Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates

Seth launched Max over my head with a blast of air. He landed behind me, locking his muscular arm around my shoulders as he tried to restrain me.

My arm reached backwards over my head and I cast shadows around his face, suffocating him as he tried to get hold of the knife in my other hand. He cast a blade of ice into his palm and cut into my hand to try and make me drop the blade. I gasped as blood flowed, but my fingers wouldn’t unlatch from it even though I willed them to with all my might.

“Stop – don’t hurt her!” Seth demanded as he raced forward.

My free hand twisted towards Seth and smoke hurtled at him like a demon. He shielded against it and Max started to choke as the shadows wrapped around him and wrenched him off of me.

He froze my legs just as I was about to step forward, letting the ice travel further and further up my body to keep me in place.

“Run!” I insisted, but they shared a look that said they weren’t going to abandon me here just as Clara ran by again with Caleb hot on her heels. Shadows blasted out behind her as he threw spears of wood at her back with a frightening strength, but she dissolved them again and again.

Ice clamped my arms to my sides and the knife slipped from my grip, the blade driving into the soft soil by my feet.

Relief made my breathing even out, but it only lasted a single moment as a rattling, sucking sound reached me from the trees.

Every part of me rippled with terror as heavy footfalls thumped this way and a beastly form stepped out of the darkness, the Nymph towering above us with its probed fingers outstretched and the sound of its rattle carving deep into my soul. Its gnarled, tree-like body loomed over me, its red eyes locked on me as it approached.

Seth and Max ran forward, shoulder to shoulder in front of me and I despised that I couldn’t help, that I was bound by Clara’s will, by the shadows. They ate into my essence, trying to make me fall into their hungry call.

Give in, Darcy, Clara’s voice whispered in my head. Come into the dark. You can be free here.

Seth dove forward, bursting into his white Werewolf form and leaping for the throat of the Nymph with a savage snarl. Navy scales crawled across Max’s bare arms and up the back of his neck as his Siren form took over and the rattle in the air tried to douse his magic.

The ice around me began to give and my lungs laboured as I tried to hold back against the force which had me in its grip. But it was no use and the ice shattered around me as the shadows found their way free once more.

They poured from me, winding around Max just as the Nymph knocked Seth into a tree with a nasty cracking sound and my heart clenched in terror.

The Nymph closed in on Max as I was forced to hold him still for the monster, hating that I wasn’t able to break free of Clara’s command, that I couldn’t stop this creature of darkness. I called for my Phoenix and it rose its head, but the shadows kept pushing it down, deeper and deeper.

“Stop!” I screamed as the Nymph reached towards Max’s heart with the sharpened probes of its hand, the Heir struggling uselessly against the shadows.

He roared in rage and pain as the beast’s probes sliced into his chest and I screamed and begged for help, turning my gaze to the stars as they glittered unforgivingly down at us.

Another Nymph charged out of the trees, crashing into the one about to kill Max and sending it tumbling to the ground. The two of them started fighting, ripping up the dirt and knocking a tree over in the process, making the earth shudder beneath me.

Seth pounced on me out of nowhere and the shadows binding Max released him as his heavy paws crushed me to the ground. He bounded away a second later, diving at the Nymphs and tearing into their limbs as they fought. I’d never seen Nymphs act like that, but I guessed the prize of an Heir’s magic was worth more than your average Fae.

Max hurriedly got up, backing away from them as he regained hold of his magic. I was forced back to my feet too, my hands raised once more but this time, Max didn’t try to restrain me, he ran.