Zodiac Academy 6: Fated Throne

I jogged after Orion through the graves surrounding the huge stone mausoleum at the heart of the cemetery. Statues of the star signs stood around it and we moved past a creepy looking Capricorn ram as we examined the large stone sarcophaguses circling it. A rattling came from within them that said the dead were trying to get out, but I guessed they couldn’t lift the stone lids. The shouts and cries carrying from our friends said they were still facing them. So we needed to hurry our asses up.

“Are we close?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” Orion murmured.

“Didn’t you ever visit his grave?” I asked in confusion.

“No, I thought he was cremated,” he said, his brow pulling down.

“Oh…well, they’re all Capricorns here,” I said and he frowned at the nearest stone coffins.

“They must be laid out by star signs,” he said, grabbing me and I cursed as he whipped me into his arms again, racing around the mausoleum at high speed. He planted me down beside a large statue of a set of weighing scales and I shoved out of his arms.

“Quit doing that with no warning,” I hissed, but my point was lost a little as my foot skidded down a muddy bank.

I was about to cast air to push at my back when he threw out a hand at lightning speed to catch me. He yanked me back against his chest and I tilted my chin up with a scowl.

“Stop it,” I snapped.

“I’m never not going to catch you,” he growled and I pulled away from him, rounding into the group of graves beyond the statue and hunting for Orion’s name.

“I would have caught myself,” I said firmly.

“Sure you would.”

His eyes slid over my head and I opened my mouth to rebuke him but he blurted, “That’s it,” and rushed past me.

I twisted around, spotting him running toward a huge stone tomb standing under an arching willow tree. The name Lancelot was etched beside a Libra symbol above a round stone door.

“How do you know?” I asked as we stopped in front of it.

“Because my dad used to call me that,” he said then brushed his fingers over two small holes in the centre of the door, overlapping like an infinity symbol.

I took the rings from my hand with a buzz of excitement in my veins and stepped forward, pushing the first into the deeper hole then the other into the one that overlapped it.

There was no sound of the door unlocking and I glanced at Orion in concern as he pushed against it, but it didn’t budge. He ran his fingers over the stone, his eyes shutting in concentration and I glanced over my shoulder anxiously, hoping the others were okay.

“What’s wrong? How do we get in?” I asked and he sighed, opening his eyes.

“It’s bound with blood magic. But it doesn’t just want my blood…” His fingers moved across the stone, brushing the rings. “It wants a Vega’s too.”

“Do you think my mother saw this? Us standing here together?” I asked in shock.

He swallowed, glancing at me. “Looks like it.” He held the draining dagger up to his palm, slicing it open and pressing his hand against the stone.

I took the dagger from him, feeling the call of the shadows within it. But I knew what I was doing, and my Phoenix wouldn’t allow any of that darkness into me again anyway. I cut my palm open and Orion’s fangs snapped out as he watched, a low groan leaving him.

I arched a brow at him then placed my hand on the door beside his, my breaths coming quicker in anticipation. It threw me for a loop knowing my mother had seen us together and had told Orion’s father. Did they think we were allies, or did they know we’d been more than that?

A heavy grinding of stone sounded from within the tomb and the circular door swung inward. Magic washed over me from inside and I felt something calling to me, begging me to come closer. I gasped, rushing into the tomb, needing to reach whatever it was and Orion was right at my side as he hunted for it too. It pulsed like a second heart beating close by, one that ached to be in my hands.

The door twisted shut with a loud thunk that made my bones rattle and my magic inside me fell still, blanketed by some power and not allowing me to access it. 

“Oh shit,” I breathed, casting a red and blue flame with my Phoenix fire in the corner of the tomb and my gaze fell on a huge sarcophagus ahead of us.

The effigy of a man was carved into the stone lid, holding a sword against his chest which had all the constellations etched into its surface. His eyes were closed like he was in an eternal sleep and I was struck with recognition at how much he resembled his son.

