Zodiac Academy 7: Heartless Sky

I’d hit the ground on my back with the force of a fucking freight train, my skull rattling and wings crushed to my spine beneath me, blacking out from the pain of the impact with the mocking stars looking down on me the last thing I’d seen.

“Wake up.”

I felt the brush of ethereal fingers grazing against my cheek and a groan escaped me as I clawed my way towards consciousness and the agony of my injuries rushed in to claim me.

Long stalks of grass stroked against my cheeks as the pounding rain continued to batter me and the scent of it drew me out of the void of my mind.

I was alone, vulnerable and dressed in an agony that burned brighter than the fire of my Phoenix.

I flexed my fingers, moving them to press against my side just beneath the base of the metal breastplate where I could access a sliver of skin, and I drove healing magic into my body, thanking the stars and our continued magical lessons for the fact that I knew how to heal broken bones now.

I sucked a shuddering breath between my teeth, working to remove the pain from my body first before shifting my attention to seeking out the injuries themselves and healing those. My broken wings had taken the brunt of my fall and I closed my eyes to concentrate as I mended the breaks in them before moving on to heal the rest of my body too.

When it was done, I blinked my eyes open, squinting up at the dark clouds which continued to spill water down on top of me endlessly, making me shiver as I felt the cold which had sunk into my bones while I’d been out of it.

A flick of my fingers cast a shield over me to keep the rain off and I called on my fire Element to dry me out and banish the chill from my body as I tentatively sat up to try and get my bearings.

I’d landed on a small hill which was coated in grass and peeked out from between the trees to the far side of the clearing which held the destroyed remains of the temple. I glanced down at the ground I was sitting on, finding a perfect silhouette of my body and wings burned into the stalks from my landing and my gut knotted as I thought about what had happened.

We’d only been power sharing, so why the fuck had our magic exploded instead of merging the way it always did?

The sound of heavy footsteps approaching chilled my blood and drew my attention from that thought. I looked around into the trees, noticing a group of huge figures moving between them, closing in on my position.

I couldn’t hear the sounds of battle anymore and one glance at the sky told me there wasn’t a Phoenix or Dragon flying past either, and I frowned as I tried to figure out where the hell they all were.

The haunting rattle of a Nymph drove beneath my skin like splinters, worming their way towards my magic and working to lock it down.

I looked around towards the smoking remains of the temple and found more and more of the creatures moving among the wreckage, far more of them than I had realised were here, and as the figures in the trees turned my way, I found myself vastly outnumbered and alone, like a sitting duck just waiting to be devoured.

The Fae in me wanted to stand and fight, but as a figure clouded in shadow shot across the cloud-hugged moon and I recognised Lavinia on the hunt, I got the horrible feeling that this fight was weighted too heavily against me.

The Nymphs released that god awful rattle again and as I felt their power sliding into my bones, I made the snap decision to hide, driving my fingers into the earth either side of me and harnessing my earth magic so that I sank into the dirt.

I created a pocket of air all around me, banishing my wings to make it easier for my body to slide beneath the ground and willing the grass to grow lush and thick above me to cover the evidence of where I’d been.

With my connection to the earth, I could feel the heavy vibrations of the group of Nymphs drawing closer and my breaths feathered in and out as adrenaline scored a path right through me as the power of their rattle drove into me again.

I had no idea if the creatures could sense my magic or were able to tell that their power was taking effect on a Fae nearby, but I wasn’t gonna stay here and find out by letting them cut me off from my magic so that they could pluck me from the ground like a daisy and devour me whole.

I ground my jaw as I worked to cling on to my power and started driving myself down, further beneath the ground and away from the hunting Nymphs, burying myself alive and delving into the dark.

I was so focused on feeling for their approach that I only noticed the space beneath me opening up as I fell through the roof of the tunnel below me.

A scream caught in my throat as my stomach lurched and I threw my hands out wide, catching myself with air magic before I could hit the floor and illuminating a Faelight as I landed on my feet, looking around for enemies as dirt cascaded down on me from above.

The tunnel I was in was carved from the same black stone as the temple had been, though I was nowhere near the wreckage of that place, so I was guessing this was either connected to it from afar or its own structure built alongside it.

I cast an amplification spell and held my breath as I listened for the sound of anyone else drawing close to me, but I didn’t detect anyone other than the Nymphs who were now walking through the clearing I’d been laying in just a few moments ago.

