block out Max’s shouts. She gave me a rueful smile and patted my arm before tugging me further inside.

The beauty of the place extended within, ice carvings of Phoenixes decorating the stone walls, depicting Darcy and me in scenes that I remembered surviving through battle and bloodshed, the entire thing seeming so much more impressive than it had felt at the time. Honestly, I just felt like I was faking my way through this game of power and politics most days, but in the images Geraldine had rendered of the two of us, we looked regal, beautiful, confident and impressive. Like we really were queens.

Geraldine batted away every attempt I made at complimenting the work she’d done on this place, telling me repeatedly that it was little more than a cow shed with a flower on top of it and still required much more work. But if this was a cow shed, then I had definitely grown up in a pig pen, or maybe a cesspit.

She led me towards a short corridor to the left of the central entry hall which was half hidden beneath the grand staircase, knocking open a door and revealing a plain, unadorned room within. It looked about the same size as my dorm back at Zodiac Academy, had a basic wooden bed with a scattering of straw for a mattress and the floor was just hard-packed dirt. It almost seemed as though it couldn’t be a part of the same building that we’d entered a few moments ago.

“What’s this for?” I asked curiously.

“This is Melinda Altair’s chamber,” Geraldine explained with a shrug. “There’s one for each of the shamed and denounced former Councillors and their family members down here.”

“All of their family members?” I asked, looking at the squat space and trying not to snort in amusement. “Even the Heirs?”

“What precisely are those three dongleberries heirs to anymore?” Geraldine asked me curiously, turning us around and drawing me away from the dark and forgotten corridor she’d crafted for the use of the non-royalists in our company. I doubted they would happily sleep in those rooms, they’d probably just use their own magic to make a counter-castle that was even bigger than this one. “There is no Celestial Council anymore, they hold no claim to the throne through bloodline or weight of their own power. Some might say they are shamed beyond all reproach, have come crawling for pity at the feet of the true queens and are lucky to even be allowed to step foot upon the R.U.M.P. at all.”

“Are you ‘some’?” I asked in faint amusement, and she winked at me.

“Maybe I am. Though perhaps I should be forced to bed down there with the rabble too after so shamefully linking myself to that scandalous sealion out there,” she mused.

“Max?” I asked and she nodded gravely, her brow furrowed.

“I have so tried to tempt my Lady Petunia away from his fine hose. But alas, her mind is set upon him and…I fear my heart may have followed in her wake.”

I tugged her to a halt at the foot of an enormous frozen staircase and turned to face her, taking her hands in mine as I looked into her deep blue eyes.

“Geraldine,” I said firmly. “If Max is it for you, then let him be it. This war, this doubt and uncertainty we live in has only confirmed one thing to me, and that’s how brief life can be and how quickly it can be stolen from us at any point in time. So don’t waste any more of it simply because he hasn’t knelt for me and Darcy. I don’t give a fuck about that anyway.” I swallowed against a lump in my throat as I forced the next words past my lips. “Darius never knelt for me either, but I didn’t want him to. Not in the end. All I really wanted was for him to be mine, and I had far less of that than I might have done if I’d just accepted what he was to me sooner.”

Geraldine’s lower lip wobbled, and she reached for me like she was going to embrace me, but I shook my head, hardening that wall of ice and fire surrounding my shattered heart as I refused to feel any of it.

“I don’t want pity,” I said firmly, my hatred for the stars rising like lava through the core of me. “I just want you to go out there and grab that fish boy by the balls and tell him he’s yours, bad choices in politics be damned.”

“I…” Geraldine glanced towards the drawbridge like she might be about to do precisely that, but she raised her chin and gave me a rueful grin instead. “I may just do that, my lady, but I think I’ll allow him to flounder out there a touch longer before I do.”

I snorted and let her lead me on through the castle she’d spent the entire night building. There was a room laid out for war councils, a round table far grander than the one we’d used back at the ruins, ready with a map of Solaria at the heart of it and murals of a dismembered jade green Dragon hanging on every wall. Then there was a huge kitchen, a dining hall fit for a medieval banquet with a high table presiding over the others, two huge chairs carved with mine and Darcy’s names at the centre of it.

Upstairs there were two more floors, one set up with far grander rooms which Geraldine declared would be used by the members of our court, a group she reminded me needed selecting officially as I looked at the four poster beds and lavishly decorated spaces.

“I thought our inner circle was pretty clear,” I pointed out as she continued the tour. “There’s you-”

Geraldine squealed and fell to her knees at my offhanded remark. I had my damn sword in hand and a fistful of fire before I realised she was just overwhelmed and bowing to me, sobbing all over my boots and thanking me relentlessly for the great honour I had bestowed upon her.

“Get up,” I begged her, sheathing my sword, and grabbing her arm as I heaved her to her feet. “You can’t seriously have doubted that we’d want you by our sides through all of this?” I asked incredulously as tears and snot ran freely down her face and she seemed in real danger of hyperventilating.

