Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

Knowing that Darcy was being held in The Palace of Souls was a special kind of torture designed entirely to destroy me through fear alone. I’d lived that horror, had endured Lionel’s cruelty and depravity first hand for months. He’d stripped away the things that made me myself, coated me in an armour forged of lies, terror, and false devotion.

I’d survived it. But barely. And now I had to force myself to remain here, doing absolutely nothing for days on end while we waited for the day of the fucking Hydrids meteor shower.

It was killing me. Causing actual agony within my soul, knowing that three of the people I cared most about in this miserable world were stuck with those monsters. And to make it worse, I had to force myself not to plan any kind of rescue attempt or attack on them in any kind of detail for fear of that decision being seen.

I tossed the blankets off of myself and got out of bed. Dawn was glimmering on the distant horizon, but the world was mostly dark and restful.

I needed to do something. And seeing as that something couldn’t be the thing that had kept me tossing and turning all night, I was going to pour my restless energy into another task that could help us.

I strode into the closet and reached for a pair of leggings, hesitating as I noticed the latest ridiculously over-the-top gown Geraldine had acquired for me. From what she’d told me, there were some seriously gifted earth Elementals who had been dedicating their spare time to creating gowns for the true queens, and as I stared at the black dress which seemed to be sewn from an image of the night sky itself, I couldn’t help but reach out to run my fingers over the fabric.

I didn’t give much of a shit about pomp and festivity, of looking the part of a queen and playing at the politics involved in winning public affection, but I did understand the need for it. I could understand the power of symbolism clearly enough, and where I was going, that was likely to be exactly what I needed.

As I moved my hand over the fabric, I watched the way the tiny silver gems sewn into it caught the faint light as if they really were stars glimmering through a midnight of solace.

It was bullshit, but it was powerful bullshit.

With a sigh, I stripped out of the oversized shirt I’d been sleeping in and changed into the gown. The black fabric was as soft as silk, clinging to my torso while leaving my back bare for my wings. There were slits up either side of the floor length skirt, making it easy to move in, as well as comfortable. I ran my hands over the sides of it, my lips lifting as I found several hidden pockets before realising the way that it had been cinched in at my waist left a perfect space for me to hang my sword scabbard without it bunching the material and ruining the look of the gown. This wasn’t just some fluff piece for public appearances; it was a dress made specifically for a warrior queen, and if I really was going to consider donning a crown at the end of all of this, then I was damn certain that was the only kind of queen I would consider becoming.

I strapped my scabbard into place, taking a pouch of stardust from the stash I kept close at all times, dropping it into one of the concealed pockets, followed by a wicked little dagger that I’d grown fond of, then I pulled on a pair of boots.

I stopped before the mirror and used a mixture of water and air magic to wash and style my hair so that it fell in an inky waterfall of loose curls, then forced myself to paint my face. This meeting mattered, which meant my recent lack of personal care had to be shoved aside. I wasn’t dressing myself for vanity or any kind of self-healing – this was war. And it was time I stepped up and started playing my part in it.

With my eyes lined in kohl and my lips deepest red, I almost looked like my old self again, just a girl in a pretty dress…with a sword and a scowl sharp enough to cut flesh and bone.

“You lied to me,” I said to my own reflection, though the words were intended for him. “You promised you’d stay.”

Nothing.

Endless, hopeless, nothing. Even the ruby pendant which hung from my throat remained cool against my skin, like he was further away than ever today. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one, but it didn’t help with the desperate loneliness which was working to swallow me whole.

I blinked at my reflection just to prove to myself that I was still alive, despite the unnatural stillness that had fallen over me.

I was going to break soon. My walls were growing weaker and weaker, so tenuous that I knew I couldn’t maintain them much longer. But not today. Not now.

I turned for the door but paused as I spotted a glimmering tiara peeking out from amongst the heap of Darius’s treasure beside it. I plucked it from the pile and turned it over in my hands.

“You also swore you’d never see me as your queen,” I murmured to the man who wasn’t here. “So I’m willing to bet that this will make you all kinds of pissed.”

I placed the glittering silver and blue tiara on my head and smirked in that obnoxious way which had never once failed to get a rise out of him as I felt a prickle of something stirring in the air, the ghost of a memory trailing down my spine like fingertips.

It wasn’t real. But oh, how I wished it was.

I closed my eyes as I tried to summon him closer, tried to believe he was really there with me for just a few seconds. But even as I attempted it, the imagined sensation faded away, the wind as still as it had been the entire time, and my heart just as irrevocably fractured as it had been since I’d found his body on that hilltop.

I snatched the Book of Ether into my grasp and strode from the room without another moment spent lingering in the company of no one, taking the steps two at a time and barely even acknowledging the guards who had been posted at the foot of the stairs leading to my chambers.

They scrambled to bow at my unexpected appearance, but I simply told them not to tell anyone that they’d seen me until they came looking. I may have disliked the way people bowed and scraped for me now, but I had learned one vitally useful piece of information about the Fae who did; they would not disobey an order from one of their queens. Which meant that I was safe from discovery unless Geraldine decided on a four AM check in.

Thinking about that made me realise it wasn’t at all unlikely, and I hurried my pace as I jogged down the next set of stairs and out of the doors, crossing the drawbridge and repeating my orders to anyone who noticed me.

The moment I was clear of the palace, I shifted, keeping my flames extinguished and simply drawing my bronze wings from my spine so that I could cover the distance I needed to more swiftly.

I beat my wings hard, speeding across the island terrain and spotting the jail within a few minutes before hurtling from the sky and landing heavily right in front of the guards on duty there.

All five of them had weapons drawn and magic igniting in their hands in a heartbeat, a fireball crashing into my air shield as I managed to throw it up with less than a second to spare.

“Probably should have announced myself,” I said in apology as they recognised me and the man who had thrown the fire dropped to the floor with a wail of horror.

“Forgive me, my Queen!” he begged. “Sever my useless head from my neck. Remove my entrails and use them to spell out a curse upon my entire family. Take my eyes and feed them to any rodent you so desire. Chop up my-”

“Ew. Dude, stop,” I said, wrinkling my nose at those suggestions. “You did good. You were protecting the realm and all that jazz. I just need to have a word with the prisoner, though, so no harm done. But can I grab the keys to his cell?”

The man gaped at me, then began sobbing about my magnanimous nature and the kindness my forgiveness had bestowed upon his family.

I tried to block him out as I held out a hand for the keys, but it was made harder as he crawled across the ground on his belly like a worm and started trying to kiss my boots.

“Stars take me now,” I groaned as my discomfort grew and one of the other guards finally managed to snap themselves out of their shocked state and hand me the keys.

I nodded in thanks and hurried away from the weeping guard, pretending not to notice as he started licking the grass where I’d been standing while claiming it was blessed by the press of my boots.

“No wonder you were such an arrogant ass, if Fae treated you like that your whole life,” I muttered to Darius, but once again, there was no kind of response.

I moved through the squat jail building which housed the huge night iron cage where Miguel was still being held, finding him sitting up in his bed, his posture stiff as he no doubt tried to figure out what all the crying was about.

“Have you thought about what I said to you?” I asked him, cutting past any niceties and bullshit. “Would your people consider an alliance?”

“Perhaps,” Miguel said slowly, rising to his feet as he took me in in all my royal grandness. His eyes widened a little as if he was just now seeing me for what I could be, and I raised my chin.

“But it’s all about trust, right? Our kind and yours have been at war for so long that it’s hard for you to imagine the Fae not turning on you. While in turn, it will no doubt be hard for the Fae to trust that none of you will shift and try to stab us through the heart with your probey fingers.”

Miguel snorted humourlessly, nodding. “It is hard to imagine any future where both kinds could fully cast aside those fears and prejudices.”

“Yet you told me there are some Fae living among you who had accepted exactly that,” I pressed.

“There are a few.” He nodded thoughtfully. “But their entrance into our communities were mostly through a mixture of desperate circumstances. They are the kinds of Fae who found themselves needing escape from their previous lives enough to risk a little trust. Besides, convincing one or two through acts of continual humanity and kindness is different to convincing an entire Fae race through words alone.”

“If you fought with us in the war, I’d say that would be action enough to prove your intentions to a lot of them,” I countered.

“Perhaps. But others would still just think we were only doing so to meet our own ends, expecting us to turn on you once it was done.”

I nodded, understanding that fear.

“Do you wish to remain hidden forever then? Ignoring the pain of the world beyond your little secret sanctuary?” I asked, and Miguel bristled.

“I was dragged from that sanctuary years ago by people who claimed to be my own kind. They trapped my soul and used my power to their own ends, then killed my child, my sweet Diego, without ever once allowing me to love him as I should have. It is hard to ignore such strikes against me.”