Once I was confident that I wasn’t about to bump into a Nymph down here, I let myself look around at the dark tunnel, taking in the unlit sconces which lined the walls and the carvings which marked the black stone.

I walked closer to one of them, spotting an image of a woman who looked a whole lot like Lionel’s Shadow freak as she cut her own flesh open with a sharp blade. I glanced at the image beside it, finding her now bleeding tendrils of smoke, winding their way from her body and into the hands of a Nymph who kneeled before her.

I arched a brow as I kept walking, seeing the Nymphs accepting the smoke which I was now guessing was actually meant to be the shadows before they got to their feet and grouped themselves together into an army.

I ran my fingers along the ridges of the carvings in the black stone as I took in the scenes of battle which finally culminated in a lot of celebrating Nymphs and a shadow bitch sitting on a throne with a crown on her psycho head.

I was hoping that whole scenario had been wishful thinking by the artist rather than some kind of prophecy, but I was willing to fight the stars themselves if it was the latter, because there was no fucking way I’d let that future come to pass while I still drew breath.

My boots echoed against the hard floor as I moved further along the empty tunnel and I cast a silencing bubble just in case anyone happened to get close enough to hear me before looking up at the roof and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now.

Stardust would have been nice, but we’d split it between our group and I hadn’t been carrying any – not least because my Phoenix fire might well have destroyed it if I’d tried. So here I was, stuck in some Nymph tunnel with no idea where the others could be and an uneasy feeling that something had gone horribly wrong.

There had been no sign of any of them when I woke and no sounds of battle either, so what did that mean? They wouldn’t have just left me here, but I equally couldn’t accept any version of reality where they’d been beaten or taken captive. So what the hell was going on?

Before I could get too caught up in that question, the brush of fingers against the back of my hand made me jolt in surprise and I whirled around, Phoenix fire igniting in my fist as I prepared to fight. But there was no one there.

“Come,” the ethereal voice which had woken me before demanded and I stiffed in alarm, my gaze scouring the empty corridor as my senses prickled and I fought to figure out what the fuck was happening.

But before I could go all Phoenix on this place and just blast everything around me to shit in hopes of striking the invisible entity in the room too, I spotted a glimmer of something golden hidden between the stones near the foot of the passageway.

I knelt down, my fingernail catching in the little metal thing as I tugged it free of its hiding place and a tiny golden charm in the shape of a Hydra fell into my palm.

Energy rushed along my skin like a kiss of recognition and I straightened, frowning as silver footsteps appeared on the dark stone at the far end of the tunnel and I stilled, realisation finally finding me.

“Mom?” I breathed into the quiet, feeling like a fucking idiot for saying it aloud, but now that I wasn’t jumping at shadows, I was sure it was her. Or the memory of her at least.

“Come,” she repeated, the voice sounding further away now in the direction of the footsteps.

I swallowed a lump in my throat as I wished for Darcy to be here with me too before taking off after the ghost of my mother with the charm held tight in my fist.

The tunnel continued on along several corridors, short staircases leading me further beneath the ground and getting me turned around before I found myself in a wide chamber with a dark aura about it which made me hesitate on the threshold.

“You need to see,” my mother’s voice echoed around the open space and I stepped into the room, my gaze shifting over the chains which hung from the wall and the wooden chest which sat closed in the corner of the room, hiding fuck knew what.

But as I took another step forward, the room seemed to shift before my eyes and my gut swooped like I was falling as the black walls melted away and I found myself outside The Palace of Souls, watching as my parents strode up the steps and into the throne room, the sound of a cheering crowd following them in from outside.

“There,” Hail Vega said heavily, waving a hand to push the door closed at his back and drawing my mom closer to him as she smiled brightly.

“Didn’t I tell you they would accept me?” she teased and he smiled back down at her, grabbing her by the waist and drawing her body flush with his.

“Of course they will,” he growled. “I am their king. They accept whatever I tell them to.”

He leaned down to kiss her hard and I belatedly took in the white dress she wore and the crown which was balanced in her hair. I’d seen images of the two of them wearing these exact outfits when reading reports on the unexpected royal wedding. 

