Zodiac Academy 6: Fated Throne

It had taken me more than five hours of just sifting through the memories of pain and fear that filled Tory’s mind before I’d even been able to get down to the roots of them. Lionel had done a damn good job of forcing her to associate every moment of torture he’d inflicted upon her with a memory of Darius. 

I’d gotten a clear look at so much torture in her memories that it made me feel sick to my core and bile kept rising up in my throat as my gifts allowed me to feel every single second of it.

I could have shied away, refused to absorb the worst of it and protected myself from it, but she needed this outlet. I was certain of it. She needed to work through each and every time he’d taken her down to that room beneath the Acrux Manor and played out these dark and twisted fantasies on her.

If there had been any doubt in me at all about the depths of Lionel Acrux’s depravity before, then there was absolutely no illusions left in me now. 

He hadn’t just cut, burned and electrocuted Tory until she couldn’t even scream any more. He’d revelled in it.

Hidden deep within the memories of her pain there had been more than enough visions of his eyes gleaming with excitement while he made her scream and cry out for mercy. He’d just forced her to think of Darius time and again until she believed those memories were of his eyes. That it had been him doing that to her.

It had taken me the better part of the day to realise that he’d been using a Cyclops to assist him with a lot of his cruelty. He’d taken every dark and pain filled memory she held of Darius from when she’d first arrived at the academy and twisted the knife in the pain she felt over them until she was bleeding from the inside out. And then he’d found all of her good memories too, beating her down over and over again until she couldn’t protect them anymore, though I was surprised to find there were a few things hidden within her mind still.

She was still resisting my attempts to get her to unlock them, but each time I guided her thoughts and feelings towards them, she seemed a little closer to looking at them than the last time, so I wasn’t giving up.

We’d moved into my bedroom within King’s Hollow after the first time she’d blacked out with the memory of the torture she’d endured, and I’d barely caught her before she cracked her head against the hard floorboards. 

I’d carried her in here and laid her down on the bed beside the fireplace where I was carefully rebuilding the fire every time it went out. Using my gifts on her like this drained her magic as I fed on it, and she needed to keep replenishing her stores to keep up with how much I was taking while we worked. I was heady on the richness of her power and had had to take breaks several times to empty myself out by throwing a gale of wind into the forest outside or casting a river of water just so that I could continue to draw more from her. 

She was curled in my arms, her head resting on my chest as her limbs trembled with the memory of pain that had crashed through her over and over again. 

I couldn’t help but feel like the monster who had done this to her in the first place as I kept using my gifts to draw this pain out of her and force her to give me every single piece of it. But I knew it was the only way. She needed to release herself from it, needed to look at it clearly and without the taint of Lionel’s lies shading it in falsehoods if she was ever going to be able to move on from it.

I wasn’t even going to let myself think about what it was doing to me. I was using the fullest extent of my gifts with her and she was opening herself up to them, letting me fully immerse myself in her memories so that I could actually watch them play out like I was there myself. I rarely pushed so deep into anyone’s mind like this, but if I wanted any chance at all of fixing what had been done to her then I had to.

I closed my eyes as I pushed my power into her again and her cold fingers fisted in my shirt as a gasp of pain escaped her and I grunted as I felt the sharp kick of electricity slam into my own chest as if I’d been there too. I could taste blood in my mouth as she bit her tongue while she jerked and spasmed from the pain of the strike. And the hard bite of the leather straps which held her arms and wrists in place on the wooden chair she’d been strapped to in her underwear set panic racing through my limbs.

‘Who do you love?’ Lionel asked coldly while Clara hung off of his arm, smiling as she bared her fangs.

‘You,’ I gasped, my voice Tory’s as I relived her memory. 

‘What about my son?’ Lionel asked, moving aside as the Cyclops stepped forward and I shook my head desperately. He had thick black hair which hung long over his shoulders and a wizened face with a jagged old scar running through his left eye which had left the white stained red with blood even though the wound was clearly old. He called it his shadow eye, claiming he had the ability to see visions of the Shadow Realm as well as our own, and it was clear that Lionel believed him. His pupils were so dark they looked black and as he turned his gaze on me, I shuddered with fear, knowing all too well what he was capable of.