“Personally, yes. But I’m not looking for one Nymph to come fight on our side. I’ll level with you: we need more allies. We need more Fae to rebel against Lionel and Lavinia’s tyranny, but we need more than that. I won’t fight in another losing battle again. I won’t watch the Fae who have placed their hope and trust in me and my sister be slaughtered because we hoped for the best. We need as much strength as we can acquire. We need allies. Or at the very least, I need help with this.” I held out the Book of Ether for him to look at, and Miguel’s eyes darkened as he took in the carvings on the cover.

“You still wish to find someone who can govern you in the old ways?” he asked, stepping closer. “You do understand the dangers of such power, don’t you?”

“I wish for all kinds of dangerous things, all kinds of regularly,” I replied with a shrug, withdrawing the book and holding up the key to his cell instead. “I’m thinking we could take part in a trust exercise,” I said, shaking the key in temptation and watching as his eyes tracked the movement.

“What kind of exercise?” Miguel asked cautiously.

“I’ll let you out of your cage, and you’ll take me to this secret village or whatever the fuck it is. You can toss the stardust and I’ll even close my eyes, if that helps – point being that I’ll have no fucking idea where you’ve taken me, so I won’t be able to give up your secret.”

“Once you have travelled there by stardust and seen it for yourself, you would be able to do so again. It wouldn’t matter whether you knew where it was on a map or not.”

I sighed, trying to figure out how I could alleviate his concerns on that before offering him my hand.

“I’ll swear on the stars not to do that,” I said, though if he knew of my contempt for the glittery assholes in the sky above, he might have realised how thinly I would hold to any word made in their honour. But that didn’t matter because I had no plans to break this promise. I wasn’t going to lead a genocide into the heart of a peaceful settlement. No part of me would ever be capable of that.

Miguel reached for my hand, and I gave him the vow he wanted, a clap of magic passing between us as the deal was struck.

“So, if I am trusting you with the fate of my people, what exactly are you trusting me with?” he asked curiously as I released him.

“Simple. You get me, all alone in a village full of Nymphs. I’d say that’s pretty damn trusting considering the power you’re capable of wielding over my magic. I might be one powerful bitch, but I doubt I could fight my way free of an entire village if you all turned your rattles on me at once. So you’ll have a Solarian princess at your mercy for the entirety of our little excursion without a single other soul around to protect me. I’d say that if I return from a place like that without having had anyone attempt to stab their little probes through my heart, then we will be making some big steps towards trust between our peoples.”

“Our probes aren’t little,” Miguel muttered like a dude who had just had his manhood insulted, and a I grinned at him in challenge.

“Maybe you can prove that on the battlefield beside me one day.”

Miguel grinned at that visual too, and I already knew his answer before he nodded. “Okay then, Roxanya Vega, I think we have a deal.”

Those words were all I needed to move into action, and I quickly unlocked his cage, letting the door swing wide as I gestured for him to leave the confines of it, a free man, no longer a prisoner of war or anything of the like. The ex-Councillors were going to throw a fit when they realised that. Oh well.

The two of us headed outside, finding the guards still there, all of them gaping in alarm at the sight of the Nymph walking mere inches from their princess.

“Miguel is no longer being held captive,” I told them firmly. “So there is no need for you to guard an empty cell. Go…eat some bagels or whatever. And when Geraldine starts freaking out over my little adventure, tell her I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

I took the pouch of stardust from my pocket and tossed it to Miguel without waiting for them to reply, turning my own magic on the wards which protected the island from the use of stardust, before cracking them open just enough to let us through. Miguel didn’t hesitate as he drew a pinch of the glimmering substance out and tossed it over our heads, then we were whipped away from the shocked guards so fast that I didn’t even see them disappear.

The stars spat us out in the heart of a forest, the trees dense and the canopy thick above, blotting out all signs of the sky.

I raised a hand to cast a Faelight, but Miguel caught my wrist with a shake of his head.

“If they realise a Fae is close, then they will hide so absolutely that we may never find them at all,” he warned. “You’ll need to follow me until we reach the High Nymph’s seat.”

“Is that like a Nymph queen?” I asked as I gave in and released the magic I’d been drawing on without casting a single thing.

“Our leaders are more like shamans than monarchs,” he replied. “The wisest of our kind, rose to their positions by proving themselves worthiest of the role. I was once counted among them too. But that was a long, long time ago.”

“Before you were forced to leave?” I questioned, and he nodded solemnly. “Have you been back here since then?”

“No.”

Miguel raised his hands and began moving them in an unfamiliar pattern, his fingers shifting as he did so, becoming the probes of his kind. I forced myself to remain where I was, not retreating from the things which could oh-so-easily pierce my heart and rip my magic and life right out of me. Instead, I watched as he began to pluck at the air as if playing it like a musical instrument, a hum building around us as a soft mist began to grow from nothing at all, the colour of it paling as he played on until it was finally bright enough to give off a silver glow.

“This is how my kind lights the way,” he said, a soft reverence to his voice which made me think that the shadows he’d just called on were entirely different to those Lavinia had claimed for her own.

Miguel’s hands shifted back into normal fingers, and I gave myself a mental high five for neither flinching nor recoiling throughout that entire process.

The pale mist hung in the air above us, illuminating an almost invisible track through the trees, and I fell into step with Miguel as he began to follow it.

“Do you have family here?” I asked softly, and Miguel sighed, nodding slowly.

“I had a wife and three daughters,” he admitted. “My children were so small when I was taken from here, I don’t suppose I will even recognise them now.” His voice was a hopeless, broken thing, and I realised that he had lost as much to this war as any of us. “I never loved anyone aside from my Octania,” he added. “But I don’t expect her to have waited for me. They will have known, even if they understood that I was unwilling, they would have known where I was and what I had become. She will have found out that I was married to another, that I fathered a child who wasn’t hers…”

“Fuck,” I said, because really, what else was there to say to that? He’d had his entire life stolen from him, had been forced to marry someone he hadn’t wanted, had been enslaved to the point of fathering a child with her. I knew the shadows had taken him captive, but I was only just realising how deeply they must have delved into him to have stripped away an entire life and left him pliant to the whims of those monsters who had chained him.

“The willow,” he said suddenly, and I had no idea why he was pointing out a random tree until I turned my gaze in the direction he’d indicated and saw it for myself.

The tree was enormous, its fronds a delicate, impossibly thick shield which hid its trunk from view altogether. Glowing blue and green Faeflies drifted lazily around it, and the scent of pine and snow brushed against my senses as I felt myself fall prey to its spell of beauty.

We moved towards it on silent feet, the trees shifting in a breeze I couldn’t feel as if they were turning to watch our progress, and the hairs along the back of my neck stood on end.

The rustling grew and the fronds of the willow suddenly parted, a pale grey light blinding me as it was revealed within.

I lifted a hand to shield my eyes, squinting between my fingers as I continued to move across the fallen leaves, the soft crunch of my footfalls the only confirmation that I was still moving at all as I lost all sense of myself, only able to focus on that light.

“You must give in to the call of it,” Miguel said from somewhere both far away and close at once.

“The call of what?” I breathed, but he didn’t need to answer, the tug on my soul making it clear what he meant.

It was a similar sensation to when I had soul-walked to locate Darcy, this otherness to it, like all of me and none of me was in motion. But this time, I didn’t leave the confines of my flesh, there was no rush of adrenaline followed by an escape of the purest kind, my connection to my body remained, my legs moving to the call of power, and as much as it should have terrified me, I simply gave in.

The grey light brightened and brightened as we moved into it until we were consumed entirely, devoured by it and taken somewhere at once away from where we’d been and yet somehow it appeared as though it had been in plain sight at the same time, hidden from us until now.

I blinked through the fingers of my still outstretched hand as I settled back into my body again, a hush falling all around us, though I could feel many eyes turned our way.

I dropped my hand and swallowed a lump in my throat as I looked at the crowd that had gathered, at least fifty Nymphs both in humanoid and shifted form, their attention fully on us, some with weapons in hand while others pointed their gnarly probes at our hearts. They wore simple clothing, their cloaks and shawls all in neutral colours and designed to keep the cold out.

“I guess they weren’t expecting us then,” I hissed to Miguel who took a step forward to place himself between me and the Nymphs who were starting to focus their attention my way, a few soft rattles breaking the silence as they tasted the strength of my power.

Oh yeah, this was a great idea, I just got myself all dressed up like a tasty Nymph party snack, then snuck off in the middle of the night without telling anyone where I was going on the word of a man whose mother-in-law knitted herself into a fucking hat. What the hell had I been thinking? I was like…seventy-six percent dead. Fact.

“Miguel?” a woman at the rear of the crowd asked in astonishment.

Suddenly, the weight of all those stares were turning from me to him, murmurs breaking out as they recognised him and got over the shock of our appearance.

“I have so much to tell all of you about the last twenty years,” Miguel said, opening his hands before him in a gesture of peace. “So many, many things that la Princesa de las Sombras has been doing in her bid for dominion over the shadows. Of the things I was forced to do as her prisoner.” His voice broke with what was undoubtedly shame.