Hail had returned from his trip to the southern kingdom of Voldrakia with a foreign princess on his arm and had married her that very day, sending the entire kingdom into an uproar. There had been some backlash from the family of the man she’d been betrothed to in her home kingdom, but Hail had threatened war and the issue had been resolved through some political alliances and the exchange of a substitute bride for him from our own kingdom.

Hail dropped his mouth to claim a kiss from the woman he had fallen so irrevocably in love with and I drank in the sight of them together, happiness clinging to every inch of them as she drew him closer for several lingering moments before pulling back.

“They’ll come looking for us if we don’t approach them ourselves,” she sighed and he growled in frustration.

“Heavens save me from the inconvenience of politics. Let’s get the rest of this over with then, so I can have you to myself,” he rumbled, taking her hand and leading her through the palace to a large room full of guests where my gaze fell on the Celestial Councillors and my throat tightened as Lionel greeted them warmly, offering exuberant congratulations.

I shifted closer, wanting to overhear what they were saying, but my attention was drawn to a group of men and women who stood to the side of the room, each of them wearing a royal blue cloak and looking over to my parents with interest.

One particular member of the group stood out to me, and I stiffened as I recognised Vard. The oily Cyclops hadn’t had the mop of long hair back then or even the scar on his face, but my heart thrashed harder as I took in the sight of him so close to my family.

“Rain!” one of the cloaked women in his group suddenly cried and a few moments later rain began to pebble the windows.

“I could have told you that a week ago,” my mother laughed, glancing up at her new husband with love in her eyes as his attention was drawn to the robed people.

“We haven’t had any great Seers emerge in our kingdom since my father’s man Narbord died eight years ago,” Hail said, his eyes sweeping over the group with slight distaste. “So I was forced to create a group of individuals who had enough of The Sight to be relevant, hoping that the minds of the many would amount to the mind of one.”

“And do they?” Merissa teased, a knowing glint in her eyes.

“There isn’t one among them who can even sit in the Royal Seer’s chair,” he muttered irritably. “Though perhaps that was because it had been waiting for you, just as I was.”

Vard’s head snapped around and he looked at my mother with a whole lot more interest than he had initially.

“The new queen has The Sight?” he asked curiously, though I could tell how threatened he and the rest of his group of less talented Seers felt about that.

“She does indeed,” Hail purred, drawing his new bride closer to his side. “She can see better than anyone I’ve ever known.”

The Seers broke into muttered conversation over that, their attention fixed on the new queen who answered their questions politely with a soft smile on her face.

Merissa straightened suddenly, her hand snapping out to catch an apple which had been aimed at Hail’s face and Lionel barked a laugh, clapping loudly as everyone whirled to look at him.

“My King, I think you truly have found a gem to treasure here,” he cried, looking like he was honest to shit happy, though I knew enough of him after spending months trapped in his company to recognise that dangerous, conniving look in his eyes. “I aimed the fruit at you while she was distracted and yet she still saw it coming! She is a true Seer indeed and her love for you must be fierce for her to sense threats against you so easily.”

People around the room broke into applause at Lionel’s lead and Hail grinned as he tugged his new bride closer, lifting her chin with his fingertips and looking deep into her eyes.

“Yes, she truly is something special,” he said, kissing her in front of all of them to more applause but my attention flicked between Vard and Lionel, both of whom didn’t look the least bit happy about the arrival of the new queen.

I opened my mouth, wanting to ask what else had happened, but the vision was already shifting, showing me the first time Merissa sat on the Seer’s chair, her official elevation to the position of Royal Seer and various occasions where she’d seen something that Vard and the others hadn’t even caught a whiff of. Time and again, Vard’s jaw tightened with frustration and he continually offered up predictions which had varying levels of accuracy to them.

Over time, Hail met with the other Seers less and less, often not even informing them of the predictions Merissa made as his interest in their visions lessened to the point of him hardly consulting them at all.

Vard had come to him on more than one occasion, begging to be allowed to use the Royal Seer’s Chamber so that his own visions could be more accurate, but he was denied.

I was thrown into another vision then, finding myself inside that very room as my mother sat on the chair, her eyes glazed with a vision and my father standing over her.

“Well?” he asked, his brow furrowed with concern as she came to, her eyes brightening as she shook her head. 

“Nothing today, my love,” she confirmed and his anxiety fell away with a sigh. 

“I swear bringing you back here has changed everything for me,” he said, moving close to her and falling to his knees before her. “I should reward you for that.”