‘I hate him,’ I said. ‘I hate him more than anyone I’ve ever met. All he does is cause me pain.’ But I didn’t feel those words. I felt Darius’s arms around me as we lay in his bed and he held me like he never wanted to let go. I felt the way my heart pounded when he looked at me and I remembered the way he’d promised to fight for me.

‘Liar, liar,’ the Cyclops purred, reaching out and running a finger down my neck and between the valley of my breasts before hooking it around the centre of my bra and tugging lightly.

‘Hands off, Vard,’ Lionel growled and I shivered in relief as he saved me from the Cyclops’s wandering hands and he released me with a flicker of irritation on his features. ‘Just do your job.’

The Seer huffed softly as he gave in to Lionel’s command, rolling his neck in that way he always did before he shifted and making my pulse spike with fear.

“I like the pretty jewel she’s wearing, Daddy,” Clara breathed in Lionel’s ear, pushing her hand into Lionel’s pants and he growled softly.

“Now that you mention it, Clara dear, that necklace looks familiar to me.” My heart thumped as they looked at the ruby necklace Darius had given me and I recoiled into my chair even though I knew there was no escape. “If you like it then you can have it.”

Clara grinned excitedly but Vard moved to stand before me, capturing my attention once more as I tried to figure out who I should be fearing the most in this room.

Vard smiled toothily as his dark eyes slowly slid together, forming one huge, bulbus eye in the centre of his forehead and I snapped my eyes shut, scrunching them up as I tried to protect myself from the invasion of his mind into mine.

Clara cackled with glee as she leapt up onto the back of the wooden chair I was strapped to and grabbed a fistful of my hair, pulling hard enough to make me scream before peeling my eyelid open with her dirty fingernails digging in hard enough to make me bleed. Her other hand yanked on my necklace as she scrambled for the clasp and I felt her tug it free just as I lost the battle to keep my eye closed.

Vard caught me in his gaze and within a moment, the slimy, intrusive feeling of him slithering into my mind overwhelmed me and I swear I could feel his hot breath on my neck as he spoke inside my thoughts. 

‘I’ve seen a future where I get to touch you as much as I like, little dove,’ he purred. ‘Where my king will gift you to me and send you to my bed as often as I wish in reward for all of the visions I’ve gifted him. Did you know your daddy gave me my scar? I’m going to enjoy paying his daughter back for it, over and over and over again.’ 

Vard drove that point home with mental images which made me gag with actual bile rising in my throat and if I’d had anything to eat today, I was certain I’d have been vomiting all down myself. Just as I felt myself start screaming at the imagined scenario playing out in my head, Vard’s gifts shifted beneath my skin and he spoke a single name inside my head.

‘Darius Acrux.’

Before I could do a single thing to stop it, my mind whirled to the moment I’d thought of earlier, of me wrapped in Darius’s arms in his bed, of how warm his skin had felt against mine and how safe it had seemed there.

But as I rolled over, I found Darius glaring at me instead of the sleepy, half smile I almost remembered. His hand snapped out and he locked it around my throat as he pinned me down against the bed, ripping open the shirt I was wearing while I fought and bucked beneath him. I couldn’t scream, his grip on my throat suffocating and refusing even the slightest noise to pass my lips as he smiled cruelly and slammed a fist down into my chest.

The moment the punch landed, the force of a thunderstorm crashed into my body and I shrieked with pain as it burned me from the inside out, thrashing against the vision of Darius in my mind and the straps which held me to the chair in reality. My brain tried to keep hold of what was happening, what was real and what was a lie, but everything was blurring together as Vard used his powers until all of it merged into one and the cruelty in Darius’s eyes was the only thing I was truly certain of alongside the agony in my flesh.

I fell back panting on the bed as I shrugged the memory off, tugging Tory closer to me as she trembled in my arms, helping her to see the way her memories had been manipulated to turn her against Darius while trying to contain my own emotions so that I didn’t accidentally push them into her.

My body ached with the echoes of the torture she’d endured and I could feel her exhaustion as she curled against my chest and I wrapped my arms around her tighter. She needed a break. And if I was being honest then I did too because this shit was seriously fucked up. I felt like it might break me if I wasn’t careful and I had to keep reminding myself of all the reasons I had to love Darius as the conditioning she’d been put through wormed its way into my head too.

I stroked my fingers through her hair, using my gifts to make her feel even more tired and pushing her into a deep, dreamless sleep before feeding her as much happy, calming energy as I could muster.