I stepped to his side, placing a hand on his shoulder in solidarity.

“Don’t blame him for the hell he endured while he was gone from this place,” I said firmly, knowing all too well what it felt like to be forced under the control of someone you hated. And I’d endured a far shorter span of it than he had. “He’s free again now. And he has used that freedom to try and fight back, as well as to find me and bring me here. Do you know who I am?”

“You’re a Savage Princess,” an elderly woman muttered, spitting in the dirt by her feet, and I fought the urge to scowl at her. “Your father hunted our kind without mercy during his reign. And his father before that.”

“And many of your kind have hunted Fae, butchering them for their power without discriminating between man, woman, or child,” I replied evenly. “Yet Miguel swore to me that you here are not like those monsters. And I was hoping you might do me the courtesy of not judging me by my father’s reputation any more than I have judged your entire race by the actions of those corrupted by the shadows.”

More murmuring broke out in the crowd, and I waited, eyeing them cautiously without calling on my own magic. I didn’t need to be a Siren to tell they were filled with fear by my arrival in their sanctuary.

“Look, I didn’t come here to cause trouble. Miguel told me that we have an enemy in common, and after some convincing, I found that I believe him. And I think you all know what they say about the enemy of my enemy?” The corner of my lips twitched at the thought of heading into battle with a Nymph army of our own, seeing the looking on Lionel and Lavinia’s faces when they found out that they weren’t the only ones with tricks up their sleeves.

“Why should we trust a single thing that comes out of the mouth of a Fae?” a large man growled, his lips peeling back in distaste.

“I’m showing you a level of trust by coming here, aren’t I? Alone, vulnerable. Some might think that would earn me a little respect, if nothing else.”

“Respect?” the man scoffed, and I gave him a shrug.

“Well, if not that, then at least it has offered me this audience with all of you.”

“An audience with a girl playing queen, how very thrilling,” a woman drawled, and I barked a laugh as she continued. “Lionel Acrux has made an alliance with some of our kind and offered them more than the Savage King ever did. And there are more than a few of us here who want to see how that plays out.”

“I am playing,” I agreed with her. “I’m playing a game of cat and mouse with the biggest, scaliest cat you’ve ever seen. He’s one mean son of a bitch who likes to hunt those smaller than him for fun and watch them scream before he devours them whole. For now, the false king has allied himself with some of your kind, but he is already in the process of eradicating certain Orders of Fae who he deems as lesser-” I sneered at that word in contempt, “-so do you really believe he will keep an entirely different species at his side for long? Lionel hates anything and anyone who does not conform to his idea of powerful perfection. He covets Fae that fit that ideal and is planning to create an entire kingdom who follows in that line of thought too. He’s using Lavinia and her hold on both the shadows and your people to help him get what he wants.”

“The only reason those Nymphs even follow Lavinia is because they allowed themselves to become corrupted by her darkness in the shadows, and you well know it, Paula,” Miguel chastised. “And those are the ones who follow willingly. You know me. All of you know how much I love our people here, how devoted I am to all of you and to our community. And yet, for the past twenty years I have been missing from your lives. Please don’t tell me that you truly believed I turned my back on the people I loved and had dedicated my life to for the sake of Drusilla.” He spat her name, and a few more murmurs broke out, faces creasing with doubt. “I was captured by her and her foul brother all those years ago. I was taken far from here and spent months locked up and at their mercy while they pierced my skin and forced la Princesa de las Sombras’ power inside of me. I fought it. I fought for all of you here, and for my family most of all, but her power was unimaginable, and the agony I endured…”

He trailed off, and I reached out to clasp his arm, knowing all too well what that kind of suffering was like.

“I am ashamed,” Miguel said in a small voice. “Ashamed that I was broken in the end. They flooded me with the darkness of her shadows and left me drunk on them, lost within the confines of my own mind, my body little more than a pawn to their desires. I was forced to denounce my marriage and unite my blood to Drusilla’s in her place, all because I am a powerful Nymph and she wanted to use that power to her advantage.” His voice cracked, but he went on, the rapt silence of the listening Nymphs making me wonder if we might really be getting through to them at last. “I was used to father a child. A boy who I couldn’t even show a hint of love to, thanks to the control they had over me. A boy who sacrificed himself to save the sister of the woman who now stands before you. A boy who, despite being raised under their monstrous desires and being tempted by Lavinia’s shadows for his entire life, managed to break free and see the world for what it was. He chose his own path and pledged his loyalty to the Vegas because he could see that they would fight for a better world.”

“Diego will be remembered when this war is over,” I promised him. “For so many things, but maybe most importantly of all for showing us that the Nymphs don’t have to be our enemies. That you shouldn’t all just be painted with the same brush because of the brutality some of your kind have enacted against ours. I know the power you all hold is terrifying to Fae, for valid reasons. But I’m a Phoenix who can level a village with a blast of fire which burns hot enough to melt stone. My husband was a Dragon large enough to swallow men whole, Vampires hunt other Fae as part of everyday society, and the list goes on and on. The point is that all of us are monsters in our own rights, and I don’t think any of us would choose to be anything else. And so long as we control the power we were born with, then why should we? If we can live in peace and harmony, then isn’t that for the best?”

Silence hung heavily as they considered our words, one man calling out to Miguel in question.

“If you were lost to the power of Lavinia’s shadows, then why didn’t you give our location up?” he demanded of Miguel.

“That was the single secret I managed to keep all these years,” he admitted, his throat bobbing with the truth of those words. “I was forced to endure many brands of torture for that answer, the shadows driving deep into my mind in search of it, but I would never relinquish it. I would have died first. And when they realised that, they decided to keep me as their pet, use my power and continue the hunt for your location without my assistance. Though they mostly abandoned it once the Shadow Princess broke free of her prison and returned to this realm, in favour of serving her.”

“Lionel and Lavinia won’t stop,” I said in a low tone, looking at the people gathered before me and meeting their eyes one at a time. “They won’t ever be satisfied. They will just take and take and take, their hunger for power a scourge which will only end with their deaths. Which is why my sister and I intend to fight them. It is why we are raising an army and circling them like sharks in the water. Every day, more rebels emerge from the dark and announce their allegiance to us, but we need more. We need you. So I’m asking you to come to our aid when we call for you. To join us on the battlefield and see an end to their hateful rule. In return, I swear to stop the hunting of your kind. You’ll be held to no differing law than any Fae. You’ll be free to set up homes in any part of the kingdom you desire, and your rights will be protected by the crown.”

“And what if you don’t end up taking the throne?” a woman demanded.

I gave her a rueful grin and shrugged. “Then I swear that the Heirs will hold to this deal too. I can get that in writing for you, if you doubt my word on their behalf.”

The Nymphs all broke out into discussion then, some of them seeming convinced while others voiced their doubts loudly and firmly.

“Come, they need time to think on this. You can rest and eat this way,” a woman said, stepping from the crowd and reaching a hand towards us in offering.

“We can’t linger here too long,” I told her, taking a step closer all the same and falling into step between her and Miguel, who gave me a reassuring look despite the arguments that had erupted following my request.

It was impossible to tell if that had gone well or not, and I found myself wondering if I should have brought the Heirs here with me. At least they knew how to play this game of politics. They’d have known all the right things to say and how to spin every angry outburst to their advantage. I was just going to have to hope that brutal honesty would win these people over instead.

A strangled cry escaped Miguel as we moved through the crowd and he fell still, causing me to turn and look at the four women who had caught his attention. I could tell from the look of them that the younger three were sisters, their similarities to their mother clear enough too.

A lump caught in my throat as I looked between them and Miguel, understanding who they were, what they were to him. The life he’d had stolen from him. The sisters Diego had never even known he had.

“Go,” I urged as Miguel remained frozen at my side, though I was sure it wasn’t me he lingered for. “Don’t let fear keep them from you for a moment longer than you’ve already lost with them,” I insisted, giving him a small but firm shove in their direction.

Miguel tore his eyes from them for a single moment, nervously pushing his fingers into his dark hair in an attempt to flatten it, the motion reminding me of the way Diego had often tugged at his hat.

“You need me to-”

“I don’t need you for anything anymore,” I swore to him. “I’m fine right here with…” I glanced at the woman who had been leading us in the direction of food and she helpfully supplied me with her name.

“Uma.”

“Yep. Me and Uma are good. Go speak to your family, dude. I’m a big girl. I don’t need you to hold my hand the entire time I’m here.”

Miguel took my arm and gave it a firm squeeze in thanks before turning and striding away from me. My gaze remained pinned to his back, watching as the four women who were his family stilled at his approach before breaking, the eldest of the daughters running for him with a choked sob, her arms wide. The others followed and within moments, all of them were clinging to him as he sank to his knees between them, murmuring praise to fate for finally shining on him and reuniting them at last. His wife fell on him with sobs, kissing him between prayers to the shadows and swearing she had known he would one day return to them.