My mom giggled as he closed in on her, hitching her skirt up while leaning forward to kiss her neck and I wrinkled my nose, wondering why the fuck I was being gifted a vision of my parents getting it on and feeling a little sorry for Gabriel as I failed to find a way out of it. 

My father growled hungrily, yanking on the top of her dress and ripping the material as I turned away sharply, not needing to see another moment of that as he dropped his mouth to her breast and she moaned loudly.

I turned to the door, clapping my hands over my ears and wondering if I could walk through it in a vision to escape this hell just as it burst open.

“My King, I really must insist that I be given use of-” Vard cut himself off abruptly as he realised what he’d just walked in on, and I turned to look back at my parents as a ferocious roar escaped Hail Vega which made the fucking walls tremble.

I expected to find him in his shifted form but instead I gasped as a knife was flung at me, the glint of sun steel flashing ominously as it sailed right through me and sliced across Vard’s face.

Blood splattered against the wall and Vard howled in agony as he dropped to the ground, clutching at his ruined eye as blood poured freely from it.

“You dare to lay your eyes on my wife’s body?” Hail bellowed, launching himself towards the bleeding, sobbing man on the floor with murder in his gaze and my mom cried out in alarm behind him.

She caught his arm, throwing a hand towards Vard, capturing him in magical vines which dragged him out of the room.

“You can’t kill a member of the royal court without a trial!” she yelled, her fingers biting into my father’s arm as she fought to contain his rage and I could see the essence of the monster in him shifting restlessly behind his eyes as he worked to look at her. “That isn’t the king you want to be anymore. Remember what you asked of me? You want me to help you see a way back to the light.”

“No man can lay his eyes upon your flesh and live to speak of it,” he snarled, taking hold of her face between his hands and gazing down at her like she was the most precious thing in all the world to her. “I won’t stand for it. You know that.”

“I do,” she breathed, holding her ground beneath his rage and not flinching once, that fire in her making my heart swell with pride as I watched her with this beast she’d chosen to love and saw the purity of that bond between them. She was his light and he was her dark. They balanced each other, but only when they worked for that unity as they were clearly trying to do now.

Hail looked fit to burst with fury as he yelled for the guards to take Vard out of his sight, but the vision shifted before they could arrive and I found myself watching as Merissa woke suddenly in the night, a vision drawing her from her husband’s bed with an urgency which saw her racing from their room and diving out of a window into the night.

I relished the experience of flying alongside her as she shifted into her Harpy form, her wings beating hard as she flew straight to the amphitheatre where Darcy and Orion had been forced to fight the Nymphs at Christmas.

I chased after her as she landed lightly, running past the bodies of two dead guards and hurrying down to the cells which held prisoners in the darkness, though none of them seemed to notice her running past them.

She skidded to a halt outside a cell which stood open, a curse escaping her as she frowned, trying to force a vision into existence.

“How are you hiding from me?” she hissed, her frustration clear as she worked to get a vision which would lead her to the man who had escaped the royal dungeon.

Her head snapped up suddenly and she took a pinch of stardust from her pocket, tossing it over her head and yanking me along with her through the stars as she was whipped away through them.

I sucked in a surprised breath as we landed in the exact forest that I had been fighting in alongside my friends just a short while ago.

I followed my mom as she crept through the trees towards the pyramid shaped temple in the heart of the forest where she spotted Vard hurrying towards it, words pouring from his lips which she couldn’t understand any better than I could and a draining dagger in his hand which hummed with the dark power I’d come to know all too well.

A shriek approached as Vard closed in on the temple and two Nymphs appeared at the top of the steps we’d not long destroyed, making Vard jerk to a halt in alarm.

He turned to run but four more of the creatures had appeared at his back and he found himself surrounded.

“I’ve come to beg mercy of the Shadow Princess,” he called loudly. “I’ve felt her presence in my work with this blade and I wish to offer myself up as her humble servant. I have the gift of The Sight and was a member of the Savage King’s court until he did this to me.”

Vard trembled as the Nymphs closed in on him and I glanced at my mom, finding her ready with a pinch of stardust between her fingers, but she stayed where she was, watching, waiting.

A man strode out of the temple next, my blood chilling as I recognised Diego’s uncle Alejandro with his black curling hair, thin moustache and dark, forbidding aura. 