Orion shot forward and lifted the lid, carrying it with the strength of his Order and placing it against the wall. A corpse lay inside which was nothing but bones and Orion moved to look down at his father with an ache in his eyes that hurt me.

“Hey, Dad,” he murmured.

“I’m sorry,” I said gently, moving closer to look down into the coffin.

“Don’t be,” he sighed. “He died a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not sad anymore,” I said with a frown, moving to his side and brushing my fingers against his arm. He glanced at me and our eyes met, the air thickening between us.

He reached down into the coffin, carefully checking around the body. I moved along the edge of it, hunting the dark space, urging Phoenix flames in my hands to see by.

“It’s not here,” Orion growled.

“It must be,” I insisted, starting to move around the tomb, searching everywhere.

Orion shot around too, checking anywhere that could hide a compartment, but there was nothing, just four cold stone walls.

“Why would the diary lead you here if it’s gone?” I asked in frustration, carefully searching around the body again. “Could someone have gotten here before us?”

“There’s no way,” he growled fiercely. “How could they have gotten through that door?”

I shook my head, confused and furious as I continued hunting, but there was no compartment or hatch or anything. It was just an empty tomb and the sarcophagus.

“There has to be something we’re missing,” I said stubbornly, looking to Orion but he didn’t have an answer. “Maybe you needed to come here with Tory…”

“No,” Orion growled. “It was meant to be you, I’m sure of it.”

“Why?” I balked, moving to the door and pressing my hands against it, shoving with all my strength, but without my air magic I had no chance of opening it. Shit, how the hell do we get out? “It could be her. Or both of us, or-”

“It’s you,” he snapped. “It’s me and you, that was how this was meant to be.”

“Says the guy who abandoned me,” I scoffed. “We clearly weren’t meant to be anything.”

“I didn’t abandon you,” he said in disbelief, shooting to my side as he shoved the door too, adding the power of his Order, but it wouldn’t give. Shit.

“Right,” I said bitterly. “You just thought heading off to Darkmore and leaving me to pick up the pieces of our ruined relationship was a great way to show your support for me?”

“I had no choice,” he snarled and I wheeled around to face him.

“If you say that one more time, I’m going to blast your head off with Phoenix fire.”

His eyes darkened, narrowing to slits. “You don’t understand,” he hissed.

“I understand perfectly actually. I understand that you betrayed me, that you broke my trust. The one thing you knew was nearly impossible for me to give you. But I did, because I thought I could rely on you, that you would always be there. But you stopped fighting for me and I was the idiot who was actually surprised.”

“I never stopped fighting for you, Blue,” he growled, boxing me in against the wall and my heart clenched at the use of that name. “I just stopped fighting for us.”

“Same difference,” I said icily as fire blazed in my palms in warning, but he didn’t back down.

“Wrong,” he snapped in his damn professor tone and I held my breath, wondering if he was actually going to give me an explanation at last. “Everything I did was for you. And I would do it again and again, because despite how much this fucking kills me, you’re still on the right path to become a queen of Solaria. And if I’d done anything different, you would have lost your place at Zodiac Academy, your name would be ruined by your relationship to me. I was going to prison either way, and I saw one way that wouldn’t drag you down with me. So I took it. And if that makes me an asshole then I don’t give a fuck. If you hate me for the rest of my life, I will swallow it because I will not be the reason you lost your chance to claim the throne.”

Tears blurred my vision but I blinked them back as anger welled up in me. “You had no right to make that choice for me.”

“I know,” he said in a grim tone. “I didn’t take pleasure in it. But I’d still make it every time.”

I shook my head at him, my heart thundering furiously against my ribs. “And didn’t you even consider what you going to prison would do to me? How much it hurt knowing you were in that fucking place, that you could have died in there, and that everyone in the kingdom thinks of you as some goddamn predator who manipulated me?” I shoved him to try and get by, to get some air, but he didn’t step back, refusing to let me go. And I was one second from forcing him to.