A splash of warm water hit my cheek as I blinked, and I raised my fingers to it in surprise, a tear finding its way free of the hardened steel I had placed around my heart from witnessing his reunion with the deepest desire of his soul.

The pain inside me blossomed, throbbing like some immortal wound, set to bleed me dry from the inside out. My breath caught, and there was a ringing in my ears which I was pretty certain was drowning out the sound of Uma’s voice as she encouraged me to follow her again.

I turned abruptly from the sight of Miguel and his family, a flash of fire burning through my blood as I raised my chin and held the heavy Book of Ether out to show the girl who was waiting for me.

“I need to speak to someone who might know more about this,” I said to her, my voice a cold, unfeeling thing as I reined my emotions back in, stomping down on the ones that cut me deepest while burning through those which forced me to feel the loss of him so sharply.

I couldn’t fall apart. Not here. Not in front of these people who needed to see nothing but an unbreakable monarch when they looked at me.

Uma looked at the book I held, then glanced behind her as if checking that no one else was watching us, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulder at the movement.

“That kind of magic is older than time itself,” she breathed, taking a step closer to me. “It is death to most who try to wield it.”

“I’m not like most people,” I replied dismissively. “And I need to know more about this.”

Uma hesitated, her gaze sweeping over me in an assessing way, and I narrowed my eyes at the judgement she was casting before she shrugged.

“Come then, I’ll take you to the oracles, but don’t say you weren’t warned.”

Uma turned off the main path and into the darkness between the trees, not bothering to look back over her shoulder and check that I was still with her. She followed some route I had to assume she knew by heart, because there were no markers in place to suggest that anything lay out there at all.

I resisted the urge to cast a Faelight, instead bolstering the air shield I had in place around my skin in case of surprise attacks and striding out into the darkness behind her.

Our footsteps were the only sound to break the night, the soft rustle of leaves shifting beneath our feet a repetitive accompaniment to our journey.

The lights of the village were soon left behind, stolen by the dense trees until we were deep in the darkness of the forest, with nothing at all to suggest that there was anything out here besides more trees.

Magic built in my fingertips as we walked on, and I flexed my wings, the feathers rustling softly as I wondered if Uma might be stupid enough to try and attack me. I doubted there could have been time to put together much of a trap since I’d arrived, but it was possible there were others waiting out here in the dark for me. Then again, she hadn’t been taking me this way until I’d shown her the book, so unless she’d been planning on turning off of the main path anyway, it was unlikely that this was an ambush.

My boot thumped against a lump of stone hidden within the leaves, and the ground grew firmer beneath us just as the scent of damp began to taint the air.

“Be careful here,” Uma said, beckoning me closer as I squinted to make her out in the almost non-existent light.

I moved towards her and stepped up onto a rocky shelf, a thicker patch of darkness ahead indicating a huge rockface barring the way on.

“There’s a passage there,” Uma pointed out and I could just about see a thicker slither of darkness marking the point she was showing me. “Follow it to the end and knock once. If they wish to speak with you, you’ll be summoned inside.”

“And if they don’t?” I asked, turning to look at Uma, who was already backing away.

“It’s been almost a year since they last deigned to speak with anyone, so don’t be too surprised.” She shrugged.

“A year? Then why are you leaving if you expect me to be turned away?” I asked.

“Can’t the great Phoenix princess find her way in the dark alone?” she taunted, and despite the flicker of irritation her words sparked in me, I had to admit it made me like her a little more to know she wasn’t too intimidated by me to speak them.

“Fine, go,” I said dismissively, my attention moving to that narrow passage in the cliff face. “I won’t be accepting a ‘no’ from them anyway.”

Uma snorted like she didn’t believe I would be able to force anything at all from these so-called oracles, but she was vastly underestimating the power of the promise that was cut into my flesh if she thought I would let them turn me away now.

I headed forward with confident strides, moving into the stone passage and shivering a little as a sensation like passing through cold water tumbled across my flesh.

Whatever kind of power had caused it wasn’t like any I knew, and the knowledge that I truly could be walking towards something more powerful than me sank into my bones as I walked on.

The stone walls rose up high on either side of me along the trail, the night sky still visible far above, my boots crunching on gravel and twigs as I went. I tucked my wings in close to my spine to stop them from brushing against the walls. It would have been easier to shift, but I found some comfort in the presence of my Phoenix, so I kept it close.

The passage descended slightly, curving away from the forest entrance and making the dark press even closer, though as I glanced up, I spotted a few stars glimmering in the sky, always watching.

My bitterness was rewarded as the passageway tightened ahead of me, a roof forming in the rocks, a tunnel of deepest darkness the only way on. I steeled myself and kept my stride steady as I continued, lifting a hand to feel for anything before me as I headed into the cave.

After a few minutes of descending into the dark, all the while knowing that there was only one way out of here and that I could quite easily be backing myself into a corner, I came to a door.

It was almost impossible to see the thick wood blocking the way on, but the faint glimmer of pale shadows illuminated just enough for me to understand what it was.

I drew in a calming breath, summoning magic into my hands in preparation of anything which might come my way, then expelled it and knocked solidly on the door. Not once, like Uma had instructed, but three sharp strikes against the wood with my fist.

A pause followed where my heart raced and palms grew slick before the door ahead of me swung open and I was blinded by the light of a fire pouring from the space beyond it.

I looked down at my feet to shield my eyes, the things I had thought were twigs revealing themselves as a mixture of small bones, each marked with blackened runes and tossed haphazardly out onto the path.

I fought off the desire to recoil from the grisly sight and blinked as my eyes adjusted, holding my shield tight to my skin, just in case, while someone tutted impatiently.

“In or out. The fire will gutter if you linger with the wind at your back,” a woman hissed, and I stepped into the space, tucking my wings in tight to make it through, the door slamming again behind me while I looked around in search of the owner of that voice.

The chamber I found myself in was large, a fading fire in a hearth on the far side of a hexagonal table. A collection of well-burned white candles were gathered in its centre, old and new wax merging and sticking to the dark wood.

There were sprigs of herbs hanging from the beams which supported the stone ceiling, the tips of them brushing the tops of my wings. Wooden shelves lining the walls were stacked high with jars and bottles, the labels marking their contents dim and faded beyond the point where I could easily read any of them.

The woman cursed, and I flinched as I spotted her bending over the fire, prodding it with a poker as she tried to reignite the flames which had been blown out with my arrival. I swore she hadn’t been there a moment ago. There had been no one here. And yet there was no way she could have made it across the room from the single dim corridor which led out of here to my right without me seeing her.

“How did you-”

“Hush your nonsense and help me save this fire,” she grumbled, tugging her cloak closer around her while remaining stooped over the hearth, meaning I couldn’t see anything of her aside from the blood-red hair hanging down her back. “I spend half my cursed life trying to coax heat from this blasted thing.”

“Here,” I offered, stepping closer, a flame of red and blue igniting in my palm. “This won’t ever go out if you don’t wish it to.”

The woman shifted aside, and I tossed the glimmering Phoenix flame onto the measly pile of sticks in the fireplace, resisting the urge to look smug as I solved her problem so simply.

“Hark at this one, gifting out magical flames as if they were ten a penny,” another voice came from directly behind me, and I couldn’t help but flinch as I whirled around, finding a woman there standing so close to me that adrenaline shot through my veins and magic instantly leapt to my palms.

Two daggers, one of wood, the other ice, formed in my fists, but if the woman noticed them, she didn’t seem to care. Instead, she leaned into me, a curtain of ice-white hair falling forward to shadow her features, her warm brown skin swiftly hidden within the strands as she dropped her nose to my throat and inhaled deeply.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded, jerking backwards to put some distance between us and knocking into a third body, a cry of fright falling from my lungs before I could stop it.

Where the fuck had they all come from?

I whirled on the newcomer, my eyes widening in horror as I took in the carefully formed stiches which sealed the lips of her deep red mouth permanently shut. She was beautiful aside from that disfigurement, her eyes a wild and stunning shade of gold set into a face so perfect that my breath caught at the sight of her. Her skin was a deep brown, her hair a bounty of curls which seemed to highlight the perfection of her cheekbones, but it was impossible to fully appreciate that with the stitches sealing her lips.

“What happened to you?” I gasped in horror, and the first woman chuckled as she moved around the table to join us too.

“Give the child some space, Loqui,” she chided, gripping the other woman by the arm, and tugging her back a step so that I could breathe freely.

“Her mouth,” I said, unable to tear my eyes from those horrific stitches. “What happened to her mouth?”

“There is a price to the power we own,” the first woman chuckled, and as I looked to her, I stumbled back a step, a scream lodging in my throat, though I refused to let it out.