“You…mean to take…little old me…as one of your chosen…most honoured…most beloved-”

“Yes, Geraldine,” I said, helping her out as her sobs made it almost impossible to make out her words, and she flung herself at me, squeezing me so tightly I feared for the integrity of my ribcage as she fell apart entirely.

“Who else might we send an official word to, to confirm their place among your court?” she managed to ask me, though she was still trembling so violently that I didn’t dare release her.

“Err, I dunno,” I hedged, though my mind instantly went to Xavier. I had to wonder if he would even want to accept a position like that from me, knowing the ex-Councillors had plans for him to join their circle as the Fire Lord, but he was my family. One of the few members I had left now, and I knew I needed to offer this to him even if he chose not to accept it. Though for now I decided to keep that to myself. “I guess Sofia and Tyler,” I said, giving Geraldine an answer.

“Oh yes!” she cried, releasing me so fast that I almost fell over.

She whipped a hand beside her, and a scroll appeared there with a fucking quill to match, all cast from her magic so quickly that they almost seemed to fall from the air itself.

“I shall make a list of positions that need to be assigned,” she announced. “Do you have anyone in particular in mind to help manage your army? We need a true and stalwart gal or gander to take on the role of liaising with the people and making sure that their voices are heard. I, of course, will gladly assist in such a role as my sweet papa would have wanted, but with my duties to fight and remain at your side, I think it might be prudent to attach someone else to the role too. Someone who has experience in commanding authority and whose loyalty is unwavering and unquestionable. Someone who can be trusted to convey the true, honest needs and wants of your people so that they might best be served. Can you think of any such a noble Fae?”

“I’m pretty sure the person you’re describing doesn’t actually exist,” I said, frowning as I tried to think of someone who could do the things she’d described, though one name came to mind and stuck there like a wet leaf clinging to an unwilling frog.

“Oh, that cannot be, my lady, the stars have always had a guiding hand in…” she trailed off at the look which darkened my features with the mention of the stars, and I sighed.

“We need someone used to leading groups of people, yes?”

“Indeed.”

“Someone who publicly denounced Lionel and fought against him when they could have easily pretended submission and stayed out of this war?”

“That would be most preferable,” she agreed, and I winced a little at the name which was the only one that came to mind.

“Well… I think Washer pretty much fits that bill.”

Geraldine’s mouth parted in what might have been shock, or horror, or some combination of the two, but when it came down to it, if we ignored the Speedos and overly tactile behaviour, Washer was actually half decent. He had bowed to us and thrown his lot in with us, even though it meant losing his job and his relationship falling apart. He was used to commanding groups of unruly students too, so he had experience in managing people, and with his Siren gifts, he’d be able to sense any needs the rebels had without even having to wait for the issues to be brought to him.

“I shall have an order sent to the wigglesome worm himself post haste,” she said firmly. “As you say, he has indeed proven himself a fine and worthy candidate – even if his attire often leaves a lot to be desired.”

“Yeah, maybe we should get him an official uniform,” I suggested. “Something buttoned up to the neck and baggy on the ass.”

Geraldine’s eyes sparkled with that idea, and she wrote it down, the words glaring back at me from the page.

A.S.S. costume for Washer.

I suppressed a shudder at the mental image those words conjured in my mind, reassuring myself that the uniform itself would most definitely be modest and sensible – not a nipple or wandering ball sack in sight.

“Alright then, now we’re rolling,” she said, giving me a nudge to get me climbing the next staircase which led up to the highest level of the castle. “Who else would you like to be officially enrolled into your court?”

“Dante Oscura and his family have been loyal to us from the moment we met them,” I said as I thought on it. “I doubt they’ll want to serve the crown long-term if we win this war, but I value their input enough to want them with us while it lasts at least.”

“Say no more, my Queen, I shall see it done.”

Geraldine wrote their names down then stuffed the scroll into her cleavage before hurrying the last few steps to the huge doors awaiting us at the top. She grasped the handles and threw the doors wide at once, light spilling through them from an enormous suite of private rooms intended for me and Darcy.

I didn’t have words for the beauty of what she’d created as I strode between the bedrooms and stunning bathing area, my heart full of gratitude for her doing this for us as well as awe over her talent.

“Geraldine, this is-”

“I know it is nothing in the face of all you have abandoned at your true home in The Palace of Souls,” she interrupted me as I stepped into the room she’d designed for me, finding my few possessions already there and a fire lit in the hearth.

The room was big but still cosy, the walls decorated in red and black roses which crept up and over the bed then hung down over it, a delicate scent coating the air. There was a large copper bathtub beneath a window formed with ice standing on a slightly raised area to my right, and a desk for me to sit at too. My clothes had been placed in a walk-in closet to the left of the space and Geraldine started telling me her plans to create more garments as soon as possible.