He gripped my chin, his chest crushing me back against the wall and suddenly the air was thick and hot and another pulse was pounding in time with mine again somewhere in the tomb. But I couldn’t focus on it through the fog of my mind, my hands sliding up to grip his biceps and squeeze as anger gripped me in an iron fist.

“I don’t care,” he said, his breath warm and enticing against my mouth. “I knew I could never keep you, Blue. I knew it from the first time we kissed, I just fooled myself into believing it for a while. So when it came to us or you, I chose you. Because I woke up to reality. And real life isn’t nice or easy, it’s fucking quicksand that tries to drag you down the more you fight it. Love doesn’t conquer all this time, because we’re on two different paths. You’re heading to the stars, beautiful, and I’m staying down here in the dirt. That’s just the way it is.”

“It didn’t have to be,” I hissed, hating him, loving him.

“Well it’s too late for regrets,” he said darkly. “And I’m sure you’ll enjoy the view of the sky up there with Seth Capella beside you.”

“What?” I balked, my thoughts totally derailed by that comment. “What’s Seth got to do with it?”

“Oh, come on,” he scoffed, his fangs on show as he leaned down into my face and my hands grew scoldingly hot against his arms in a threat. “Are you going to deny it right to my face?”

“Deny what, asshole?” I snapped, my hands blazing hot now, but he still didn’t move, taking the burns rather than letting me go.

“That you’re together. He likes to send me the updates to rub my face in it,” he spat and the heat slid away from my hands as I saw the hurt in his eyes. “To be honest, you being with anyone else would have broken me, but did you really have to choose the one guy who tried to rip us apart?”

I reached up to brush my fingers across his cheek, hating the raw pain I saw in his eyes. It cut into me like a knife. “I’m not with Seth, Lance. Never have been, never will be. He’s a friend. That’s all.”

He tsked like he didn’t believe me and I scowled, my anger rising again. So my word just meant nothing now?

“You think I’d screw him after what he did to me? We might have resolved our differences, but I wouldn’t just forget that he cut off my hair or that he tried to ruin me at every chance he got. That he messed with us and made it so much harder for us to be together. Do you really think that little of me, Lance Orion?”

His brow creased, his eyes scouring my face, pausing on my mouth. “No…I think the world of you, Darcy Vega.”

He grabbed a fistful of my shirt, yanking me forward and suddenly pressed a demanding kiss to my lips. He surrounded me, consumed me. My heart was fit to burst as I tasted the man I’d pined for for so long and I was frozen in shock, torn between wanting him and needing to pull away. But I gave in, falling into temptation as I took a bite of the juiciest apple ever presented to me. I clawed at him as he pinned me back against the wall, a low groan of desperation in his throat making an earthquake roll through to the centre of my being. He tasted like broken promises, but of purest sunlight too. The shattered pieces of my heart sat like broken glass against my tongue, and the longer I kissed him, the more those pieces seemed to draw back together. But it was too late for that. We’d had our shot. He’d hurt me. And he hadn’t once even apologised for it.

I broke the kiss, furious at myself for giving in and his face was cast in shadow as I looked up at him, my lips bruised and tingling.

“We can’t,” I breathed.

“Fuck,” he rasped, stumbling back a step. “No.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I knew this was the last thing on earth we should even be doing right now. The drumming pulse of magic sounded in my head again and Orion took another step back, his hand going to his throat.

“Darcy,” he begged and I shook my head.

“We have to figure out how to get out of here,” I said, my cheeks still burning and my lips stinging.

“No, Blue,” he said, a fierce warning in his tone and I frowned as I realised his fangs were glinting at me in the dark. The power of this place closed in on me on all sides and I twisted around as I realised he was looking at something over my head. Words lit up across the door in glowing blue letters and my heart juddered in fear as I felt the spell they cast, spilling through the air.

Royal Vega blood tastes the sweetest.

Does the monster or the man in you run deepest?

“Get out of here!” Orion roared, his pupils dilating and fear ran through me as I raised my hands. His upper lip peeled back, the bloodlust in his eyes making his face seem wholly animal. “Darcy – run!”