She was just as stunning as Loqui, though her features were vastly different. Her skin was so pale it was almost alabaster within the curtain of red hair, a dusting of freckles gracing a perfect nose and pale pink lips curving up into a smile as she sensed my full attention falling on her. I knew she had sensed it rather than seen, because her eyes, oh hell, her eyes had been sewn shut, just like Loqui’s lips.

“This was a price you chose to pay?” I asked, the shock clear in my voice as the woman breathed another laugh.

“It was little in the grand scheme of what we gained. I am Vidi. It means ‘to see’.” She laughed again, her voice so much older than the beautiful body housing it somehow, filled with knowledge and wisdom beyond the years of the woman who looked to be little more than thirty.

“And I’m Audire,” the third woman – the sniffer – said as she circled me to stand beside the others. She grinned broadly as I hunted the utter perfection of her face, the warm brown skin, eyes so dark they were almost black, and that hair a stunning contrast with its icy white tone. I hunted her for any signs of stiches and almost relaxed before she lifted her hair to expose the place where her ears should have been, two jagged scars remaining instead from where they had been severed.

“The aesthetic is just her choice in dramatics,” Vidi said dismissively as I tried not to recoil. “Her eardrums were punctured to remove the sense of hearing, but she wanted scars to match her sisters’.”

Audire looked to Vidi’s mouth as she spoke, and I guessed she was able to read the words which came from them because her lips peeled back and she hissed like a cornered alley cat.

“Why?” I breathed, because I had all kinds of questions, but as I stared between these three beautiful, disfigured women, it was impossible to think of any aside from that one.

Vidi placed a hand on her heart dramatically, and my eyes moved over the cloaks they all wore like some medieval coven of witches, though I suspected they were something far more dangerous than that.

“See no evil,” she breathed, a reverence to her tone as she indicated herself before reaching across and touching Audire’s heart next. “Hear no evil.” She moved her hand to touch Loqui’s heart, but I found myself finishing the words for her as I came to a sick kind of understanding.

“Speak no evil?” I breathed, and they all nodded in eerie synchronicity. “So the aim is to avoid evil?” I guessed, and they all laughed that time, though the noise which came from Loqui was stifled by her sealed lips.

“The aim is to stifle how much any one of us can use,” Audire contradicted, her words clear despite her inability to hear them. “To save us from consumption by the forces we taste.”

I nodded, forcing myself to take their explanation and accept it, ignoring the urge to keep staring at the lengths they’d chosen to go to in aid of whatever power it was they commanded. Hadn’t I sworn that I would do whatever it took to claim such power too? I wasn’t going to blink at the first sign of just how steep that cost might be.

“I came here looking for help,” I said, holding the Book of Ether out before me. Loqui elbowed Vidi aside, snatching it from me, then dropping it onto the table just as fast.

“What is it?” Vidi demanded as Audire gasped, hurrying towards the table and whipping open the first page of the book.

“Something old,” Audire muttered, flicking the pages one at a time, hissing and murmuring as she did so while Loqui pressed her hands flat to the table and leaned in so close that she was in danger of getting a papercut to her nose. “Even older than you, dear sister.”

Loqui laughed at that, the noise stifled by the stitches closing her mouth, and Vidi snarled, revealing gleaming, sharp teeth as she stalked towards them and shoved them aside. She ran a hand down the centre of the book, and I winced at the rough treatment they were giving the ancient pages, imagining Orion’s face if he could see them.

“Sit, sit, sit,” Audire barked at me, though her gaze never left the book as she waved me towards a chair on the other side of the table to them, beside the fire.

I nodded, moving towards the spot she’d indicated, wincing as my wings knocked against some of the herbs hanging from the ceiling and dislodging something which rolled over my shoulder and fell to the floor before I realised it was a huge, dead spider and recoiled.

“Put those things away before you take our entire house down,” Vidi grouched at me, but before I could shift, Loqui was in my face, plucking a bronze feather from one of my wings and giving me a gruesome smile through the stitches in her face.

I fought the urge to recoil, my wings fading out of existence as Loqui moved away from me as suddenly as she’d appeared, grabbing several more items from around the room and shoving them into the pockets of her cloak.

I dropped into my seat and fought a flinch as I found Audire right beside me, somehow having circled the entire table in the time it took me to lower into the wooden chair, and she leaned in to inhale my scent again.

“Royalty,” she spat, a wad of saliva landing in a heavy stone scrying bowl which she was holding before she set it down on the table with a thump so hard the whole thing rattled.

“Blood of the chosen,” Vidi agreed, appearing on my other side and taking hold of my chin as she forced my head back, seeming to inspect me despite her eyes being sewn shut. “A burning flame in the dark. But she is one of twin flames; where is the other?”

I batted her hand off of me, her sharp nails scratching my skin. “Enough with the touchy-feely shit,” I snapped. “I’m not a hugger, and I’m definitely not here for a makeover, so keep your hands to yourselves, okay?”

Vidi straight up cackled, tossing me a small velvet pouch, and I caught it on instinct, feeling several hard lumps inside the fabric as I closed my fist around it.

“Cast them,” Audire demanded, inching back out of my breathing space when I shot her a scowl.

I tugged the string securing the pouch open and emptied five ice-white, tiny skulls into my palm.

“Wonderful,” I deadpanned, wrinkling my nose at the little handful of death I now held, and Loqui gave me that devil’s grin again, her stitches pulling tight.

“Animals have links to true magic which are less burdened than our own,” Vidi said as Loqui reached out to stroke her finger over the head of what looked like a bird’s skull, a series of tiny runes carved into the bone in blood red. “A sparrow for air, viper for earth, an eel for water, and a salamander for fire.”

“What’s the fifth one for?” I asked, shifting the skulls in my palm and looking into the empty eye sockets of an almost demonic-looking skull, though as it was barely bigger than any of the others, I knew it had to be some other small creature too.

“A bat for ether, because they are of air and earth, fire and water combined, and none of them at all. Something other,” Audire hissed, her eyes on my mouth, reading my words as I spoke them.

The skulls seemed to warm in my palm at the sound of that word, like the ether awoke something in them.

Loqui grabbed a handful of dried thyme from a hook close to the fire, then plunged the end of the sprigs into the flames. She waited a moment until they were smouldering, the fire taking hold of them quickly, then she pulled them out again, stubbing them out on the table before me and scrawling a pentagram into place, surrounding the scrying bowl with the ashes. She tossed the last of the charred herbs into the fire and the pungent scent of them filled the space quickly as a haze of smoke drifted through the room.

“Place your mind upon the questions you most desperately desire answering, then cast the bones into the bowl,” Vidi encouraged, the three of them backing up just enough to let me breathe.

There were so many questions I had, so many things I should have been asking before I even took part in whatever the hell this was, but I’d already come this far, and I wasn’t going to turn back now.

I drew in a deep breath, focusing my mind on all the problems surrounding us, on Lionel and Lavinia, the armies they commanded and the struggles we were facing in trying to raise our own forces again so that we could meet them on the battlefield once more. I thought of my sister, my brother, and Orion trapped in The Palace of Souls and the single hope that we were placing upon a vision to save them. There were so many things I needed answers for, help with, but as I closed my fist around the skulls, Loqui leaned in to speak in my ear.

“What does your heart bleed for, Princess of the Flames?”

I raised my fist to throw the bones, my heart splintering at her words, the golden eyes of a dragon scorching through my soul as they tore my breath from my lungs, seeing me the way no one else had ever seen me, knowing my heart inside and out, owning me, claiming me, ruining me.

The skulls hit the edge of the scrying bowl and scattered inside it, tumbling over each other and rattling against the stone while my heart raced at the feeling of his hands on my skin, his breath against my lips, the powerful thump of his heartbeat seeming to pulse against my palm as if my hand were laying over it.

The three Nymphs lunged forward, Loqui and Audire staring down into the bowl while Vidi thrust her hand into it, her fingers tapping against the skulls one at a time, checking their positions while not moving them at all.

Loqui took a vial of white liquid from the pocket of her cloak and poured it into the bowl before I got to take a look at the way the bones had fallen, and they were submerged within it as she poured the contents.

Next, she took a sprig of hemlock and threw it into the mixture while Audire murmured something about death calling for death.

Vidi snatched my hand into her grip, a knife appearing against my fingertip and a hiss of irritation escaping her as the blade met with my shield. I didn’t need her to bare her sharp teeth at me to know what she wanted, and I dropped the shield, too far down this path to turn back now, my need for answers all-consuming.

The blade pierced my skin and several drops of blood splashed into the milky water, swirling through it and tainting the colour while Vidi shoved my hand away from her again.

Loqui took the bronze feather she’d plucked from my wing and scored her thumbnail down the length of it, a growl building in her throat before a purple flame blossomed beneath her nail and the feather caught light. She tossed that into the bowl too, and I didn’t even bother to protest as Audire cut off a lock of my hair and threw it into the mix too.

The two Nymphs who could use their mouths began speaking in unison, their words ancient and unknown, thrumming with power that set the fine hairs along my arms on end and made a shiver track down my spine.

