Zodiac Academy 6: Fated Throne

I sat in the Mess Hall at breakfast, gazing at the slop they called oatmeal in my bowl and trying to convince myself to eat it. Wasting away in here was non optional if you wanted to survive. Fights broke out daily and without magic I had to be physically strong to defend myself whenever I was dragged into it. Which was pretty often thanks to the stars being assholes to me lately.

The small amount of free time I had, I either spent in the gym or in the library. Working out until I nearly busted a lung was the only thing that ever made my misery more bearable. And the rest of the time I spent pouring through every book in this place as I hunted for clues about the Imperial Star or how to break into an old fucking diary locked by a magical password I couldn’t guess. Not that there were many passages on either of those things in the tomes kept in the piss-poor Darkmore Penitentiary library. But there was an old section on the royals which mentioned the Imperial Star once or twice. Nothing useful so far though, nothing that could give Darius and Darcy an edge to find it before Lionel did.

Someone slid into the seat beside me and I turned my head, a growl grating against my throat in warning. I found Roary Night perching there, his muscles flexing, his long hair falling around his face.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said casually, like we’d spoken a thousand times.

I grunted, turning away again. “You? Or your little band of followers?” He wasn’t one to show off about it, but everyone knew he ran one of the biggest gangs in Darkmore. Unlike the other gangs, the Shades didn’t need to go around shouting about how big their balls were to prove their power though. They were the shadow in the dark, the threat you didn’t see coming. It was hard to even know for sure who exactly was one of them, but they saw everything that went on in this place. Each and every one of them reporting back to the man in charge. And for a while now, I’d gained his attention.

He chuckled darkly, twisting around in his seat and resting his forearms on the table. “Both.”

“Good for you, I hope you enjoyed the show.” I stuffed a spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth and he yawned broadly, slinging an arm over my shoulders. I swallowed the tasteless sludge on my tongue, cocking a brow at him.

“I’ve been speaking to my brother. And he’s been speaking to Gabriel Nox…” His brother Leon was a good enough friend to me that I didn’t distrust Roary, but I was also planning on collecting friends in here about as much as I planned on starting an acapella band. But now he had my attention. I’d met Leon after he and some of his classmates had been sent to Zodiac Academy for a student exchange back when I’d been a student myself. He’d licked my face which had made me dislike him intensely, but I guessed the over-friendly Lion Shifter had grown on me eventually. His brother was a little more sinister though.

I fell still, surveying Roary curiously. “And?”

“And, I know the truth now.”

I dropped my spoon into my bowl and shrugged his arm off of my shoulders. “And what’s the truth?” I asked hollowly.

“You’re no pervert,” he said with a smirk, rubbing his knuckles against my cheek. I batted his hand away with a growl of warning and he laughed lightly. “So we can be friends now.”

The table banged as Ethan Shadowbrook, the leader of the Lunar Brotherhood gang in here, slammed himself down on the seat opposite us, his fists hitting the table. “Hands off, Lion. I already called dibs.”

“Didn’t realise I was building a harem,” I said dryly, returning to my breakfast.

The resident nutjob, Sin Wilder, suddenly launched himself to sit on the table cross legged, gazing between all of us with a psychotic look on his face. “What do you call a harem with four swords and no scabbard?”

“What?” Ethan narrowed his eyes at him.

“Boring.” Sin jumped off the table and laughed manically as he headed away. The guy was a certified lunatic, but at least he left me the fuck alone most of the time.

“So, remember that offer I made you about those pills that will, you know…” Ethan leaned closer, pushing his fingers into his styled blonde hair. “Suppress the Guardian Bond.”

I itched the mark on my arm where the sleeve of my orange jumpsuit was rolled up, the skin prickling as it urged me toward Darius as always. Fuck I missed him.

“I said no,” I growled. I wasn’t gonna owe this guy anything. I’d fought to keep myself a loner in here and that was the way it was staying. I’d align myself with one of the gangs the same day I’d strip down and bend over for the local pervert Plunger. Last week a guy had made a crack about him drinking tea instead of coffee and Plunger had face slammed him into a wall, then proceeded to drop his pants and dunk his balls in and out of his slack-jawed mouth while shouting ‘who likes tea bags now?’. So, yeah.

“That’s the thing. Yesterday I gave those pills to a guy who was suffering from Faemorrhoids,” Ethan said, scratching the back of his neck. “They’re like a fix-all, numbing thing you see?”

“Right,” I muttered and Roary frowned at him.

Ethan leaned even closer, lowering his voice. “And basically, I can definitely get more of them if you want, but the guy got a rash on his balls that was so bad he had to have them chopped off.”

“Wow,” I deadpanned. “Please send them my way.”