I nodded along, feeling somehow detached from the girl who was being shown around this place, the room I would now own, the bed I would occupy alone without a single thing here belonging to the man I should have shared it with.

“There is a training area on the roof with targets and practice dummies, all manner of things for you to train with, whether with weapon or magic, should you so wish,” Geraldine was saying, but I was finding it hard to hear her.

I unbuckled my scabbard and dropped my sword onto the desk before sinking down on the edge of the bed and staring at the roses adorning the walls. The flowers in Darcy’s room were pink and blue, Geraldine had already explained to me, and I nodded vacantly, trying not to see blood in the deep red of the roses before me.

“Where’s Darius’s treasure?” I blurted, interrupting something she’d been saying about magical targets, my fingers curling into the softness of the bed sheets with a grip that was far too tight and not tight enough.

“I…think that it was being transported by a herd of Minotaurs…” Geraldine seemed to realise that I was on the verge of cracking because she stopped mid-sentence and raised her chin. “I will fetch it now, sweet lady love of mine. Forgive me, I should have thought, I was distracted but I should have thought to make sure it was here. I shall gladly flay the skin from my bosom in penance for my failure this day. I shall scoop both eyes from my skull and drop them in a lagoon. I shall scald the skin from my fingers and allow a rat to eat the remains of-”

“Don’t do any of those things,” I said as firmly as I could manage, shaking my head even as screams rang in the confines of my skull. “It isn’t important. Just forget about it. I just need a few minutes.”

My grip on the bedding tightened until I could feel my fingernails trying to puncture the skin of my palms through it. Geraldine opened and closed her mouth several times before bowing so low that her nose brushed the ground, then she fled the room.

The second the door closed, a silencing bubble burst from me and I released a scream so loud that I was surprised the entire building didn’t come falling down on top of my head.

This was all wrong. I shouldn’t have been here, sitting in a castle surrounded by beautiful things while my sister was missing. While Darius lay cold and alone on the side of some forgotten mountain.

I’d let the others talk me into leaving him there to rest alongside Hamish and Catalina. I’d let them convince me it was the right place for him, beneath the open sky, surrounded by such strong magic that no one but those of us who had cast it would be able to find them again.

But now I was here, and I was alone, sitting on the edge of a bed meant for two, a band of metal on my finger binding me to a man who would never again look me in the eyes and call me his.

I pushed off of the bed and slumped to the floor, my fingers taking hold of my hair and tearing at it as I dropped my forehead to my knees and fell into the deep hole within me.

The walls I’d been building so forcefully were cracking, the weight of all I tried to hold back within them pressing out too powerfully.

I would die from this pain. Slowly but surely, it would consume me and rot everything good I had ever claimed for my own. And I couldn’t even say I cared about that anymore.

I screamed again, fire igniting across my body as my wings burst from my back and sent the bed screeching across the floorboards behind me.

I managed to hold onto the power of the flames just enough to stop them from burning this beautiful castle to the ground, but I let it have me. Hotter and hotter I blazed until the glow from my own flesh was too much and I was forced to close my eyes against the power of it.

I was fury incarnate, a raging void that craved nothing but death and an end to all things.

Lionel Acrux’s face flashed through my mind, and I burned him up too, watching him scream as the skin melted from his bones and the fire in me consumed those as well until he was nothing but ash, then not even that. A simple stain on the map of the world where he had once stood tall and dared call himself king.

The ruby pendant which hung from my neck seemed to heat beyond even the power of the flames, a pulse sounding within it as though the heart of it had come alive, beating to a rhythm I knew as intimately as my own pulse. Like he was there, his chest pressed to mine, our souls linked as one, reaching for each other even through the barrier of the Veil.

Could he see me? Was he watching me break for him with knowing eyes, wondering where the girl he had fallen for had gone in the wake of his end?

The door banged against the wall as it was thrown open, the sound of gold and jewels hitting the floor making me look up from my own personal pit of despair as Caleb dropped the huge chest of treasure to the floor and let the pieces scatter everywhere.

He said nothing as he moved to sit before me on the floor, his fangs snapping out as he let me see the monster in him too, no sign from him that the fire I was wielding frightened him. No sign that he believed I was as close to losing control of it as I felt.

“You need to keep moving,” he said to me in a low voice, his eyes dark and full of the same pain which was blinding me. “You need to be doing something real, not sitting in a castle tower, waiting for the world to come find you.”

I choked out a laugh or maybe it was a sob, the sound so fucking hopeless that it was impossible to tell.

“I thought I was supposed to be leading an army?” I replied hollowly.

“No one said you have to stay sitting here to do it. What about that promise you made? What about Darcy?”

A rush of longing ran through me at the mention of my sister’s name and with a force of pure will, I banished my Phoenix.

