Zodiac Academy 4: Shadow Princess

I brought us back to King’s Hollow, riding on the energy of the stars as the stardust swept us away from the cliff and my father and the horrors that had happened there. 

The Vega Twins appeared in front of me as my feet hit the wooden floor in the central room of the huge treehouse that the other Heirs and I had claimed for our own personal sanctuary. I’d never thought I’d bring Roxy here, but I’d needed somewhere safe to bring them and this was the only place in the world where I’d ever felt entirely out of my father’s reach. 

Lance looked at me as he appeared at my side, his forehead furrowed with concern and so many questions that he didn’t seem to have the energy to voice any of them. 

Roxy pushed herself to her feet, the blue robe I’d wrapped around her slipping off of her bare shoulder. 

“Where have you brought us now?” she asked, her voice strong but her eyes darting around nervously. She thought I’d taken her somewhere to hurt her again and the idea of that carved a fissure right through the centre of me. 

“We’re back at the academy,” I said quickly. “You’re safe. You’re both safe now…” I trailed off, unsure what they even thought had happened to them after my father had forced that Dark Coercion on them. He’d made them forget what he’d done, so maybe they were just confused or-

“Your father is a goddamn psychopath,” Gwendalina hissed, glaring at me as she shifted closer to her sister, taking her hand. 

“I know,” I said, my voice hollow because that was the truth I’d lived with my whole life and it didn’t even matter. 

Power was everything in Solaria and Father was one of the four most powerful Fae currently alive. At least until I completed my training and was able to challenge him. But that day seemed further and further away with each passing moon and now that he’d harnessed the shadows…

He’ll be more powerful than the other Councillors. He could claim the crown for himself alone.

“Fuck,” I spat, turning and stalking to the far side of the room as I pushed my hands through my hair. 

I started pacing, the blue robe I wore swishing around my legs in an irritating as hell way until I tore the damn thing off of me and headed for the chest in the corner of the room where we kept the spare clothes. If I had an aura for every outfit I’d destroyed when shifting into my Dragon form, I’d probably be twice as rich as I was now. I threw the chest open and grabbed a pair of black sweatpants before pulling them on. 

I flinched in surprise as Roxy appeared beside me, but she didn’t even look at me as she dropped her robe too, revealing her body like it made no difference to her at all before she yanked a red T-shirt on. It was mine so it swamped her, hanging to her mid-thigh like a dress. I opened my mouth to say something, but I wasn’t even sure where to start. Before I could say anything, Lance beat me to it. 

“Do you remember anything, Blue?” he asked slowly, his voice gentler than I thought I’d ever heard it. 

I turned to look his way in surprise and found him reaching towards Gwendalina like he wasn’t sure if he should touch her or not. 

“Like what?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly. “The part where we were kidnapped or how we were forced into that pit? The bit where the shadows tried to drag us down or how we managed to pull each other back away from them? Maybe the part where we finally emerged into our Order forms? Or are you referring to the way Lionel tried to Coerce us to forget all of it?” 

“You remember?” I asked, my eyes widening as I looked to Roxy beside me, wondering if she did too. She gave a sharp nod, her gaze not turning towards me but staying fixed on her sister across the room. “How?”

Father had used Dark Coercion on me more than once and I couldn’t fight it off. He used dark magic to strengthen the power of his words. It was why I couldn’t tell the other Heirs the details of what he did to me. He’d used it to make me stay still while he was beating me before. Even the pain of my bones breaking wasn’t enough to motivate me to tear through it. I thought it was impossible. 

“It was our Order,” Roxy said grimly. “Apparently our fire can burn right through bullshit.”

A laugh spilled from my lips before I could stop it. My father had just fed her to the shadows, her Order had Emerged and her body had been turned into a conduit for the dark power he’d stolen from the Shadow Realm and yet she was still biting at me. 

I caught hold of her without thinking about it and dragged her into my arms, crushing her against my chest. My heart leapt as she pressed her cold hands to my skin and I kissed the top of her head as relief spilled through me. She should have died. What my father had just done to them should have been more than they could take but here she was, wrapped in my arms and-

Power slammed into me with the force of a battering ram and I was thrown backwards across the room before crashing into the wall so hard that the whole treehouse trembled. 

Pain echoed through my spine and I shoved myself upright, a snarl leaving my lips as shadows danced across my vision for a moment. My lip curled back and a low growl escaped me as the dark power beneath my flesh ached to be set loose. Shadows licked their way between my fingers as they sprang free of my flesh, awaiting my desires with a hungry craving which set me alight from the inside out.

“Don’t give in to them, Darius!” Lance shouted and the call of his voice was enough to pull me back from the darkness. 

I blinked the shadows away and felt the power of them slipping from my grasp. 

“What the fuck was that for?” I demanded of Roxy as she glared at me, her hands still raised as power coiled around her. 

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” she growled, her eyes filled with more venom than her words. 