When I was certain she wasn’t going to wake any time soon, I gently rolled her off of me and tucked her beneath the covers, frowning at how fragile she looked in the big bed all alone. Lionel Acrux was going to pay for what he’d done to her and Darius. Not to mention all the other reasons I had to hate him. 

I left the room, but before I could even call Darius and Darcy, they appeared with Gabriel between them, the Harpy giving me a knowing look which I was clearly going to have to get used to.

‘How is she?’ Darcy asked urgently and I summoned the shadow of a smile for her even though the weight of everything I’d just experienced through Tory’s memories was hanging so heavily on me that I felt like I might break beneath the pressure of it all.

‘Better,’ I muttered, swiping a hand down my face. ‘I think she’s seeing Lionel more clearly now, though the Guardian bond makes it hard for her to fully hate him. I’ve helped her to process a lot of her trauma, but…’ My gaze slid to Darius and he nodded like he already knew what I was going to say.

‘You just have to prove to her that you’re not the monster she was made to believe you are,’ Gabriel said firmly, clapping a hand on Darius’s shoulder before looking to me. ‘You need to rest, Max. Get some sleep tonight. I’ll inform the staff that there’s a bout of Fae flu going around as an excuse for you and Tory missing classes tomorrow. After that, I believe she will be able to function well enough to return.’

‘You really think she’s gonna be able to fake it good enough for that to be safe?’ I growled, feeling strangely protective over the girl I’d once sworn to ruin no matter what. But fuck putting her back in the firing line of that monster.

‘It’s the only way forward at the moment,’ Gabriel said firmly. ‘Any attempt we make to hide her or help her escape Lionel will fail if we try now. I’ve spent the entire day trying to see a way out of this for her, but with the bond in place…’ He sighed heavily. ‘All isn’t lost. She’ll be as safe as she can be if she just keeps up the pretence of maintaining her position in alignment with him for now. But if she tries to run, the bond will force her back to him eventually and the punishment for her trying to escape will be unthinkable. This is the way it has to be.’

I pinched the bridge of my nose, hating that idea but knowing that Gabriel wouldn’t be pushing for it if he could see any other way. It seemed like fate wasn’t done fucking with us yet then.

‘Fine,’ I muttered as Darius growled beneath his breath.

‘Me and Gabriel will stay with her tonight,’ Darcy said softly, moving to wrap her arms around my neck and squeeze me tightly. ‘Thank you, Max.’

I was so exhausted that I didn’t even hug her back, not wanting to let any of the emotions I was trying to contain slip out of me. Because she didn’t need to see the details of what her sister had been through at the hands of that tyrant. I didn’t want it haunting her the way I knew it was going to haunt me. 

Gabriel thanked me as he followed Darcy away down the hall but Darius didn’t move, like he could already tell from my expression that he wasn’t going to be welcome in that room.

He waited until Darcy and Gabriel were out of sight before flicking his fingers and casting a silencing bubble around us. 

‘Show me,’ he demanded and I sighed.

‘You don’t wanna see it, man. Hell, I don’t wanna fucking see it and I’m not in love with the girl,’ I tried, though I could already see how determined he was to know the extent of it.

‘It can’t be any worse than what I’m already imagining,’ he growled and I swiped a hand down my face, shaking my head.

‘Imagining it and living it aren’t the same. I’m begging you to leave it. Trust me to help her through it, know that it’s over now and just try to-‘

‘Show me,’ he commanded, grabbing my hand and lacing his voice with Coercion even though he knew I could shove off the impulse to comply if I wanted to. But I was fucking tired and I knew he wouldn’t drop it, so I showed him what he wanted to see even though I knew this was going to hit him like a stab wound to the fucking heart.

I pushed my gifts at him and he dropped his mental barriers to allow me to show him the memories I’d lived out inside Tory’s head. Darius’s grip on my hand tightened and the rage and grief I felt from him hit me like a tidal wave as he watched what his father had done to her.

‘How often did he do this?’ he snarled, his grip unyielding so he was crushing the bones in my fingers, though I was fairly certain he hadn’t even realised he was doing it.

‘Not as often recently. It was almost all within the first six weeks,’ I muttered. ‘He stopped once she showed fear in response to every mention of you.’

Darius kept hold of me for several long minutes, his magic keeping its grip on mine as he forced me to show him as much of what Tory had suffered through as he could manage before he dropped my hand and turned away from me with a stream of smoke billowing between his lips.