“Wait,’ he called, raising a hand as the Nymphs closed in on Vard and causing them to fall still. “The Shadow Princess has use for him.”

Alejandro beckoned Vard forward with a single finger and the Nymphs at his back all corralled him up the steps, sending him scuttling forward with a whimper of fear that made me think he might have been second guessing this decision to come here.

I waited in the dark with my mom as they disappeared inside, turning my attention on her and slowly circling her as I drank in the sight of her face. Looking at her opened up an ache in me which I had long since fought to ignore, but it was impossible to do so while I was here, staring at the woman who had loved me and Darcy so much that she allowed her own life to be forfeited for the chance to keep us safe.

There was a lot of her in the two of us, and my heart pounded at each small similarity I found between her face and ours or Gabriel’s. She was a memory of a life we should have been gifted the chance to live, but it had been stolen from us and the hurt I felt over that would never truly go away.

Lionel Acrux had a hell of a lot to answer for.

Merissa’s gaze shifted suddenly and I found her eyes on mine, a gasp escaping her as she looked at me and a soft ‘oh,’ leaving her lips as she reached out as if to touch my cheek. 

“Can you see me?” I asked shakily as the ghost of her hand skimmed the line of my jaw and I felt the faintest echo of that touch.

“You need to see this, don’t you?” she asked and I wasn’t certain she could hear me or even that she was really talking to me, but as my brow pinched she took off, passing straight through me as if I wasn’t there at all and making the fragile pieces of my heart shatter with the love I ached to feel from her.

I turned to watch as she ran towards the temple, drawing the darkness tight around herself and hiding so thoroughly that I couldn’t even see her myself, only knowing where she was headed through pure instinct.

I took off after her, hounding her up the steps and into the temple where screams echoed out to us and my mom followed the sound of them, slipping down dark corridors and stone steps until she reached a room where the screams were so loud that they made my skull rattle.

She hesitated by the doorway, looking in to offer me the opportunity to see this too, knowing she couldn’t get a vision about this place while the shadows clung so closely to it and instead viewing it with her own eyes so that she could offer up this memory.

The sounds of agony coming from that room made me want to turn away, but I didn’t, understanding the risk she’d taken to witness this for us. Whatever she saw in there had to be important and I needed to know what it was.

I stepped forward, moving to stand in the doorway and falling still as I spotted Vard, stripped to the waist and chained to a stone table as he begged and panted. Alejandro stood over him with a bloody blade in hand and my stomach writhed as he shifted to one side, revealing the bleeding mess of Vard’s face and I couldn’t help but wince as he tossed a destroyed eyeball aside, letting it hit the floor with a wet slap.

“I’m begging you to let me meet with the Shadow Princess!” Vard wailed and Alejandro laughed cruelly in reply. 

“No one meets with our god,” he spat. “But you came to the right place if you wish to serve her.”

He whistled sharply and a Nymph strode from the corner of the room in his shifted form, his huge, tree-like body sending a wave of fear through me as I watched him drop to his knees before Alejandro and look up at him with all the mindless adoration of a true zealot.

Alejandro raised his blade once more as he closed in on the creature, murmuring words beneath his breath which sounded like a prayer or perhaps something more sinister. My breath got caught in my lungs as he grabbed hold of the Nymph’s throat and drove the blade into his eye socket.

The creature stiffed, a cry of pain coming from it, but it didn’t try to fight as Alejandro kept going, carving the Nymph’s blood red eye from its face and plucking it out to lay it in his palm.

Bile coated my tongue as I watched the eyeball start to twitch and writhe in Alejandro’s hand which he held aloft as he continued to chant and pray, the words making every hair on my body stand on end as I felt the rush of the shadows racing into the room.

Darkness swept towards the Nymph’s eye and as Alejandro continued to call on the power of the Shadow Princess, the thing began to twitch more violently, until suddenly it sprung clean out of his hand and landed on Vard’s chest with a wet and bloody thump.

“Fucking hell,” I gasped as I watched the thing filling with more and more tendrils of darkness as it began to wriggle its way up Vard’s chest like some sort of fucked up worm and made its way to his face before lodging itself in the empty eye socket which awaited it there.

Vard screamed bloody murder as the shadow eye attached itself to his body and I had to fight the urge to heave as Alejandro watched with a cruel and malicious smile on his face.