“I…you have to know I didn’t set you up,” I said, shaking my head as I realised she was blaming me for what my father had just done to them. “I fought against him! I tried to get you away from him. I-”

“Yeah, you did,” she agreed. “Until you didn’t and you just let him have us.”

“He had Xavier,” I replied desperately, my heart pounding unevenly as I took in the rage in her. She had to know that it had broken me to watch my father push her into that pit. It had felt like carving into my own heart with a rusty knife and offering up a piece of my soul for him. But the alternative had been Xavier’s life. It was no choice. But I knew she was strong; I’d known she could survive anything and even though it had killed me to watch him do that to her, I hadn’t had any other option that I could choose. 

“I know,” she replied, her gaze softening for a moment and I could tell she really did understand that much. She’d do anything for her sister too. “That’s the only reason I haven’t burned you alive.” Red and blue flames flickered between her fingers and Lance moved to stand between us.

The fight went out of Roxy and she hooked another T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants out of the trunk for her sister, moving across the room to hand them to her. 

Gwendalina turned her back on us before dropping the blue robe and I looked away so that she could get dressed in privacy. 

Lance shifted closer to me and as I looked into his eyes, a shadow slid across them before fading away again. 

I swallowed thickly, feeling the shadows beneath my skin too. They were a part of me now and the most terrifying thing about that was how easily they sat there. Like I’d always had space for such darkness in me and they were just coming to claim their place.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek and strode away from them, crossing the wide living room before opening a drawer in the kitchen and pulling out the Atlas I kept here. I sent a message to Xavier, asking if he was alright, what had happened to Mother, all of it. It wasn’t enough but I knew Father wouldn’t hurt him now. He might have been willing to kill him to force my cooperation in his quest for the shadows but killing his own son wasn’t something he could easily get away with. He wouldn’t do it for no reason. I could only hope that Mother was okay and that he’d be able to call me soon.

“You got very lucky when Lionel mistook your Order forms,” Lance said to the girls and I looked over at them with a frown.

“What do you mean he got it wrong?” I asked before either of them could respond. When the girls had reared out of the shadows and sprouted wings of flame before leaping into the sky, my heart had almost beat a path right out of my chest.

They were so bright against the black canvas of stars that it had been hard to make out the details of their forms, but I’d seen those red and blue flames and huge wings like they were two angels set alight by their power. Fire Harpies: rare but not unheard of, even more powerful than their more common cousins but not strong enough to challenge a Dragon.

My relief at their survival had been compounded by the fact that they weren’t Dragons. I was sure that Father would have killed them if their forms had been something powerful enough to rival him.

“Lionel said they were Fire Harpies,” Lance said slowly, his gaze fixed on Gwendalina like she fascinated him. “But he was mistaken. He saw the flames and the wings and made an assumption. Their mother, the Queen, was a Harpy so that had always been a likely outcome for them. They were only in their Order forms for such a brief moment that it was an easy mistake to make.”

“So what are they?” I demanded as the twins shared a look that let me know they already knew.

“Phoenixes,” Lance breathed, the awe in his voice pulling a frown to my brow.

“Not possible,” I replied with a shake of my head. “There hasn’t been a record of someone having the Phoenix Order in…”

“Over a thousand years,” Lance murmured, still staring at Gwen like the world began and ended with her.

My eyes fell on Roxy and my heart thumped to a different tune. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be. Phoenixes were practically a myth. No one was even sure they really had existed. They were supposed to have been the most powerful Order of all, their flames capable of all kinds of insane things. Some people even claimed they’d been immortal but if that was the case then where were they? How did a species die off if they couldn’t die?

“They can’t be,” I said.

“We are,” both girls replied at the same time, an amused glance passing between them as they spoke in unison.

“We have to keep this a secret,” Lance said, looking at me.

“Why?” Roxy demanded.

“Because if the things I’ve read about Phoenixes are true – even half true – then the two of you could be more powerful than any Fae who has walked the earth in the last millennia. You’re like the Fae of old, legendary… I don’t even know what your limits would be, but I do know that you pose an even greater threat to Lionel now. If he finds out about this before you’ve learned to harness these powers-”

“He’d kill you,” I finished for him, because I knew it was true. I’d learned more than enough about my father to realise this about him. He would do whatever it took to claim his position as the most powerful Fae in Solaria. And if he realised that the girls were Phoenixes then he’d eliminate them before they could lay claim to that power. I could barely even grasp the idea of something so impossible. It was no wonder Father hadn’t realised; he was distracted by the shadows he’d just harnessed and who would ever suspect something so insane anyway?

“So we should hide what we are?” Gwendalina asked, sharing a worried look with her sister.

“Until you have a better grasp on your gifts and can defend yourselves, I think it should stay between the four of us,” Lance agreed.

Roxy glanced at me and my gut lurched as I realised that the look in her eyes was mistrust. She didn’t think I’d keep their secret.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I growled. “You have my word.”

She scoffed beneath her breath then stalked towards me. I stilled as she drew closer, but her gaze slid beyond me to the kitchen sink. She took a glass from a shelf and poured herself some water before draining it in one go.