Caleb arched an eyebrow at me, his gaze dropping to my body for half a heartbeat. I realised with a flash of irritation that I’d been even closer to losing control than I’d thought as I found my clothes missing and the wooden floor beneath me scorched and blackened by the heat of my flames. I brushed a hand over my hair, thankful to find that at least had survived.

“Don’t go blushing on me now, pretty boy. It’s not like you haven’t seen it all before,” I ground out as I stood, turning my ass to him, and striding towards the closet with intent. Because he was right. I didn’t have to sit around in this fancy castle and Geraldine had already given me a place to start.

I ignored the beautiful gowns hanging on the rail, pushing them aside and finding the practical clothes I needed before tugging on a black crop top and a pair of matching sweatpants. I looked about as queenly as the street thief I’d been before I came to this fucking kingdom, and I was more than okay with that.

I brushed my fingers over the two necklaces hanging at my throat. The ruby from Darius was still warm to the touch, though there was no echo of a pulse lingering within it. Had I imagined that it had been there at all? But even as I wondered that, the scent of him seemed to wrap around me, that smoke and cedar rolling along the back of my tongue and making me think of all the kisses we’d shared from brutal to tender and everything in between. I shifted my fingers from the necklace he had given me to the Imperial Star which my sister should have worn, the thing thrumming with hidden power too.

I pushed my power into the star, wondering if it might submit to me now, when I needed it most, but there was no answering call to my magic, nothing to say that it even knew I was there, knocking on the sealed door which contained its incredible power.

I exhaled through my nose, releasing my grip on the necklaces and focusing on the task I had decided upon.

I kicked on a pair of sneakers and pulled my hair into a high ponytail before expelling a deep breath and striding back into the bedroom.

Caleb was leaning against the door, casually flicking through something on a shiny new Atlas and I frowned at the item as he glanced up at me.

“Tyler got done working on a bunch of these for the trustworthy rebels to have,” he explained, taking another from his pocket and tossing it to me. “They’ve been shielded with magic to make sure they can’t be traced, so they’re safe to use. I assume we’ll be leaving, so we’re going to need to be able to call someone for a location to stardust back to when we’re done.”

I dropped the Atlas into my pocket, noticing the bed had been moved back into position and now mostly covered the blackened patch of flooring, hiding all the evidence that remained of me losing my shit.

I stepped over the treasure which was still spread across the floor, not making any attempt to move it, simply taking reassurance in the fact that it was here, safe, like he would want it to be.

The urge to count each and every piece tugged at me, and I looked over my shoulder sharply, almost expecting to see him there, bitching about the golden trinkets which were scattered across my floor and threatening to beast-out if it wasn’t all carefully counted and polished immediately. I shook my head to dispel it of the ghost I was imagining, knowing that no spirit would ever be enough to fill the void in me even if I did find one lurking close to me.

Caleb tossed me a pouch of stardust, then held out a hand for me, and I moved towards him, letting him lift me into his arms and looping an arm around his neck.

“You know where we’re going?” he confirmed as he tightened his grip on me.

“Yeah,” I agreed because it was the only faint hope of a plan I had, and it was all I’d been able to think about since the moment Geraldine had suggested it. I’d held back out of some vague sense of responsibility to the people on this island, but that wasn’t what I needed to be responsible for. I had to focus on the things I required to stand any chance of victory and the first of those goals was clear. Darcy.

“Okay then.” Caleb shot into motion.

My stomach swooped as he raced us out of the castle past a group of Fae who I couldn’t even hope to recognise at the speed we were travelling, then away across the open green land which made up the centre of the island we’d cleaved from Solaria.

The cold bit at us mercilessly as he moved faster than the wind and I found myself clinging to him for dear life as the world became a blur all around us while he raced for the edge of the wards where we would be able to disappear into the clutches of the stars.

In no time at all, he had made it to the clifftop on the western side of the island, the point where the land had once been attached to Solaria now nothing but an unforgiving drop into the depths of the ocean below.

Caleb didn’t slow as he ran for it, leaping straight from the edge and into the void beyond.

We began to fall, the water rushing up towards us at speed, the motion reminding me of a time long ago when we’d done this very thing before, when our problems had seemed so big and yet now seemed so incredibly small in hindsight.

I took a pinch of stardust from the bag he’d given me and tossed it over our heads just before we could hit the water.

The world twisted all around us, the stars looking on with their greedy eyes, and I was really tempted to flip them all off and tell them to get fucked. But even as I thought of it, they spat us back out again and we appeared on a lush hillside, a mountainous terrain sweeping out around us in an endless sea of green.

We were still falling as we appeared, but a gust of my air magic caught us and set Caleb down on his feet before he released me too, both of us looking around in confusion at the yawning, empty space which surrounded us.

“There’s nothing here,” Caleb muttered, turning to take in the wild and untainted landscape we found ourselves in.