“He felt pretty numb while it all happened if that helps. And people call him Eunuch Jim now. He always wanted a nickname,” Ethan snorted and Roary shoved out of his seat, giving me a look that said to come and talk to him when the Werewolf was finished offering me ball rash pills. The choices I had in here really were sublime.

A bell rang which sounded the end of breakfast and I pushed out of my seat with plans to head straight to the gym, but I knocked into some asshole behind me and turned around to find Gustard there, his juice spilling all down his chest. Great.

The guy had tattoos on his face and was the last motherfucker anyone wanted to cross in Darkmore. But since the stars had cursed me with bad luck for breaking the star vow I’d made with Darcy, I seemed to bump into him ten times a day and piss him the fuck off. I swear I’d been sent to medical five times more often than any other Fae in here, mainly because of this asshole.

“You again,” he hissed between his teeth and I clenched my jaw. It wasn’t that he on his own was a force of nature, but his entire gang flouted the way of the Fae and ganged up on their opponents ten on one. “Get me another,” he growled, trying to dominate me, but for all the stars in the world, I had too much pride to bow to anyone like a little bitch.

“Get it yourself,” I snarled, brushing past him toward the doors.

I’d have to pay for that in blood later, but I’d rather that than lose my dignity in this place. It was pretty much all I had left and if I was being honest, it wasn’t really intact when everyone in the world believed I’d Dark Coerced a Vega princess into fucking me. I was just some depraved pervert in most people’s eyes. But at least I’d done it for the best reason on earth. Her.

I headed down to the library, the guards’ watchful eyes following me on the stairs. When I pushed through the frosted glass doors, I headed to my favourite spot at the very back of the stacks, one of the few places where I could find solitude in the prison.

As usual, the old guy everyone called Poltergeist was there. He was ancient with his grey beard and sallow skin and he never said much. He drifted to the end of the aisle, throwing me cautious glances before disappearing around one of the stacks. He always haunted this part of the library, but he never bothered me, and I didn’t bother him either. And that made him my new best friend.

I grabbed out the tome I’d been reading yesterday, flicking to page five hundred and dropping down at a desk before working through it. I had one saving grace today. A visitation with Darius. It was kind of pathetic how much I’d come to depend on my contact with him. He visited me whenever he could, but now he’d started back at Zodiac, I doubted he’d be able to come as often. I supposed if I had one constant companion in here, it was loneliness. And once upon a time, that wouldn’t have bothered me so much. Being a Vampire meant I had an inclination towards alone time. But fuck if I didn’t ache for company these days. A very specific kind of company of course.

The Guardian bond tethering me to Darius was always begging me to be with him, and I’d once thought the pain of being parted from him would be unequalled by anything else. But since meeting Darcy and now being parted from her, it paled by comparison. There wasn’t a moment that went by that she wasn’t on my mind, my memories of her playing on repeat in my head. At least there were distractions in the day, but at night it took everything I had to fight off the shadows beneath my flesh, offering me the sweet bliss of a high that could help me escape from the brutality of heartache. It was a wound that lived on the inside and consumed all the colour in the world until everything seemed grey. She was gone. I’d made her go. And there was nothing I could ever do to fix it.

I spent a couple of hours reading, not finding anything of use and eventually giving up as I realised it must be almost time for visitation hours. I needed to see Darius. And I was always desperate for any scrap of news he brought from the outside. After everything that had happened with Lionel during the summer, I lived on Darius’s updates like a drug. News reached this prison slowly, the newspapers I got were always a week old, so I was often left not knowing what was going on. I’d been struggling with the fear that my sacrifice had been for nothing after Lionel had bound Tory to him and all the power had shifted in his favour. But now I’d made my bed, I had to lie in it. It was too late for regrets.

Appealing my sentence would only prove I’d lied and ensure Darcy’s name was dragged through the mud. Her place at Zodiac Academy would be in jeopardy and she had to keep getting stronger so she might be in with a chance to claim the throne. At least one good thing had come of it all. Blue – fuck no, don’t call her that  – had broken free of the shadows and she was no longer plagued by them. She was so fucking strong. So fucking everything. By the stars, I couldn’t believe I’d ever tried to claim her for myself. She was so far out of my league it was unreal.

Despite knowing that, it was still keeping me awake at night not being able to comfort her after everything. She’d lost her sister to Lionel. And I knew the fucking feeling. But now I was stuck in here, useless to her and Darius and everyone I cared about. The only solace I could take was that by staying here, Darcy would keep her place at the academy. And that was what I held onto to keep me sane.

Books were shuffled along the stack at the end of the aisle and Poltergeist’s yellowy eyes peered through them. He liked rearranging the books. He also liked watching me. And as creepy as that was, it kind of beat hanging around with most of the other inmates so I just ignored him and let him do his creepy thing.