“Ask and you shall receive,” he purred, watching as Vard thrashed and screamed against his restraints and the darkness of the shadows took a grip on his soul.

A clamour of noise drew my attention to the corridor behind me and fear sent a shiver through my limbs as I turned at the sound of countless Nymphs coming this way, looking to my mom in alarm as I tried to figure out how the fuck she’d escaped this place of horrors. But she answered my question simply enough as she tossed the stardust she’d been holding over her head, vanishing in an instant and dragging me along with her as the vision faded away.

“I saw Hail’s death if I ever took him to that place.” Her voice echoed around me as I came back to myself and I shuddered at the thought of that.

I landed back in my body inside the tunnel beneath the mountain, suddenly recognising this as the room where Vard had gotten his gross Nymph shadow eye. It made so much fucking sense to me now. How he’d been able to see the shadows, why the deep red colour of it had always unsettled me so damn much. He had a fucking Nymph’s eye in his face and no one had ever questioned it. Or maybe they had, and I was just late to the party. Lionel almost certainly knew and he had clearly been trading for power from Lavinia since he’d been gifted that thing.

Was it the reason they’d managed to work around my mom’s visions? Had this moment been the deciding factor in their fate? One scorned asshole throwing a bitch fit because someone came along and did his job better than him?

Pain radiated through my chest at the thought of that. Of how something so small had become so important. My father had been angry and perhaps overly harsh, but the monster he’d created in Vard with his actions had to have been beyond all possibilities to predict. 

I blew out a breath, looking around at the dark space while my chest tightened with anxiety for my friends. 

I needed to get out of here. I needed to get back to them and figure out what the hell had happened to them.

I wasn’t going to give too much thought on what the hell had gone down between me and Darcy when our power had collided, but there was a heaviness in my soul and a fear for my other half which lingered there, waiting to emerge the moment it got the chance and leaving me with the desperate desire to be reunited with her so that I could make certain she was okay.

I headed back the way I’d come, following a long passageway and feeling out ahead of me with my connection to my magic to make sure I wasn’t about to meet any surprise guests down here in the dark.

The passage turned and I found myself at the foot of a long stairway, the brush of fresh air against my cheeks making me think I must have found my way back to the surface.

I made sure my concealment spells and silencing bubble were firm around me and began to climb, jogging up the steps quickly in hunt of the fresh air I could feel billowing around me.

I wanted out of this dank series of tunnels and I needed to get back to my friends.

At the top of the steps, I found myself in a stone arch which was cut into the side of the hill, overlooking the now destroyed temple below where I could make out a large figure moving among the rubble.

My blood chilled at the sight of the Nymph and I hesitated just inside the doorway as I looked out at them through the sheeting rain, hunting for any sign of Darcy or Darius or any one of the people I’d come here with. But there was nothing.

My mind began to turn with a plan to get closer to the destruction down there, to hunt for them and figure out where they were, but I flinched at the sound of Lavinia’s voice and I shrank back into the shadows instead.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are…I want a taste of rebel blood tonight.”

I spotted her as she landed amongst the rubble in the valley below, a shriek of fury escaping her as she yelled at her Nymphs to search harder and find her some prey.

Hope swelled in my chest as I took in her frustration, and I was struck with the certainty that she hadn’t found them after all. But then where were they?

It was hard to believe that they would have left here without me, but maybe they hadn’t had a choice. Maybe they thought I was dead. The explosion of power which had collided between me and Darcy had been enough to hurl me far from her and any of the others, and I had no idea how long I’d been lying in the grass unconscious either.

A tugging sensation in my gut made me turn and look to the north, a feeling of need filling me as I squinted into the storm and was hit with the desire to fly that way, sensing my mother’s presence once again like there was more she wanted to show me.

I’d never felt her like this outside of the palace before and I wasn’t certain if it was the golden trinket in my hand or the head injury I’d received that was causing it, but I was going to have to hope it was the trinket.

I glanced down at the little Hydra charm in my hand before tightening my fist around it and turning my back on Lavinia and the destruction we’d left here, choosing to have a little faith for once in my damn life and calling my wings into existence.

I was careful to keep the flames of my Phoenix at bay as I took off, holding the darkness around me with a concealment spell and using the storm to hide my progress through the sky as I tore away from this place and its foul memories.