Everything here was a deep and vibrant green, the rolling mountains painted in the colour, and the air so fresh that breathing it in felt like waking up more fully than I had in weeks. There were no roads or paths, no signs at all of inhabitants beyond the lone eagle I spotted soaring through the low clouds above our heads. The air felt thick with moisture, rain oncoming or recently passed and the silence was of the heavy, unrelenting kind which I had never once known while growing up in a bustling city. There was peace here, untainted and unfractured, just a natural, endless peace which set my body at ease in a purely organic way.

“There’s the lake,” I pointed out, drawing Caleb’s attention to the still water which spread out in a bowl between the mountains at his back.

Caleb turned to look at the steely grey expanse and together we started walking towards it, our boots treading on springy moss as we followed the impossibly green hillside down to where it met with the water’s edge.

The world was still here, harmony encompassing every bit of the surrounding landscape in a way that was alien and yet alluring all at once. It was as if nothing resided here beyond the solitude and wilderness, this oasis of calm lost within a world I knew was fraught with war and suffering.

Even our soft footsteps on the mossy ground sounded loud here, the silence stretching between us as we maintained it, not wanting to taint the serenity we’d discovered with unnecessary words.

We fell still as we made it to the lakeshore, the toes of my boots crunching in the slate-coloured gravel marking the water’s edge.

A few heartbeats passed, but nothing happened, no one came to greet us the way Darcy had described to me, no island sat in the centre of the water nor grew from the depths of that mirror-like pane of glass.

“Maybe there’s no one home,” Caleb mused, bending down to claim a piece of slate from the ground before throwing it out into the lake.

The stone skipped five times, ripples arcing out in its wake before it sank into the icy depths and was lost.

We watched in silence as the ripples spread across the surface, the disturbance eerie in this too calm place and yet still, nothing happened.

“I am Roxanya Vega,” I called out, the loudness of my voice a harsh break to the peace. “Daughter of the Savage King and the Greatest Seer of their generation. I wish to gain entry to the Library of the Lost.”

Nothing replied to my request beyond the echoes of my own voice resounding from the mountains that surrounded us and I sighed.

“Do we head back?” Caleb asked me uncertainly, but I shook my head.

“I came here to visit a fucking library. And I’m not leaving until I’ve checked out some books.”

I took his hand, and he didn’t protest as I drew him with me towards the lake, air magic circling us as we strode straight into the water, carving a path through it with the arrowhead of air that surrounded us and descending beneath the surface.

A flick of my fingers sent flares of Phoenix fire tumbling away through the blackness of the water ahead, lighting the way on as we strode towards the centre of the lake where I knew the library was hidden.

“What if they still refuse to open the door when we find it?” Caleb asked curiously, no concern in his voice.

“Then I’ll break in,” I replied with a shrug. “I’m beyond the point of niceties. Darcy needs me, and the only hope I have of finding her is locked within their precious sanctuary. If they don’t want to help me with that, then that makes them my enemies. And my enemies are forming a nasty habit of ending up as soot.”

“Savage,” he commented, the corner of his lips twitching with approval.

“Whatever it takes.”

Deeper and deeper we delved into the lake, the weight of the water above us pressing down with impossible intensity on the roof of my air shield, but I didn’t falter, simply pushing more power into it to reinforce it as we went.

The light of the flares I shot out ahead of us lit up shoals of small fish which darted away from the invasion of their underwater kingdom, their scales flashing silver as they fled.

“Look.” Caleb jerked his chin to draw my attention to our right and I fell still as I spotted several huge, nameless shadows circling just out of sight, the silt at the bottom of the lake billowing up to disguise their bodies as they moved.

I flicked my fingers towards them, Phoenix fire tumbling away from us in an attempt to illuminate them, but the dark swallowed the flames before I could see more than a flash of scales.

“Do you think those things guard the library?” I asked, my heart leaping as an enormous, red tentacle was revealed for a second before it whipped out of sight into the cloud of silt.

“Or they’re just hungry,” Caleb suggested, taking his twin daggers from his belt, and igniting the fire which was imbued into the metal, readying for an attack.

I pursed my lips, considering the beasts tailing us before turning away from them and continuing towards the heart of the lake.

“Let them come for us if they dare,” I challenged. “I could do with a good fight.”

“Feeling bloodthirsty?” Caleb asked as he turned his back to the creatures too, matching my pace and striding on at my side.

“That’s pretty much all I feel now,” I agreed.

There was a pause before he replied, an acknowledgement of the man we had both loved and lost, a ripple in our reality which would never smooth out.

“Good.”

I could feel the monsters drawing closer to us as we walked, their eyes roaming down my spine, sizing me up, stalking me in the dark, but I didn’t look back again.

I wasn’t some prey to be hunted and I had to think they knew that too, or they would have attacked by now.