I watched her silently, wondering if there was something else I should say to her but not even knowing where to begin.

We were like magnets, destined to gravitate towards each other or repel each other, but nothing in between. And I didn’t know how to flip it back to how it had been just before my father had shown up. It should have been the last thing on my mind, but in that moment all I wanted to do was take hold of her and pull her into my arms. My heart was still beating out of rhythm with the shock of what had nearly happened to her and I just wished that I could fix it somehow. I wanted her close even though the moon was gone now, the Eclipse over and its effects waning. But it didn’t seem like she felt remotely the same way anymore.

“Do you both feel alright?” Lance asked, though his question seemed to be aimed at Gwen who was lingering close to him. “Lionel used your bodies as vessels for the shadows. That amount of dark power passing through you could leave its mark, a scar on your soul…”

“I feel okay,” Gwen replied slowly. “Though I don’t know how I’m supposed to inspect my soul for scars.” She gave him a ghost of a smile.

Lance reached for her for a moment then dropped his arm again. I guessed he was feeling his own bout of guilt over our part in this mess. We’d spent the last four years training together to try and stop this from ever happening and we’d failed abysmally. His sister had died the last time and now all our fears had come to pass. Not only had Father gotten what he wanted but the twins had nearly died and we’d been cursed with the shadows too.

“At least you don’t have to bear the burden of harnessing the shadows,” Lance said gently. “They only passed through you, they didn’t take root.”

His gaze found mine and I knew he was worrying about us having to deal with it. I agreed with him. But we were also prepared in a way. We’d been dancing with the shadows for years when we practiced black magic and if they might give us an advantage in a fight, then I’d accept the weight of carrying them. I had no choice now anyway. Father hadn’t bestowed this gift on us for any altruistic reasons like wanting us to have more power too; he’d made us into accomplices. By holding the power of the shadows, we were just as guilty as him. He’d bound us to him with them, made sure we couldn’t go to the authorities unless we wanted to end up imprisoned too.

Roxy placed her glass down on the counter and pursed her lips like she had something to say, but she stayed quiet. Her eyes were locked with her sister’s and I was sure they were communicating something to each other but I had no idea what. Roxy shook her head a little and Gwen sighed but agreed with a nod of her head.

“You wanna share that little exchange with the group?” I asked, scrubbing a hand over my face.

“Obviously not, dipshit,” Roxy snarled. “Contrary to what you may think, we’ve never wanted anything at all to do with you or your bullshit throne. But one way or another we keep getting dragged into this drama. So if there’s something I choose not to say to you then that’s up to me.”

I bristled at her tone, a growl rattling through my chest as I looked down at her and she just stared right back into my fucking eyes. Why was she always baiting me? And why did some fucked up part of me like it so much?

“All of this is a lot to take in,” Lance said loudly. “Perhaps it would be best if we all got some sleep and discussed this more later.”

“Fine by me,” Roxy said, striding away from me, her legs bare beneath my T-shirt and her give-no-shits attitude right back in place. “The further away I am from Dragons the better.”

“I think it might be a good idea for the four of us to remain here until the sun comes up. The moon’s influence will still be potent until then and we’ve all been through a lot,” Lance said.

Roxy scowled at him, looking like she was about to tell him to fuck off, but Gwen caught her arm.

“He’s probably right, Tor. Let’s just get some rest here.”

I blinked in surprise as the fight went straight out of her and she bowed to her sister’s suggestion. I’d begun to think that girl didn’t know how to do anything other than argue. It seemed like that was just how she was with me. At least most of the time. For a moment I remembered laughing with her after racing on my bikes and wondered if there was any chance she’d ever look at me like that again.

“There are bedrooms here, I can show you to two of them,” Lance said, moving forward to show them the way.

“We’ll stay together,” Gwen said and he nodded like he’d expected that.

Before they could leave the room, I stepped forward and caught Roxy’s arm. I needed to say something to her, apologise, try to explain myself, I wasn’t quite sure what yet. But I wanted to do something to combat the hate that was rearing up in her as she looked at me.

“Can I have a word alone, Roxy?” I asked as she pulled against my grip on her arm.

The other two headed down the corridor before she could respond and I shifted a little closer to her.

“I don’t know what it is you want from me,” she said quietly. “But I don’t care either. You think because you’ve decided you want to talk to me then that means I must want to too? Well I don’t. And I don’t know what makes you think you can keep laying your hands on me either. Fire doesn’t burn me, Darius, my Order is more powerful than a Dragon. I don’t have any reason to fear you anymore and I don’t have to do anything you say.”

She snatched her arm out of my grip and stalked away after her sister and Lance. I felt like we were on a merry go round that wouldn’t stop turning. We kept coming back to this point and maybe I should have just accepted it. Because I couldn’t keep trying with her and having it thrown back in my face. So if she wanted us to hate each other then I’d just have to play my part in it. Because I couldn’t keep away from her, that much was becoming abundantly clear. So I’d just have to keep being her villain.