I hurried through the rumbling storm clouds, flying higher and higher as the freezing water coated my skin and armour, making goosebumps pepper my flesh and my hair stick to my cheeks.

The clouds were thick and freezing cold as I flew into them, the thrum of electricity present all around me and making memories of my torture at Lionel’s hands rise to the surface of my mind. He had taken a special interest in watching me scream beneath the strike of the lightning which he kept trapped in those jars. Even this faint tingle of that power had me back in that room, back at his mercy and trapped in my own mind.

I fought to shake off those memories, trying to cling to the lessons Max had been giving me in compartmentalising and deep breathing. But I really wasn’t a meditation kind of girl, so I worked on my favourite coping mechanism instead as I failed to find that calm place inside me which always seemed to elude me too easily. Revenge. My desire for cold, hard, revenge was what was going to get me through those flashbacks. I gave myself over to thoughts of all the ways I dreamed of making Lionel, Lavinia and Vard pay for what they’d done to me and countless others besides. 

And while I indulged in fantasies about carving them up and burning them in Phoenix fire, I burst through the barrier of the storm clouds and made it up to the peace above them where only the stars could see me as I flew on.

I let the sensation I was getting from the Hydra charm guide me as I flew on, filling my body with the heat of my fire magic as I went and leaving the chill of the storm behind alongside the shadow bitch who was mourning her poor lost rift.

I wasn’t sure how long I flew for, but by the time I felt the urge to descend from the sky, dawn was lightening the horizon and my wings were aching with fatigue.

I dropped down through the clouds which were now white and hazy, the storm left long behind alongside the forest and I found myself gliding over a huge, flat plane which was covered in grass and wild flowers tipped with morning dew.

The charm in my fist almost seemed to heat the further I flew until eventually I spotted a stone circle standing in the centre of an otherwise open expanse of grass.

I cast a detection spell to hunt for anyone who might be hiding themselves here, but found nothing to suggest that I wasn’t alone as I dropped from the sky and landed softly in the centre of the ring of stones.

I looked around at the enormous lumps of rock, wondering if an earth Elemental had cast them into existence here because there was no sign of any other stones about the place.

The charm in my fist heated further as I stood there and as I opened my hand to look at it, I found myself tugged into another vision, this one of my father as well as my mother, with Lionel and the other Celestial Councillors all standing close by and watching as the king stood in the centre of this stone circle.

“Have they destroyed the Nymphs who created this?” Seth’s mother Antonia asked and I looked to see what she was referring to, noticing the crackle in the air at the centre of the stone circle as I did so. 

“The FIB are on the hunt,” King Hail replied, moving forward and placing a hand in his pocket as he scowled at the rift.

“How many of these things have you discovered?” Tiberius Rigel asked as he stepped closer to inspect the rift, the taint of dark magic coating the air surrounding it and clearly making all of them wary.

“Enough to be concerned,” the king replied. “I think we need to focus our efforts on hunting the Nymphs down and annihilating their foul race once and for all.”

“They’ve grown too good at hiding over the years,” Melinda Altair murmured. “But if you can deal with these rifts as you say then perhaps it’s not such a concern.”

“The Nymphs will always be a concern,” my mother replied. 

“How would you know when you can’t even see them?” Lionel asked in a teasing tone.

“I’ve seen enough of the future to know they could cause all kinds of problems for our kind if nothing is done to stop them,” she replied.

“Perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way,” Lionel murmured, stepping into the stone circle alongside the king and reaching his hand out towards the rift, causing shadows to coil out and brush against his fingers. “If we could figure out a way to harness them then imagine the power they could provide.”

My father laughed loudly, knocking Lionel aside with his shoulder, the force enough to make him fall against one of the huge stones as he strode forward.

“Azriel, explain to Lord Acrux why that is a terrible idea,” the king said in a condescending tone which I could tell riled Lionel to no end while the other Celestial Councillors all seemed amused by his rebuke.

A man I hadn’t even noticed stepped out from behind one of the largest stones, pushing a pair of golden glasses up his nose which hummed with enough magic to let me know they were doing far more than enhancing his vision. He had dark, messy hair and a pale complexion, his clothes expensive but worn without much care like he only dressed so well to suit appearances. He seemed slightly irritated to have been drawn away from whatever he’d been studying, and I couldn’t help but feel a little amused as I noted that similarity to his son. 