My senses were on high alert for an ambush though, the fire in my veins pulsing in time with the pounding of my heart, sending adrenaline skittering through me. I got off on that feeling, the urge for survival, the desire to fight. It was the one thing that let me know I even wanted to live anymore, the automatic reactions of my body which was stubbornly determined to keep fighting even if inside I felt like I was crumbling.

I was so focused on the monsters hunting us in the dark that I almost didn’t notice the stone and silt of the lakebed giving way to the firmness of rock beneath my boots.

I fell still, looking down at the circle of stone surrounding us and releasing a low breath as I took in the glimmering constellations which were carved into an ancient-looking zodiac wheel with a sun symbol at the centre of it.

“Is this it?” Caleb asked as he looked down at it too. “The door?”

My lips parted on a reply but just as I started to speak, a rush of water crashed into the back of my air shield, the attack coming so fast and so violently that my magic almost buckled beneath the force of it as those enormous tentacles crashed into the hardened shell encasing us.

“Fuck,” I cursed, whirling towards the monster as it shot to our right, orbiting us in a haze of silt that hid most of its enormous body from view.

I wrenched my arm back, a spear forming in my hand as my earth magic flared and I hurled it towards the monster with a cry of effort, the sharp tip puncturing my air shield as I allowed the smallest hole to pierce it for that purpose alone.

The spear flew true, but the creature moved with ungodly speed, whirling away from us, and evading my attack just as another resounding crash slammed into my air shield from behind.

I whipped around, magic burning a path through the centre of me. My eyes widened at the sight of the giant, green pincer as it snapped against the walls of my air magic, the power vibrating and threatening to buckle with every sharp strike as a second monster attacked us too.

“What the fuck are these things?” I hissed, my muscles bunching as I fought to hold them off, throwing more power into my shield and bracing as the pincer snapped at it again.

“There are all kinds of monsters lurking in the corners of this world,” Caleb replied, his head turning to look just as a third creature launched its attack to our left.

A glimmering golden horn – which looked like it could have belonged to a Pegasus on Faeroids – drove into my shield, and a beast with a shark-like body and a mouth full of wicked, sharp teeth charged us ferociously. “Didn’t you read the tale of Joseph and the Long Horned Ergut when you were a kid?”

“Who the fuck is Joseph?” I hissed.

The thing I was assuming was a Long Horned Ergut whirled away from us into the depths of the water. I wasn’t dumb enough to think it was giving up on us though, and I poured even more magic into my shield just as I spotted the glimmer of that lethal-looking horn turning back towards us once more.

“Joseph was a kid who went searching for treasure in the depths of the dark pool beyond his family home,” Caleb said, rolling his eyes at me like I should know that.

“Is this some fairy tale shit?” I asked. “Did he put on his little red riding hood and defeat this thing, because if he did, I’d appreciate you skipping to that bit and giving me a few pointers.”

“Little Red Riding Hood was an Orderist piece of shit murderer who killed her grandma when she found out she was a Werewolf and not a Medusa like she’d believed,” Caleb said, looking disgusted. “We know your pretty little mortal versions of the stories too, but all Fae know that nothing is ever as simple as once upon a time.”

My concentration faltered at that weird as fuck version of the story every mortal grew up with, but I was distracted again when the pincer beast thing snapped its claws against my defences.

The shield rippled and almost collapsed beneath the might of the attack, and I swore loudly as I poured more magic into it, launching a spear gilded in Phoenix fire the monster’s way, making it retreat with a scream of pain.

The Long Horned Ergut wasn’t deterred though, and I was forced to throw both hands out in its direction, the impossibly sharp horn slamming into my shield with the force of a hammer against an anvil.

Cracks spiderwebbed across my shield, lake water trickling in through them. I gasped and fought to patch the holes again, Caleb’s hand finding mine as he offered me his power too.

I instantly dropped my mental shields, the roaring rush of his magic tumbling into me like the charge of some powerful beast itself, and the shield protecting us glimmered as it was reinforced.

“Okay then, tell me how Joseph killed the Long-Horned thing,” I gritted out, another spear forming in my free hand while I twisted my head to look for the other monsters in the gloom surrounding us.

“He didn’t,” Caleb said, frowning at me. “He found its cavern, stole one of its eggs and when the Long Horned Ergut discovered him, it ripped him apart and swallowed the pieces. His family never discovered what happened to him, and the moral of the story was to never venture into the dark places of this world without being prepared for the beasts that lurk there.”

I gaped at him, my magic vibrating as the tentacles lashed against my shield from behind, and the third beast reminded us that it was still very much here too.

“What the fuck kind of kids story is that?”

“The only kind that matters,” he replied with a shrug. “What did you expect? A happy ending?”

“Yes, I expected a happy fucking ending,” I snarled. “I expected a tale where the beast was defeated, the treasure was claimed, and everyone lived happily ever after.”