A creak sounded on a floorboard behind me and Poltergeist gasped a warning just before a huge fist slammed into my head.

I twisted around with a yell as four strong hands gripped my shoulders, shoving me down over the desk. I spat a curse at Gustard’s UnFae assholes as more of them crowded closer and Gustard watched from just beyond them.

I kicked one of the guys holding me in the dick and he yelped as he backed away, clutching his junk with both hands. Another one came to take his place, but I fought my way to my feet, throwing solid punches into the faces of anyone who got near. Blood coated my knuckles as I let myself go fully savage. I’d learned fast to fight for your fucking life and ask questions later in here. So I broke jaws and noses and roared like a fucking demon from hell as I beat the shit out of anyone who tried to grab me. My heart thrashed in my chest and I relished the outlet, sinking into the shadows as they reared up in me, lured by the pain I was delivering and whispering their encouragements in my ears.

Gustard laughed coldly, the sound making adrenaline rush through my veins.

“Hold him down,” he commanded and I lunged toward him, trying to break through the ranks to get to their leader, determination and anger fuelling my movements.

“Face me like a fucking Fae,” I barked as four of his guys grabbed me and forced me to lay down on the desk on my back.

One of them slammed their fist into my nose and blood poured over my face, pain splintering through my skull as bone and cartilage busted from the blow. I’d faced worse, but I doubted it was gonna end there.

A big asshole slapped a hand across my mouth and my arm was yanked out over the edge of the table. My muscles bulged and I bucked against their restraint as I fought to get free, but there were too fucking many of them.

Gustard stepped forward, taking hold of my wrist and I bit down on the hand covering my mouth as the gang leader pushed my arm down forcefully, bending it in the opposite direction it was supposed to go. Stars exploded in front of my eyes as the bone snapped and my pained roar was smothered by the asshole gripping my face.

I blinked away the darkness curtaining my eyes as Gustard breathed in my ear. “Last warning.”

They left me there and I groaned as I tasted blood on my tongue and felt the heavy and agonising weight of my right arm hanging off the desk, unable to move it.

Poltergeist appeared with wide eyes, taking my other arm and helping me off the table.

“You need to see the medic,” he croaked in an ancient voice, but I shook my head, groaning as another spike of pain cleaved through my arm. Fuck.

“Have to go to visitation,” I growled, stumbling past him as blood pissed from my nose onto the carpet. I wiped it away with my sleeve then clutched my broken arm against my chest, biting down on my tongue at the blinding pain racing through the limb. At least I’d made a bunch of them bleed first.

I made my way out of the library with the inmates all staring at me then headed upstairs towards visitation.

“What the fuck happened, One-Fifty?” Officer Cain barked as I reached the top of the stairs. He was a big asshole with close cropped hair and a mouth that never smiled.

“Fell,” I grunted, trying to step past him toward the hall that led to the visitation rooms. He shot into my way with his Vampire speed and I snarled a threat, wishing I had access to my own fangs so I could put this motherfucker in his place.

“Well Medical is that way.” He smirked tauntingly, pointing back down the stairs.

“I’m going to visitation,” I hissed and he folded his arms.

“Are you now?” he asked. “Well you’re gonna shock that little Heir boyfriend of yours when he sees you like that.”

I gave him a cool look then stepped forward again to move past him and he let me go this time. I made it to the line of inmates waiting to be called into a visitation room and propped my shoulder against the wall, grinding my teeth as I tried to ignore the pain in my shattered arm. Fuck Gustard. Fuck that unFae piece of shit.

“One-Fifty!” Officer Lucius called from down the corridor. “You’re in room eight.” She directed me forward, her eyes widening as she took in my face, the blood splattering my jumpsuit and my arm clutched against my side.

She grabbed her radio from her hip. “Oh shit, you need-”

“I need to walk through that door right this second, so get out of my way.” I jerked my chin at the room behind her then didn’t wait for her to agree, ducking past her and pushing through the door. Darius stood up from his seat at the single table in there, his jaw dropping at the state of me.

“Fuck, Lance, what the hell happened?”

I rushed toward him, using my good arm to pull him against me and wincing through the pain, the Guardian bond purring happily inside me as I released a heavy sigh. Better.

Darius slid his fingers onto my twisted arm and healing magic swept into my veins. The bone snapped back into place and I hissed between my teeth before the pain finally ebbed away. He fixed my nose next, cleaning the blood off of me with his water magic and I drew him into a fierce hug the moment it was done, needing him close, craving the feel of him against me.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he commanded in a Dragon’s growl worthy of his father, finally pulling away from me.

We sat down opposite each other at the table and I shrugged. I wasn’t going to snitch on Gustard and his lackies in front of the cameras, but there was another group of assholes responsible who I could openly blame. “The fucking stars have it out for me.”