“The shadows aren’t a toy to play with or lay claim to,” he said, taking his glasses off and tucking them into his breast pocket. “They are a living, feeling embodiment of their realm. You could never hope to wield them the way you wield Elemental magic no matter how much effort you went to to contain them. Their power is corruptive, mighty and endless. Each shadow is connected to the next no matter how you may try to divide them, and only death would lay in the fate of anyone fool enough to try and take ownership of them for themselves.”

“You would think being among the most powerful Fae of our generation would be enough for you,” Tiberius teased and Lionel laughed along.

“Well, one can never have too much power,” he replied with a laugh.

That hungry look never left his gaze as he kept it trained on the rift, like a starving creature aching for a taste of life. 

“Knowledge is power, so I can admit I agree with that,” Azriel replied and Lionel gave him an assessing look.

“You know, Azriel, I think you would benefit from a little time with your nose out of a book and some time spent in the company of a beautiful woman. I shall have to introduce you to my dear friend Stella Columba – she is a powerful Vampire and should be more than interesting enough to give you some reprieve from the monotony of all those books you love so dearly.”

“I don’t know that I’m entirely suited for marriage,” Azriel said with a nervous laugh. “Most women find they don’t like having to compete for my attention with my love of knowledge.”

“Nonsense,” Lionel purred. “She would be the perfect fit for you. I’ll set it up.”

Tiberius and Antonia exchanged a loaded look at that suggestion, but Azriel made no further complaint.

“Stand back,” my father commanded and everyone else retreated from the circle as he held his hand out and Azriel Orion summoned a staff from the fabric of the air at his side, a stunning stone set in the top of it which hummed with so much power that I could practically feel every Fae in attendance salivating over it. The Imperial Star glowed brighter as the king grasped the staff and I sucked in a breath along with everyone else as he drove the base of the golden staff into the ground and spoke a word which echoed around my skull and out of existence.

“Suturi!”

His voice boomed across the plain in every direction, flattening the stalks of grass with the power of that one command and with a flash of blue light, the Imperial Star took hold of the rift to the Shadow Realm and closed it for good.

“Let’s head back to the palace,” Hail commanded as he finished his work, handing the sceptre back to Azriel who promptly returned it to wherever the hell he’d found it in the first place and it winked out of sight.

The Councillors and Azriel all vanished in a flash of stardust, but Merissa stepped forward, reaching out to cup the king’s jaw in her hand.

“How many of these have you found now?” she asked and he sighed heavily, looking into her eyes as she tried to get a reading from him and allowing her to see all the rifts he’d discovered and closed so far.

I was gifted a view of what she saw too, flashes of different landscapes and locations flickering before me, some with altars like the rift we’d just destroyed, others located in remote locations that seemed utterly inaccessible, each of them allowing a little of the shadows to slip through the gap and into our realm.

“No doubt there are countless more I am yet to discover too,” he murmured, his gaze filling with concern. “I fear what they will mean for Solaria if we don’t manage to seal them all again. There is a great power in the Shadow Realm which is trying to push through to our side and with these rifts open, it has a way to slip through.”

“Then we will find them all and you can seal them up again,” she vowed and he nodded.

“That is what I intend to do.”

Hail tossed the stardust and the vision faded as they were drawn away, the light shifting around me as I found myself back in reality, standing in a ring of stones which held no evidence of a rift ever having been here at all.

But his words hung heavily in my ears and I couldn’t help but look up to the stars and wonder if he had managed to do that or not. Because if one rift had been missed in his hunt then I had the sinking suspicion that there would be more that had gone unaccounted for, each of them feeding power through from the Shadow Realm for Lavinia to make use of. So now the only question left was, how the hell were we supposed to find them?

I flexed my wings, looking around and trying to get my bearings as I cast the homing spell Orion had taught us to help us find The Burrows if we ever ended up in a situation like this. I cast healing and energising magic into my limbs to soothe the ache of the long flight I’d already taken part in then launched myself into the sky once more.

The rifts may have been a problem, but at least now I knew more about them. So we were just going to have to figure out how to track them down and close them too because I had the feeling that if we managed that, we’d soon find ourselves on a level playing field with the so-called Shadow Princess. And once that was the case, all bets were going to be well and truly off.