Caleb broke a merciless laugh. “I suggest you stop believing in nonsense like that, Princess,” he said, his voice low and rough. “That’s not the way Faery tales go. The endings are always brutal and bloody, and no one walks away from them unscathed. Especially not the main characters.”

My eyes moved to the monsters around us once more, my power threatening to buckle at any given moment, a brutal fate awaiting us if it did.

“Well fuck that,” I hissed. “I’m fighting on the side of once upon a time, and I’m gonna walk away from this a hero, just like the mortal stories promised.”

“Good luck with that,” Caleb snorted, and I took that as a challenge as I drew on my magic and prepared to show him exactly what I meant.

Out of the corner of my eye, the enormous tentacles whipped back, preparing for another strike just as the Long Horned Ergut charged at us again.

The moment it struck, I threw my air magic out, widening my shield to encompass both of them within it, a wild shriek of panic escaping the thing that looked like a giant squid as it crashed down in the waterless area, its tentacles flailing wildly and almost knocking Caleb from his feet.

He reacted fast, shooting around it before leaping towards its head, the blazing daggers in his grip primed for a killing blow as my focus was stolen by the Long Horned Ergut.

The thing was hideous without the shroud of the silt from the lakebed to shield it, its enormous mouth gnashing wildly as it tried to heave its body towards me and swallow me whole.

I offered the monster a feral grin, ignoring the crash of weight against the far edge of my shield from the giant crab thing and casting another spear into my hand as I ran for it, my gaze fixing on the one, bulbous eye on this side of its horned head.

A roar escaped my lungs as I launched the spear with all my strength, hurling it straight for that eye and following it with a blast of fire magic destined for its brain.

But instead of piercing the flesh of the creature’s eyeball, I watched in shock as a silvery, opaque eyelid snapped across the eye half a heartbeat before the spear could make contact with it.

Even the sharpened point of my weapon stood no chance against whatever that eyelid was made of, and I cursed as it bounced off, the fireball I’d sent after it flaring across its scaley skin and extinguishing too.

The only thing my attack seemed to achieve was to piss the monster off, and I was forced to turn and run as it threw its weight towards me, its huge body slamming into the muddy lakebed right where I’d just been.

I cast blades of ice into my hands as I continued running, hurling them at the beast one after another, hoping to stall it, though the cuts they made in its scaley hide seemed to do little more than anger it.

With a surge of energy, my wings burst free of my back, fire erupting over my body as I took off towards the higher regions of our air pocket beneath the lake, soaring above the tentacled squid thing just as it managed to wrap Caleb in one of its snake-like appendages.

I threw a blast of Phoenix fire at the limb and the squid screamed as it was forced to release him.

Caleb instantly took the chance I’d given him, and with a flash of speed and whirl of his flaming blades, he sliced the belly of the creature wide open, bluish-green blood spraying across the muddy lakebed as it roared in anguish.

I beat my wings hard, flying for the very top of my air shield, glancing back over my shoulder as I felt the Long Horned Ergut lunging after me, the air shifting as it heaved its bulk upwards like a shark beaching itself in search of a meal.

I threw my arms wide, my head falling back as I tucked my wings in tight and flipped over backwards, the hot breath of the monster licking up my spine and its jaws snapping shut just shy of my heels.

I dove down, air rushing behind me to make me move faster while I drew my sword and plummeted towards the monster’s back.

The Long Horned Ergut shrieked as I landed on it, my feet slipping on its wet scales, but I kept my footing and plunged my sword down into its spine with a bellow of effort.

The creature thrashed and roared as my sword was buried right up to the hilt, its greyish blood spilling all over my hands, making it even harder for me to hold my position.

I flapped my flaming wings to help me balance, my pulse thundering as adrenaline crashed through me and I lost myself to this feeling. The fight for my life woke me up and made everything seem so much sharper than it had since the moment my world had imploded, and the people I loved most in this star-cursed life of mine had been lost to me.

I gritted my teeth and wrenched my sword to the right, the monster screaming with a deafening finality as its body went rigid then lax beneath me.

I leapt away as it began to fall to one side, beating my wings to get airborne again and ripping my sword free in a spray of blood. It fell to the silt at the bottom of the lake, finally releasing its hold on the brutal existence it had claimed.

I expelled a wicked laugh, swiping a hand over my face to clear the blood from my eyes and turning to see how Caleb was doing against the giant squid.

But as my gaze fell on him still fighting a ferocious battle with the creature, I found one huge tentacle whipping my way, the suckers along its edge pulsing as they sheared through the air straight for me.

I sucked in a sharp breath and raised my arms to shield myself, but I wasn’t fast enough, and the full force of that monstrous limb collided with me hard enough to blast the wind from my lungs and send me flying.

I was hurled across the open space and I banished my wings, my eyes widening in fear as the edge of my air shield loomed ahead of me as solid as a brick wall.