They stopped abruptly and Loqui leaned in, her luscious curls falling forward to mask her face as she held out a single finger and tapped the very centre of the liquid in the scrying bowl.

“Look,” Audire commanded as the three of them drew back.

I pushed myself to my feet on trembling legs as I leaned in to get a look at the image which was beginning to appear inside the bowl.

“Darius?” I breathed, something inside me wrenching free as a sob caught in my chest and I looked at that all-too-perfect face of his staring back at me from the depths of the scrying bowl.

His expression was hard, the image not drawing any memory that I could place, making me wonder if this was real, a view of him beyond the Veil, wherever that might be.

His deep brown eyes met mine and a thunderbolt speared its way through me, my tears falling free at last, splashing down into the water and making the image of him ripple and twist.

“You promised you’d stay,” I hissed at him, swiping at my cheeks in an effort to banish the tears which were ruining my view of him.

“You promised you’d find me,” he replied, a dark and taunting grin on his lips which looked nothing like the smiles I remembered. “Tick tock, Roxy.”

“Wait,” I gasped as the ripples continued to spread across the bowl, the image shattering even though I’d barely gotten a look at him at all. “Do it again,” I demanded. “Bring him back.”

“Bring back the dead?” Audire chuckled, getting to her feet and taking the scrying bowl from the table. “Not possible, Princess of the Flames.”

“You could follow him into death if you require your reunion so dearly,” Vidi suggested, swiping a hand over the pentagram that had been drawn onto the table and smearing the edges of it.

A breath of fresh air tumbled through the room as the lines of that shape were broken, and I felt the power they’d been wielding fade with it.

“I can’t follow him into death,” I snarled. “I’m needed here. He’s needed here.”

“Pity,” Audire sighed, and I couldn’t tell if she was referring to him being dead or my unwillingness to follow him beyond the Veil.

“I want to learn more about the magic in that book,” I said firmly. “I want to learn more about the things you just did.”

“It won’t bring him back,” Vidi said, amusement colouring her words. “Not even one of the most powerful Fae in Solaria can do that. There is no doing what you want done. The stars have chosen his fate.”

“It won’t be undone,” Audire agreed.

“Fuck the stars,” I growled, and the three of them recoiled like hissing snakes.

Loqui tossed a handful of sage into the fire and Vidi poured some salt from a glass shaker into her palm, swiping it over her tongue while Audire simply began begging the sky for forgiveness as they all worked to clear their home of my curse upon the celestial beings.

I swore and shoved to my feet, reaching for the book and grabbing it just as Loqui slammed her hand down on the pitch-black cover to halt me.

Her sewn-shut lips curved into a wicked grin, and she pressed a single finger to them, urging me to remain silent while her eyes seemed to swirl with unnatural darkness.

“Such things are not within the bounty of any gifts known to Nymph or Fae. You would be better served turning your grief upon your enemies than you would wasting your time with us,” Audire spat, but despite her words, she didn’t look angry, her gaze wild as she shoved the heavy table aside and I was forced to release my grip on the Book of Ether as I stumbled back out of its way.

“Beauty is the curse of the stars themselves,” Vidi sighed, shrugging her cloak from her shoulders, revealing a lithe, naked body beneath. She was a stunning creature, even with the stitches securing her eyelids, every curve of her porcelain flesh seeming designed for seduction and temptation.

I opened my mouth to question what the fuck she was doing, but Loqui shook her head in a silent reminder, offering Vidi a wicked-looking stone dagger, its sharp blade etched with runes.

Vidi accepted it, rolling her shoulders back and smiling as she held the dagger to her own wrist.

I flinched as she swept it towards her arm, but before I could see what she’d done with it, Audire’s hands fell over my eyes, her body pressing flush to my back and her nose burying itself against my neck as she inhaled deeply.

“Say nothing, see nothing…” she breathed in my ear, the words so soft I almost didn’t catch them at all.

Something hot and wet sprayed across the lower part of my face beneath the hold of Audire’s hands which shielded my eyes, and I flinched back against her, my heart thrashing wildly as the sound of stone scraping against stone filled the room.

Audire shifted her thumbs against my eyelids, brushing them closed in a clear demand just as a hellish scream tore through the space surrounding me and every muscle in my body locked with fright.

Audire shifted her hands from my eyes to my ears, the weight of her soft palms pressing against them, somehow blocking out all sound so that I was lost in a void of sensation.

“Hear nothing.”

I couldn’t even tell how I had understood those words at all, the knowledge of them seeming to have built within my mind rather than me actually hearing anything.

I staggered as the flagstones beneath me shifted, but Audire held me close, the warmth of her body pressed to my back one of the only things I was certain of in this world as I started to lose my bearings on my place in it.

The urge to open my eyes consumed me, but I fought it, even as a drop of what I had to assume was Vidi’s blood rolled down my face and across my lips.

I jolted in surprise as a mouth was pressed to mine, the lips full and seductive despite the ridges of cotton which I could feel sewn through them, letting me know that it was Loqui stealing a kiss from me.

Something lodged deep in my chest began to cleave apart as the two Nymphs pressed closer to me, trapping me between them while it was unlocked, and my lips parted on an inhale as Loqui kissed me harder.

Fingers took hold of my right hand, turning my palm over before trailing across the lightning and sun steel scar which lay there, studying each ridge and facet before the fingers were replaced by a tongue.

I recoiled against Audire, whose nose grazed across the side of my throat, a vibration in her chest making me think she was laughing, though I couldn’t hear anything to confirm that.

Vidi rolled her tongue over my scar, tasting the oath I’d made within it before starting an ascent up the inside of my forearm, my nerves lighting at the indecent touch, a dark and beckoning desire awakening in me.

It wasn’t like any lust I had ever felt before, not the all-consuming heat I had burned through with Darius.

No. This wasn’t sex, nor anything like it, despite the way they were all pressed against me, their mouths on my skin, my heart racing. It wasn’t a physical act at all. They were calling to something locked deep within my soul, urging it up and out of me, coaxing a flame which I hadn’t even realised was burning to life.

I tipped my head back against Audire’s shoulder, something I guessed was a moan rolling through my chest as Loqui’s sewn lips moved from my mouth to my throat, her fingers teasing the fabric of my dress open so that the chilled air rose gooseflesh across my body.

A rumble moved through the ground at my feet, the echo of it passing through my soul and rattling it to its core, molten eyes looking back at me from within the confines of my own mind.

He seemed so real, like he was right there before me, waiting for me to do something, change something, take something.

Vidi’s tongue moved back down my arm as she remained on her knees beside us, her fingers taking possession of my scarred hand and turning it so that my own fingers were pressed to the heated skin of my thigh through the slit in the side of my dress. Her hand interlaced with mine as she began to guide it up that silken skin, fire igniting everywhere inside me as I was lost to the memory of Darius, the countless words he’d spoken to me, declarations he’d made tumbling through my mind and drowning me in the loss of him.

Audire’s fingers shifted through my hair, massaging my scalp while she kept her palms pressed down over my ears, making me arch between the press of her body and Loqui’s as something rich and potent spilled through my veins.

“The cost of honing ether is higher than you can imagine.” That voice ricocheted within me, and I was struck with the knowledge that it came from not one, but all of them somehow.

“If the cost of this is my soul, then I’d gladly pay the price,” I thought back at them, the pure truth of those words burning through me even hotter than the flame they were kindling.

All three of them laughed at those words, their amusement slipping through me without me needing to hear it.

“So easy to promise the world when you don’t hold it in your grasp.”

“Is that the price?” I asked, distantly aware of Loqui’s fingers moving over the skin above my thrashing heart as she painted a symbol there.

I knew what it was, whether through the feeling of her touch or just the power it held. A pentagram. And though I knew I probably should have been fighting this, running or screaming or something of the kind, I made no move to try and escape them. I didn’t have much hope beyond the power of these three witches, and if they wanted to toy with me before giving me what I needed, then I wasn’t going to fight them.

“We told you: there is no returning from death.”

“I don’t accept that.”

More amusement twisted from them into me, Vidi’s hand guiding mine higher, drawing my fingers closer to my core while the vision of Darius consumed me. Memories of the two of us together in heat and passion and hatred all merged. I couldn’t just recall them; I could feel them. The heat of his skin against mine, the power of his body claiming me, each thrust, each lick of that sinful tongue, every kiss and conquest and burst of pleasure he had ever given me.

“We can give you this,” they offered. “A memory dipped in reality. You can partake in it for as long as you like, feel every piece of it, relive each sordid, beautiful memory as if they were taking place in the now.”

I trembled, the feeling of him so fucking real, the weight of his impenetrable stare consuming me, the nearness of him so close to truth. I knew they were holding back, that they really could offer me a trip right into those memories. I could immerse myself inside them, let myself believe that they were real all over again. But I would lose myself in them if I did that, I could feel the weight of that truth pressing in on me. If I accepted this gift from them, I would be trapped in those memories until my true body wasted away right here in this cave in the middle of nowhere, my magic no doubt a gift they’d claim as I took my final breaths.