“You can’t continue like this, you’ll end up fucking dead,” Darius hissed, his face twisted in concern.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I demanded. “It is what it is.”

He shook his head, then subtly swiped a finger and a chill filled the room. He used his water magic to mess with the cameras, casting ice into them to give us a chance to speak properly. “Lance you have to get out of here. My father…he’s taken the throne. He-”

“What?” I gasped, my lungs constricting, horror threading itself into my chest. I knew that we’d been running out of time, but I’d thought there was still some left. How could this have happened? How were we going to stop him now?

Darius started recounting how Lionel had made the Councillors bow to him and moved into the Palace of Souls and I just listened in silent dismay, losing hope by the second. And I’d barely had much to start with.

I cursed, the walls seeming to close in on me. I was so fucking useless in here. How the hell was I supposed to do anything to help?

“I’m sorry,” I rasped. “I’m sorry I’m no use, I’m sorry for fucking everything up.”

He sighed, his brows tugging together. “Just take the appeal.”

“That would only make things worse now,” I said quietly. “You know that’s true.”

“There must be some way,” he insisted. “I’ll speak to Nova, I’ll ensure Darcy’s place at Zodiac is secure.”

“Elaine Nova’s in Lionel’s pocket. Any excuse to get rid of Darcy and she’ll take it,” I spat and silence stretched for a moment as Darius tried to come up with another idea.

“Fuck.” Darius slammed his hand down on the table. “Well at least break that star vow with Darcy. You’re never going to find out what your father’s diary says if you can’t catch a damn break.”

I drew in a long breath, unable to deny it. But that would mean him bringing Darcy here again. Seeing her, getting her to break the last thing that tied us together. For all the bad luck in the world, a twisted part of me wanted the punishment. I’d broken her. I’d given her no choice. Betrayed her in a way I’d sworn never to. She wouldn’t ever trust me again. But I’d known all of that when I’d taken the stand in court, because regardless of the consequences, it was still better than the alternative. She would have lost her claim on the throne if she couldn’t be trained. As soon as our secret had been exposed, I had been the one thing standing in her way, the one thing that could cost her everything. And now with Lionel sitting on the throne, it was more important than ever that she would be able to fight him.

“We need this. If your father knew something, then we have to find out what it is. Astrum’s last Tarot card said to seek the fallen hunter. And that just has to be your dad,” Darius insisted.

“Yeah, maybe,” I grunted, scratching at my beard. “Or maybe not.”

“The diary has got to be important,” Darius insisted.

“But what if it’s just a diary?” I croaked, knowing that all the efforts I’d made to crack the password could be pointless, that all the hopes we were pinning on it could be in vain.

“Well we have to find out either way. We don’t have anything else to go on,” Darius said, sounding tired and I realised he looked it too. He was going through his own kind of hell out in the real world and it pained me to see him that way.

“Alright,” I gave in, my chest growing tight at the thought of what I had to do, but there was no choice. Darius was right; so long as the stars were cursing me with bad luck, I’d never figure out how to unlock the diary. “Bring her here.” Oh fuck why do I feel like I’m about to bust a lung at the thought of that?

I wanted to see Darcy again more than anything in the world. And yet I knew it would crush me all over again.

Darius smiled sadly as he nodded.

“She misses you, you know?” he said darkly. “She won’t say it, but-”

“Don’t,” I growled, my heart crumbling to dust in my chest. “I don’t wanna hear it. She should be moving on.”

“I think she has,” he said earnestly and I wasn’t prepared for how much that hurt me. I wanted it, I’d pushed for this, I knew it was what needed to happen. But the thought of her forgetting me, finding someone else, fuck, it was intolerable.

“But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss you,” Darius said sadly.

I miss her too. I miss her in every moment of every minute of every day. I will always miss her.

“Is she…okay?” I asked in a tight voice. I generally avoided talking about her with him in any depth, but this question was one I asked often. It gave me some peace knowing Darius was looking out for her, that she was still safe. And I guessed that was the most peace I would ever have over her.

“No one’s okay right now, but she’s coping,” he said with a deep frown. “There’s some hope for Roxy. I’ll let you know if it pays off.”

I knew he couldn’t tell me more even with the cameras disrupted, just in case, but my heart lifted all the same. “That’s good. Just be careful.”

“Always,” he promised then he fell into telling me everything about Xavier’s Awakening and hinting at how him, Darcy and the other Heirs were all working together to figure out a way to take on Lionel. My heart swelled at the thought. I might have been broken, hurt, and ruined by destroying us. But the sacrifice had been worth it. She was becoming the queen she was always meant to be. It was just hard to accept that I was never going to be her king.