I screamed in terror, throwing a hand out, and the shield blinked out of existence less than a second before I would have been plastered all over it like roadkill.

I crashed into the murky water of the lake, my scream turning into a stream of bubbles which raced away to the distant surface.

I kicked hard, trying to turn myself around while I lost all sense of direction, and the only sound I could hear was the thrashing of my own pulse against my eardrums.

I spread my fingers wide, and sparks burst from them, illuminating the dark water before me. The crab creature lunged for me, its beaky mouth gaping and gleaming with razor sharp teeth.

Horror came for me, that mouth wide enough to swallow me whole, moving so fast that I could do little more than flinch before those teeth snapped shut around me and I was drawn into the jaws of the beast.

For three horrifying seconds I was frozen, my hands curled around my head, limbs tucked tight to my chest as I waited for my end to take me before realising it hadn’t quite come yet.

I was crouched on a thick, lumpy tongue, rows of endless teeth surrounding me, a churning, clacking grinding noise starting up in its throat. I may have been breathing for the moment, but I got the horrifying sensation that death was fast approaching, as I found myself trapped within the cage of its mouth.

The song of my Phoenix hummed through my veins, fire lighting in the depths of my soul and burning right through me until my flesh began to glow with the strength of it, every drop of my magic and Order gifts rushing to help me. The teeth and tongue of the crab’s mouth were lit up around me, the monster beginning to chew as it nudged me towards those churning teeth.

A flash of blinding light burst from me, and I had no choice but to close my eyes against it, fire blooming in an explosion of red and blue as I let every drop of my power explode from me at once.

For a single moment the water dissolved, silence reigning as I cracked my eyes open and looked up towards the sky which I glimpsed between the walls of water which were forced to part beneath the intensity of my fire.

I sucked in a desperate breath, my eyes wide as I took in the lumps of bloodied crab meat hurtling back down towards me just as the lake water rushed back in to fill the void my fire had created.

The water collided with me, tossing me through its depths so fast that I lost all hope of figuring out which way was up, and memories of a frozen swimming pool stole through my mind for several hopeless seconds.

I thought of him, of the man I wasn’t allowed to think of, the one who I hated so very, very much and had ended up loving so deeply that the loss of him had destroyed me entirely. The memory of him was like a burn that wouldn’t heal, the pain of it constant and flaring into agony with little to no provocation. It stole my breath, stole my capacity to go on and it left me with nothing at all aside from the desire to douse the fire that had caused it before I headed into the flames myself and begged for them to end me too.

Perhaps that was my fate, to die here in the frozen water like I could have done so many times before, first when that car had crashed with me trapped inside it, and then when he had trapped me in that pool. Wouldn’t it all be so much easier if I just gave in to that fate now?

My back hit something hard and rough, my hand snapping out on instinct to grip the mound of stone which lay on the lakebed, some small piece of me still fighting despite the desperate, morbid turn of my thoughts.

A vibration echoed through the stone as I clung to it, my head turning to look at it just as it parted, a door appearing within it and a man I knew reaching out and grabbing my arm.

Caleb’s blonde curls were plastered to his scalp, water dripping down his face and a scowl set firmly on his features as he yanked me into a pocket of air he’d managed to trap at the bottom of the lake with his earth magic.

I fell to my knees as he sealed us into the small space once more, the water lapping over my hands while I coughed and trembled at his feet.

“Happily ever after my ass,” he muttered and it was so fucking funny that I laughed.

Here I was, this broken, brutal thing, a princess without a crown hunting for a lost girl at the ends of the earth, while monsters tried to eat me and all hope was well and truly lost, yet still I fought to live another day. Eternally fighting and hurting and hoping that this might just be a bump in the road, an agony I had to endure before the end. But what end could there possibly be that could offer me any light now?

The ground trembled beneath me, and I squinted in the dim light of the flame Caleb had conjured for us to see by. The submerged island topped with a cluster of zodiac stones lay all around me under the foot of water I knelt in.

My stomach dipped as the ground began to rise, the sensation not unlike being inside an elevator. We broke through the surface of the lake and the zodiac wheel beneath us locked into place at the centre of an island, the cold air sweeping in around us and I released my air shield, gazing up at the cloudy sky.

Caleb offered me my sword and I took it from him without managing to summon the energy to ask how he’d found it amid that chaos.

“I killed the giant squid,” he said in a low voice. “But I think you might have me beat with two monsters to my one, sweetheart.”

“Sounds like a pretty good end to a story if ever I heard one,” I said as I sat back on my feet and tried to slow the frantic beating of my heart. “Unless of course we’re about to be eaten by whatever is making the ground move beneath us.”

“Nah,” Caleb replied, cocking his head to one side as he used his gifts to listen to something beyond my range of hearing. “I can hear people talking. I think we just found the door to the library at last.”