It would be a beautiful death, lost in the arms of the man I loved. But not a real one.

“I’m needed here,” I told them firmly, trying to claw my mind away from that deepest of temptations even as I felt the tears rushing down my cheeks, my grief breaking free of its walls at last.

Audire tugged me closer to her, tasting my tears where they coated my skin, an echo of pain travelling from me into the three Nymphs, making them all suck in shuddering breaths.

“Show us this,” Vidi purred, her thumb tracing the scar on my palm even as she guided my hand around the curve of my thigh, moving closer to my core inch by inch.

I gave in to her request, so broken by my grief that I wasn’t even certain I would be able to deny them anything anymore.

I was back on that hilltop, Darius still and cold beneath me, his blood mixing with mine as I slit my hand open on the blade which had stolen him from me, cursing the stars themselves with all the power I possessed and more.

The three Nymphs gasped at the weight of the magic I’d called on, whispers breaking out between them in a language I couldn’t understand as I leaned back against Audire, unable to summon the energy to even move anymore.

“Ruiner of Destiny,” they whispered, and I inhaled sharply, my magic sparking within me as they called on that new and untested flame inside of me, beckoning it closer once more.

Loqui’s fingers sketched the image of a pentagram over my heart again, a sigh escaping her which I could feel in the depths of my soul.

“We can’t give you what you seek,” they said, and though I had already realised that, it still cut me open. “The deepest desire of your heart is not one any can grant.”

“Then what can you give me?” I demanded, refusing to just leave here with nothing more than I had held when I arrived.

“A path,” they whispered, Audire’s lips skimming across the side of my neck and making a shiver dance through me. “One you can tread in search of your answers.”

“What do you want for it?” I asked, my heart lifting with hope even as I tried to hide my desperation from them, because I knew I would agree to whatever they wanted from me now. I couldn’t turn back. Even if they could only offer the slimmest sliver of hope, I would take it and give them whatever they wanted in exchange.

They began murmuring to one another again, Loqui’s hands skimming the neckline of my dress, teasing it open further, my breasts almost spilling free of it while Vidi’s hand and mine were just a breath from the apex of my thighs, the memories of Darius that they had offered me still heating my skin.

“Virgin blood is the most powerful for our kind of magic,” they breathed, their voices inside my skull a whisper of seduction as I saw him there again, sitting on my father’s throne, spilling his heart out to me while I refused to hear the words and instead dropped to my knees before him. “We want a taste of what you’ve had, what we can never truly claim for our own.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat as I processed that, my skin flushed with heat as they continued to caress me, presenting me with image after image from my own memories of flesh claiming flesh. Tattoos slicked with sweat and a wicked grin designed purely to ruin me.

“That’s it?” I asked, uncertain of what exactly they meant by that, but knowing I was willing to give it to them.

“One night to taste what you have tasted, to linger in your lust,” they purred, and the movements of their hands on my skin began to merge with the memories of his, his callouses rough against my softness, the bite of his stubble a sinful scratch I could never get enough of. “Then we will give you a path to take. One wicked and steeped in sin. One which might lead you to the answers you seek or which may end in your own departure from this world. Hope. Though only the briefest flicker of it, at that. Do we have a deal?”

Their words were heavy with warning and uncertainty, nothing at all to say they even believed that what I sought was possible, but it didn’t matter, because I didn’t need anything other than a path to follow, so if that was what they were offering me, then I was going to take it with both hands.

“Done,” I said out loud, magic wrapping around that word and binding me to it so sharply that a cry escaped me.

Loqui’s stitched lips pressed to mine to silence me once more, but it didn’t seem like they were concerned with me keeping to their oaths anymore as Audire slipped her hands from my ears and she slowly rolled them down my spine.

I opened my eyes, looking between the three beautiful women who surrounded me for the briefest of moments, each of them having shed their cloaks at some point since my eyes had been closed, revealing the perfection of their nakedness and making my breath catch in my lungs.

They were creatures designed for lust, every inch of them endlessly different from each other while all wildly captivating in their own ways. The thought of them being virgins seemed absurd, the scent of sex seeming to cling to their flawless skin as I watched the way their hands moved over my body, teasing and plucking at my dress while not quite exposing me to them.

We weren’t in the cave anymore, the chill of the air pressing in around us as we stood in a pentagram-shaped clearing within a ring of ancient, enormous trees. There was a stone altar beside us, stained with what was undoubtably blood, this place used for sacrifice far more often than what they had requested of me.

My gaze fell on Vidi, still kneeling beside us, as her tongue traced a line up the side of my thigh, her eyes full of heat and lust as she looked up at me, pressing my own hand closer to my core even as I spotted the freely bleeding wound on her wrist.

She was smeared in bright red blood, not the blackish, tainted blood of the Nymphs Lavinia controlled, but blood as red as any Fae’s, like proof itself of her taint on the shadows.

My breaths became shallow as I watched her moving her mouth over my skin, the blood staining her flesh both horrifying and transfixing, like the sacrifice she had made for her power was an intoxication of its own.

“Roxy.” The deep growl of his voice had me frozen for three eternal seconds before I snapped my head up and found him there, his shirt already off, those tattoos I loved so much peering back at me like the deepest temptation.

I understood then why the three Nymphs had stopped shy of actually undressing me, of touching me any more than they had so far, Vidi’s fingers stroking the skin between my thighs without attempting to shift those final few inches to my core. They were virgins and would remain as such throughout this night, but they intended to see me destroyed in every way my memories could conjure before the sun rose to sate their own repressed desires.

I looked at Darius, the edges of his skin shining with a faint, golden light, proving him to be nothing more than a memory, and I did remember this. We hadn’t been in a forest clearing, surrounded by three entities of unthinkable power. We’d been in our room at The Burrows, my core still aching after a night spent in his arms, yet his desire never faded one bit, his need for me never sated in the least.

“You’re wearing far too many clothes,” he teased, the look he gave me peeling me apart from the inside out.

Grief threatened to consume me, the memory too real, too much to bear, but Audire ran her teeth along the shell of my ear and whispered to me. “Give yourself to it completely. Forget the here and now and let it take you to then. To him. Bring us with you.”

Her fingers curled into the thin straps which secured the back of my dress, her knuckles skimming over that deliciously sensitive spot where my wings would emerge if I shifted, and I moaned softly as I let myself do as she’d commanded.

This was the price they sought. And I wasn’t going to flinch from it, even if I feared the pain I would be left in when the sun finally rose.

I dropped my hands to my waist, unbuckling my sword belt as I stared at the vision of Darius, his eyes full of heated promises as he unbuckled his own belt, mirroring me.

I let the sword fall to the floor, drawing my hand higher beneath my skirt alongside Vidi’s, a soft moan escaping me as my fingertips brushed against the wetness soaking my panties.

The three Nymphs moaned too, their hands moving both across my body and their own flesh, seeking out that need in themselves as I began to touch myself, just like I had that day in The Burrows, teasing him, tempting him.

Darius growled softly, the sound raising the hairs along the back of my neck, and I pushed the fabric of my panties aside, two fingers sliding into my slick heat and causing me to moan again.

Vidi’s hand remained on mine, though she was careful not to touch me aside from the back of my hand as she guided my movements, her blood dripping down my thigh from the still-bleeding wound on her wrist.

Darius’s heated gaze roamed over me as I fucked my own hand for him, my teeth sinking into my bottom lip as my release closed in on me from nothing but the weight of his stare.

I slipped the strap of my dress from my shoulder, exposing my breast and hardened nipple, my free hand seeking it out and tugging while Loqui’s fingers slid down my side, caressing my skin.

“Come for me, Roxanya,” Darius growled. “Come for me so prettily, the way you always do.”

“I still fucking hate you half the time, you know that, right?” I panted, my words the ones I’d spoken to him all those months ago, and he grinned in that very same way he had then too, pushing his pants down and taking his huge cock into his fist.

My eyes became riveted to that spot and the motion of his fist, the women surrounding me fading away as I fell deeper into the memory, a cry of ecstasy breaking from me as I did exactly what he’d told me to do, no matter how much it infuriated me.

Darius gave me that cocky grin, beckoning me to him like he expected me to refuse. But I didn’t.

I strode across a blanket of dried leaves and twigs, my dress slipping from my body as I shrugged it off and let it fall from me entirely, my memory providing a different floor and a bed where I vaguely knew there was nothing but that stone table.

I was distantly aware of the Nymphs trailing me as I moved, their hands caressing my skin, their magic linking them into my memories and their power stoking my lust beyond all measure. But I was used to feeling lust with that intensity in the presence of the man I loved. The passion that had blazed between us was unrivalled by any other in this realm and all realms. None burned with the intensity which had consumed us, and none could surpass the need I felt for him in all forms.

