Zodiac Academy 8.5: Beyond The Veil

This place was ever changing, a song whispering answers on the wind at the merest hint of a question whenever it had crossed my mind.

I had been here and there, somewhere between while caught in the embrace of my mother and Hamish, but with a yank which felt like I was cast through a sea of starlight and darkness, I found myself standing on that hillside where I had felt the last furious beats of my heart before death had stolen me away.

It was instantly obvious why fate had delivered me to this place, the power of Roxy’s curse on the stars summoning me to her in her moment of earth-shattering grief.

I fell to my knees beside her, my own body sprawled in the dirt beneath her as her wings created a cocoon over it.

The shock of seeing myself there should have been more than enough to break me, but I was ruined by the utter devastation which lined every inch of Roxy’s bruised and bloodied body.

I was there but not. The wind which lifted tendrils of her ebony hair did nothing at all to me while I remained beside her, a ghost without substance. Looking down only confirmed what I already knew; there was nothing of me here. I was observing this, not living it. Her grief and need for me must have summoned this wretched piece of me back to her, and my pain in our separation was only multiplied by the forced confrontation.

“I’m here,” I told her, reaching for her arm, but neither my words nor my touch could cross The Veil for her to behold them. I was here, but I wasn’t.

Roxy lay prone across the blood-stained chest of the body which had once seemed so intrinsically mine, her entire being trembling and tear stains carved through the dirt on her cheeks.

I sucked in a breath as I took in the jagged cut to her palm, understanding it as the knowledge of what she’d sworn for me. The promise that had radiated through the foundations of the realms themselves.

There were eyes on us now. All-seeing, all-knowing eyes belonging to creatures which seemed to be holding their breath, watching, waiting, wondering…

I didn’t have to wonder though. My beautiful, broken, warrior of a wife was no mystery to me. Those words she had spoken had been full of truth and purpose, the power of them casting ripples through the fabric of fate. Destiny was shifting, uncertainty reigning, and I would be ready to fight on from beyond The Veil in whatever way I could.

I shifted closer to her, my knees in the dirt beside hers, and yet I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel anything aside from the soul-crushing grief which surrounded her. I wasn’t able to do anything here, wasn’t able to comfort her in any way, to show her that I would never truly leave.

“I’m here, Roxy,” I growled more forcefully, reaching out to brush my fingers through her hair, but my touch met with nothing, and she didn’t so much as blink in my direction.

Pain shredded the fragments of my heart as I was forced to watch her shatter for me, her silence this piercing, soul destroying thing which ate into me and made me bleed for her while she just lay across my vacant body, willing the world to change its mind on our fate.

My gaze shifted to the dagger which had stolen me from her world, the mixture of her blood and mine on it humming with a power so ancient it felt like the air was trying to recoil from it. There was menace in the oath she had sworn upon that blood, a dark promise which coiled from it into the very fabric of all that existed around us and beyond.

She was still bleeding from the wound she had carved into her own palm, her pain making me suffer while I was forced to simply observe it.

Power roiled within me, a deep and unending well of it stirring with so much more than the depths of my flames and ice. There was a purity to my magic which I had never noticed before crossing into death. But now that I had, it was like a song whispered into the corners of my mind.

I needed to return to her, needed to get back to her and draw her into my arms, banish that most powerful hurt which I could see destroying her from within.

“I’m right here, Roxy,” I insisted, louder now as I pushed to my feet, that power rising within me, churning and roaring and begging for a way out of this fate.

I reached for her, my entire being radiating that power as the air around me hummed with it, a clang of magic echoing against the walls of death which contained me, a roar resounding through the air as the force of it bucked, and I threw everything I had into fighting this path.

Someone started calling my name, the desperate plea on their lips rocking the foundations of my fracturing soul. But I ignored them and the truth of what I was now.

I couldn’t be in a place without her. I couldn’t go back on the oaths I’d made to her so soon. She was mine and I was hers. We weren’t destined to be apart. I refused it.

Roxy cupped my body’s cold jaw in her hand and found my lips with a kiss so bittersweet that it stole the breath from my lungs. My eyes fell closed as I felt the press of her lips against mine, the ghost of me almost tasting her as her tears dripped against my cheeks before she drew back.

As she released her hold on my still body, the sensation of her abandoned me entirely, a strangled cry escaping me as I was abandoned on this dark path, the space between us so thin, yet completely impenetrable.

“Your soul is bound to mine,” she breathed against the unmoving lips beneath her, and the pure, potent energy which made up all that I was now stirred in reply, the heart and soul of me needing her to know I agreed with those words more deeply than she could ever know. Goosebumps prickled her skin and her spine straightened as if she might have been able to feel that, and her words were rougher as she went on. “And I won’t rest until I make every star in the heavens fall for trying to cleave us apart.”

“Yes,” I growled, all the power I owned ratcheting up within me, blazing with a need for an outlet, my desire to touch her making everything surrounding me quake. I reached for her bleeding hand, urging her to feel me, to know I would never truly leave her.

Roxy looked down at the cut on her palm, seeming to feel that raw energy which had connected us from the very first time I laid eyes on her. Her blood knowing mine, her power aching for my own.