‘Wait,’ I called after him, trying to push my gifts at him to help ease some of the pain he was feeling, even as the exhaustion from using them all day almost swallowed me whole.

Darius didn’t reply, ripping off his shirt and leaping out of the window before I could say another word.

The haunting roar of a Dragon in distress rattled the entire treehouse a moment later as he took off towards the sky and I felt something shatter deep inside me as my own grief over all of this threatened to tear me apart.

I swallowed thickly, taking in the empty space around me before turning and heading for the door. 

As much as I wanted to stay close to Tory tonight to help her, I knew that when I slept I was going to be broadcasting all of the horrors I’d just experienced for anyone nearby to feel. Not that I was convinced I’d be sleeping at all after living through all of that. It was the curse of my kind. We took emotions from others, but it was more than just an exchange of magic. We were left with the feelings of those we drained. Their pain and memories became our own if we took too much and we could be left carrying the hurts of a hundred Fae in our hearts if we weren’t careful to feed on happiness more often than sorrow. But if you took too much happiness from another Fae then you left them in pain instead of yourself which wasn’t any better, unless you were a complete asshole. Which I tried not to be most of the time.

I sighed as I walked down the path though The Wailing Wood, heading for the lake and Aqua House while trying to skim whatever brief flashes of happiness that I could taste on any of the Fae I passed by just to take the edge off of what was consuming me.

But it was no good. Every time I closed my eyes, I was reliving Tory’s nightmares, drowning in Darius’s feelings of failure and so much pain that it made me choke.

I hardly even noticed that I was back at my dorm until I was turning my key in the lock and pushing the door wide.

I didn’t even flick the lights on, just knocking the door shut behind me as I kicked off my shoes and tugged my shirt over my head. It was still damp with Tory’s tears, but it hadn’t felt right to dry them out with magic. They were too heavy to just wish away like that.

I noticed the door hadn’t clicked shut behind me and looked over my shoulder to find Geraldine pushing it open hesitantly.

‘I’m sorry, Gerry,’ I murmured. ‘I don’t think I can bear to go over it all again tonight. Maybe just give me tonight to-‘

‘I didn’t come to enquire about my lady, you bumbling beluga,’ she said in a soft voice, pushing the door closed behind her as she stepped inside. ‘I came to enquire about you.’

I stilled, a lump forming in my throat as I took that in. 

‘I thought you didn’t care about me?’ I asked a little bitterly, our ongoing argument over her engagement to that fucking stuck up assbag still biting at me.

Geraldine sighed, kicking her shoes off and dropping her blazer as she padded towards me with her eyes glimmering with tears. 

‘Don’t do that tonight, Maxy boy,’ she breathed. ‘Just let me hold you close and we can pretend the rest of the world isn’t out there.’

I swallowed thickly, nodding as she wrapped her hands around my waist and gently pushed me back until I was sinking down onto the bed.

Her mouth found mine as she lowered down onto my lap and I groaned softly as I fell back beneath her. Our kiss was slow and deep and laced with pain that wouldn’t be fixed by anything we did now, but somehow it helped all the same.

I pulled her closer as the warmth of her body against mine seemed to soothe something deep within my soul and somehow we ended up curled together against my pillows as her soft hands continued to soothe and caress me.

I kissed her again, devouring her slowly while my heart pounded to this torturous rhythm that made me ache in a wholly different way than I had all day. 

‘I hate fighting with you, Gerry,’ I breathed as I moved my hands into her hair, letting some of my heartache slip away and worshipping her with every movement of my mouth against hers. 

Everything just felt better when I was with her. She could fight away the worst demons in my mind and keep them at bay if only she’d stay here.

‘Then stop talking,’ she breathed. ‘We only argue when you open your flapper trap.’

I had to admit she had a point there, so I closed my mouth and gave in to what she wanted, as she pulled me into her arms. I laid my head against her chest where the solid thump of her heart beat beneath my ear and her presence eased the pain in my soul unlike anything else could have.

Her fingers stroked through my hair and there was this beautiful feeling of contentment that came from her which helped to ease the ache in my soul and stop the cycle of horrifying memories from dominating my mind.

It wasn’t enough to chase out all of the dark in me. But it was the sliver of light I’d been aching for, calling me home.