The Nymphs traced their fingers over my skin, painting runes against my flesh in Vidi’s blood, the darkness surrounding us intensifying to the point where I could hardly even recall the trees, let alone notice the frigid air which tried to bite at my exposed skin.

I gave myself to the heat roaring between Darius Acrux and the Vega princess who he was forbidden to love. Gave myself to the ties I had made between him and myself in life and in death, through marriage and the destruction of our Star bond, through hate, betrayal, vengeance and violence. I was his and he was mine. And as the ghost of him wrapped his hand around my wrist and tugged me closer, I gave up any attempt to remember that this was just a memory playing out in my mind.

I didn’t care that it wasn’t real because as soon as I gave myself to it completely, it was real. His tongue was sinking between my lips, his hands grasping the curve of my ass and yanking me into his lap, his cock sinking into my wetness so fucking perfectly.

My heart trembled in my chest as the feeling of his skin against mine consumed me entirely. I had missed this, missed him so incredibly, and somehow, for this stolen moment in time, he was here, the shattered pieces of me gluing themselves back together, tears of pure joy rolling down my cheeks.

“It’s you,” I murmured, my fingers tracing the length of his jaw, savouring the bite of his stubble as I devoured the sight of him and drank it all in. “Only you.”

He gave me a smile which cast my heart to ashes, his fingers roaming over the tattoo on my thigh which echoed that sentiment and my gaze dipping to the one which wound around his hip.

There is only her.

I should have known I was his that first moment I saw him, lounging on that red couch, draped in arrogance while he stole the air from every inch of the room. I should have known it when he was taunting and tormenting me, should have known when his eyes trailed me everywhere I went, and when I dreamt of him despite myself night after night. I’d been so fucking blind and so fucking stubborn, but I had been his throughout it all.

“By the stars, I love you,” Darius groaned, his big hands squeezing my ass as he drew me down onto him more firmly, savouring the connection of our bodies while we both panted through the moment of resistance.

“I love you,” I replied, my fingers moving over his pec, skimming the ink which stained his bronze skin until I could feel the thundering of his heart beneath them. It was a lie, a beautiful, tempting, lie. But I didn’t care. There was only him.

I gave in to the need in my flesh, moaning his name as I gripped his shoulders and began to ride him, tipping my head back as I languished in the impossibly full feeling of taking him inside me. He was huge in every aspect, this immovable, unbreakable being who was bound to me in so many ways.

Darius growled against my skin as he drove his hips up into me with force, fucking me hard and deep, driving himself in to the base so that my breath was stolen by the force of his claiming and my nails broke his skin where I clung to him.

I met his passion with my own, rocking my hips and placing a hand between us, rolling my fingers over my clit while he sucked on my nipple hard enough to make me gasp.

I cried out as I drew close to the edge, but he snatched my wrists into his grasp, halting my fingers on my clit and moving them to the base of my spine where he pinned them in place with one of his huge hands.

“When you come this time, it will be entirely for me,” he growled, that bossy tone enough to make me want to punch him. But I forgot the impulse as he thrust his hips up into me again, making my tits bounce while the oracles still stroked and caressed me distantly, drinking in every moment of this as they saw him too, saw both of us, felt what we were feeling.

It should have been putting me off, but I was lost to him the way I always had been, my need for him far greater than any shyness or embarrassment I might have felt at the thought of us being watched like this.

Darius moved his free hand to my clit, taking over from what I’d been doing as he lifted his hips in a destructive, ruinous movement which had me forgetting my damn name as he slammed into some insatiable spot inside of me.

“Please,” I begged, needing him to finish me while he just toyed with me instead, his thumb making my clit sing, then stopping right as I was about to combust.

Over and over again he edged me until I was pleading, cursing, begging and he was grinning through our kisses, loving his ownership over me before finally giving in.

He slammed into me with a Dragon’s roar, coming inside of me while completing his conquest of my body with that triumphant thrust and the destructive pressure of his thumb.

I came so hard I almost blacked out, my head rolling back and a cry of purest bliss escaping me while my body was engulfed in the kind of ecstasy only this damnation of mine could deliver.

He rolled us over, laying me on my back, and I blinked up at him as I panted there, my heart leaping in horror as he faded away and the frozen stone of the table beneath me replaced the illusion of our old bed.

“Wait,” I gasped, the moans of the Nymphs surrounding me as that memory captivated them too, their hands moving over my skin as they painted more runes onto my body which I couldn’t read or decipher.

“More,” Vidi snarled, and I glanced towards her pale form, her sharp teeth flashing at the demand while Loqui moaned in frustration from behind her sewn-shut lips.

“More,” Audire agreed, baring her teeth too, her hands moving up my thighs as she seemed to draw the feeling of pleasure right out of my sated flesh and into hers.

My lips parted on some reply, but whatever it had been died instantly as Darius strode towards me through the trees, his eyes full of something which bit into me so deeply it hurt.

It wasn’t real, but…it was. Fuck, it was real. I didn’t care if it was a memory, didn’t care if I was trading this look at him for some tiny glint of hope, didn’t care if they were seeing and experiencing all of it with me because he was here and he was mine, and if it only lasted one night, then I’d still take it.

“Is it totally conceited of me to hope you might be waiting for me?” he asked, hesitation, hope and need in his dark eyes.

“Yeah,” I agreed on a breath as I drank in the sight of him standing before me in a half unbuttoned black shirt and smart trousers. The shitty sweatpants and shirt I’d been wearing that night seeming to materialise on my body as I pushed to my feet so that I could relive it just as it had been, that moment of perfect clarity when we had finally been able to just become…us. “But I think I’ve always been waiting for you, so maybe you’re right.”

“Even when you hated me?” His voice was a dark purr which set every piece of my flesh buzzing with need.

I could see what this was now, how this night would play out, me and him over and over and over again until I was aching, fractured, and broken for him even more than I had been. This was torture of the sweetest kind, and I was a glutton for punishment because I was all in. I could never say no to him anyway. Not in any way that lasted.

So the night passed with me in his arms, his body possessing mine, my heart racing to a pace that only he had ever been able to set it to as I fell apart for him time and again.

The Nymphs drank it all in, crying out in pleasure with me, their magic sharpening the memories so much that I really was reliving them. Every pleasure filled moment, every thrust of his hips, every kiss, every ‘I love you’. All of it.

Until I passed beyond the point of taking any more of it, my body wrung out, used, and destroyed from so much pleasure. Darkness invaded my mind and stole me away, though I knew that even as I was lost to the memories, I continued to play them out with him. More and more and more. Past the sunrise and through the next day and night too, endlessly his, my energy torn from me, my body and flesh exposed until finally, with the second sunrise, I was left lying on the stone table in the heart of the pentagram. My naked body was stained with Vidi’s blood, countless runes painted on every inch of my exhausted flesh, overlapping each other beyond the point of recognition.

My heart was still racing as I woke, blinking up at the light filtering down to me through the trees overhead, tiny dust motes swirling through it, highlighting small parts of my body.

I was panting, an ache between my thighs speaking of all I’d done in those endless hours and tears dry on my cheeks, my eyes puffy and aching from spilling so many.

He was gone. Only the ghost of his touch lingered on my body, love bites and scratches marking my skin like it truly had been real.

The oracles were long gone, sated from their ride through my nights of lust with Darius Acrux, having taken more than my bargain with them had initially agreed to. Though as I pushed myself to sit up, I found a scroll sitting on top of the Book of Ether beside me and decided I didn’t care about the extra time they’d added onto our deal.

I unfurled it carefully, my heart hurting with the loss of him all over again while I tried not to give too much thought to the hedonistic memory orgy I’d taken part in last night. I’d sworn that I would do whatever it took, and if that meant fucking the ghost of him in my memories until I passed out, then it didn’t seem like the worst thing that could have been asked of me.

The message they’d left me was simple, though the path they were directing me towards was likely anything but.

In the heart of the Damned Forest, beyond the Waters of Depth and Purity, lies the Ever-Changing Winds of Sky and Spirit. The Endless Drop will take you through the Fires of the Abyss and beyond them, where the ether lies thickest, your answers await.

I read over the words twice, not knowing what they meant but feeling that tiny ray of hope shining brighter at them all the same.

From the ache in my stomach, I knew I’d been gone longer than I’d meant to be. This dawn the second that had passed since I’d arrived here, the rapture I’d encountered in this clearing taking more than its toll on my flesh.

I needed to return to the island and explain myself. But as I pulled my ruined dress onto my aching body and wondered how the fuck I was supposed to explain this, I couldn’t help but smile just a little. Because we were going to rescue Darcy and the others from The Palace of Souls, we were going to kill that Dragon motherfucker, and once we did all of that, I was going to find the place known as the Damned Forest and keep my promise to the heartless stars once and for all.