She curled her fingers closed around the wound, her limbs trembling as she stood, the fatigue and pain which so clearly held her in its deathly grip making me ache to reach for her, to hold her in my arms and lend her my strength.

Roxy looked down at my broken body and I could feel her love for me in the ferocity of her heart-breaking gaze. It passed through The Veil with ease, that feeling so far beyond any barrier that might try to part us.

My warrior queen. The last one standing on a battlefield so drenched in blood and ruin that none but the stars themselves could have ever foreseen it. It was a tragedy beyond measure, the blow struck against our rebellion so harshly that I feared what it would mean for the war as a whole. But one look at the face of Roxanya Vega as she surveyed that blood strewn battlefield made it clear to me that this was no end play. This war was not won, the fight not over. I had never once seen that girl back down from anything, and even here, in the midst of defeat, her husband’s blood staining her hands and her whole world shattering around her, she still stood tall and defiant, daring the world to come for her.

A breath left her in a cloud of vapour which rose and then dispersed as she surveyed the devastation of the battlefield, a hardness sinking into her skin which made my own flesh prickle. That girl had been born with a wall of iron surrounding her heart, gilding her spine, and edging her tongue, but I watched as that iron turned to steel before me, her walls becoming impenetrable, her pain sinking deep within her until she was using it as a foundation for her very soul.

She wasn’t going to break. She was rallying herself for the fight of her life, and I was right there beside her, urging her on.

Roxy picked up her sword, her own blood mixing with all that already stained it as the wound on her palm continued to bleed in honour of the oath she’d sworn on it.

I watched as she faltered, the weight of all she’d fought for and all she’d lost pressing down on her so heavily that I knew any other would have buckled beneath it.

I moved closer to her, wrapping my hand around hers where she gripped that sword, even if she couldn’t feel it, pushing whatever strength I had into her, offering up whatever remained of me at her service.

“You can do this. You were born to wear the crown, and you can bear the weight of it no matter how heavy it becomes,” I swore to her.

Her jaw tightened and I growled my approval.

“Fate has never forced you to bend to it before,” I said, a phantom tarot deck appearing before me as I spoke the words, The Lovers mocking me from the top of the pile, blood splattered across them, a flame scorching the stiff card on which they’d been painted.

I took the deck and held it before the woman I loved as her eyes fell closed, her resolve hardening. I cast The Lovers aside as I felt her will pressing in on me, followed by Five of Swords who whispered of defeat, then the Death card, King of Pentacles, the King of Swords, Roxy’s will shoving them aside as she ignored their whispered words, as if she could somehow tell which card was being drawn, as if she could feel their power even here beyond The Veil and refused to hear their words. More and more cards tumbled to the mud and blood by my feet until finally, The Chariot met with my fingers, and I fell still. Vengeance, war, triumph.

Roxy’s lips tightened as she latched onto that meaning, like she’d been the one to shuffle the deck, her will alone forcing the result she required as she chose her own fate.

“Defy the stars,” I said fiercely, willing her to do so with all I was and all I had.

She released a breath and forced her eyes open once more, the divide between us growing as she did so, The Veil fluttering between us, parting us despite how desperately I fought to remain there with her.

She sheathed her sword in the filthy, bloodstained scabbard which hung from her hip, her chin high as she looked out across the battlefield, her beautiful features void of all emotion, that fire which ignited her soul all but snuffed out in the face of her loss.

The devastation surrounding her was unreal. Charred and blackened ground circled her, the last stand of the Nymphs reduced to nothing in the face of her terrible power.

She was trembling, her body spent, energy sapped, and I could see how thin her resolve was. The grief that consumed me was compounded for her; all she could see of me a dead body on the ground. She was so alone. And all I wanted was for her to know that I was still here, that I would never truly leave.

Whether it had anything to do with the strength I was battling to offer her or not, Roxy straightened. Shivers wracked her body, and she curled her right hand into a fist, the blood dripping between her fingers from the deep cut on her palm as she set her eyes on the far side of the battlefield and that strength in her eyes flared brighter at last.

“I’ll be back,” Roxy murmured to my corpse, the pain that promise caused almost dropping me to my knees. This couldn’t be it for us. I couldn’t be cursed to simply watch over her from this moment on, never able to pass through The Veil which divided us, never able to hold her in my arms again.

Roxy flexed her wings and for a moment, it seemed like she would take off, but she banished them instead, a heavy sigh escaping her as her Order form retreated, making her seem so much smaller than before, so much more alone.

She strode away across the battlefield, and though I tried to follow, the heavy fall of my feet met with resistance, my boots scraping over the dirt inch by inch, weighted manacles seeming to wind their way around my arms.

A defiant roar escaped me as they tightened, pulling me back, the strength of my will the only thing keeping me standing there, my boots carving ruts into the dirt, my muscles bulging with the force of all I was.

But it was no good.

With a final bellow ripping from my throat, I was hauled back, the distant figure of my one love stolen from sight, my spine colliding with a hard surface and all sense of her disappearing entirely.