Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight
Sorrow and Starlight: Chapter 32

“Gandering geese are heading east, gandering geese are heading east,” I murmured, my lips as heavy as two cowbells perched upon my face.

“Gerry, you’re rambling,” my Maxy boy said gently. “Are you alright?”

A sizzle of healing magic ran from him into my cockles and I wailed, unable to open my eyes and face the woeful world beyond. He was carrying me somewhere away from my lady when she needed me most, but I’d heard Tory encourage him thus, so who was I to contradict the word of one of my queens?

“It cannot be,” I groaned, throwing an arm over my eyes as I hung as limp as a lamprey in his arms. “Poor, sweet, merry Darcy trapped with those crudsome creatures. And her watchful, loyal, fangsome ‘pire too.”

“We’ll figure this out,” he promised me, trying to press his Siren gifts into me, but I flailed and thrashed like a rollicking seal.

“Do not dare sneak into my chest like a thief in the night to snaff away my woes. I shall feel them in their fullness and tumble into their paltry pits if I must!” I crowed.

My slippery salmon sighed, and I felt the air grow warmer as we moved inside some place I didn’t care to see.

The sound of guards trying to stop him ascending into the upper levels of the beauteous castle made me waft an arm at them.

“He is my steed. Allow him passage,” I ordered, and Max grumbled something I didn’t catch as he headed yonder.

“You’ll have to tell me the way. You’ve never invited me to your room before,” he said, an edge of bitterness to his utterance.

“Oh, my dear, angelic anchovy, I forget sometimes what a delicate daisy you are.”

I flung my arm from my face, opening my eyes at last and pointing him hither and tither until we arrived at the foot of my door.

“I’m not delicate,” he growled in that gruffsome tone of his which sent Lady Petunia into a frenzy.

I slipped out of his arms and threw the door wide, stepping into my modest room which was mostly given over to my baked goods. A long wooden table stood against the wall, running the length of the space and my single bed stood beyond it, with simple white linen a-clinging to it. Bagels in their many forms filled most of the table, but there were pastries too, and other baked goods which were fit for queenly mouths.

“You know, it’s kind of a dick move to deny me food when you’ve got this much of it.” He did not enter my pantry-come-bedroom, leaning his shoulder against the door jamb and giving me a grouchy grouper of an expression.

“Oh pish-posh.” I wafted a hand at his grumbles, moving to the little wicker basket I’d made up this very morn, covered over with a cloth that had a salmon stitched into the cotton. I had hand-sewn it myself, using a needle made from the finest silver I could conjure with my earth Element. I flapped the cloth open and offered him the basket with a flourish, unveiling the various croissants and pain au chocolat I had baked in the shape of all his favourite sea creatures.

His mouth fell open, slack-jawed like a hammerhead shark who’d lost its hammer. “Are they for me?”

“Well who else? The cod’s kipper?” I walked forward and thrust them into his arms, his eyes getting a ravenous glint about them. It seemed my lovely lobster was afflicted by hanger, and I would not forget it henceforth.

“These are my favourite,” he said, all subdued now like a tame sea lion as he plucked a pain au chocolat from the basket.

“Well of course they are. Do you think I have not noticed the way you chomp and champ at these two types of pastry? You are like a fladdywhack with a handrail.” I laughed a little, but then I remembered my lady Darcy was a captive of the lame lizard and his shadow trollop. Then I remembered Angelica’s resplendent form cut down by that ugly maggot Mildred and vengeance called my name like a wandering will-o’-the-wisp.

Oh, woe is me and I am woe.

I sobbed, letting my misery fill the air and casting the salty tears from my eyes into a cup upon my nightstand.

“Gerry…” Max said sadly, and he let the door swing closed as he moved into the room, placing down his precious pastries and choosing me instead. Oh what a choice to make, for I was not nearly as crumbly nor sweet as a pain au chocolat.

He lieth down upon the bed at my back and I rolled away from him, the two of us barely fitting on the mattress, but he made it so, pulling me back into those gargantuan muscles of his. He was truly, truly a marvellous specimen of Fae. As big as an oxen, and likely as virile too. Oh, great stars above, why did he have to be an Heir?

I sniffed and snuffed, wriggling back into his arms, and reaching behind me to clasp his neck.

“Grave fates befall us like we sit beneath a bountiful apple tree of dire destinies, each one tumbling down full of rot and worms, instead of the sweet nectar we crave. Are we doomed, Maxy boy? Can we escape this festering tree and replace another where the apples grow plump and ripe, where the sun shines upon its leaves and bathes us in its heartening light?”

“I hope so,” he said darkly. “It’s hard to see it though. It’s like the stars are angry with us.”

“But whatever did we do to invoke their wrath?” I croaked like a thirsty frog without a pond. “Once upon a yester-year, I believed the stars were not bias in their happenings. But if they are not, then why would they bestow great fortune upon a loathsome lizard who seeks to terrorise Solaria and all its virtuous Fae?”

“I don’t know,” my sweet salamander sighed. “Maybe all the stars care about is power.”

“But if that were so, then my ladies would surely be the object of their bounties,” I said, the answer hidden as if it were stuck to the base of a barnacle on the hull of a boat.

“I can tell my dad we can’t meet him for dinner today,” Max suggested.

“Nay, I cannot lay here like a prone prune all afternoon and eve, I must rise and meet with the Councilman who sired you. But first, I must return to my lady’s side and beg her forgiveness for abandoning her in her time of dire need. I have been a loathsome lout of a servant this day, and I must face the price of my ineptitude this instant.” I sprang out of bed, casting a vine whip in my hand, ripping my shirt asunder and lashing my bare back.

“Gerry!” Max barked, jumping up and trying to get a hold of me but I was as spritely as a wayward leaf in a hurricane, dancing this way and that as I struck at my back, evading him.

He cast a gust of air, snatching me up in it and pinning my arms to my sides as he closed in on me, looking like a legendary warrior of Ragoon.

He caught my cheek in his palm, his eyes a whirling ocean storm and my back hit the wall as he captured me like a crab in a net. Oh to be his crustacean…

My Lady Petunia blossomed like a flower in June, and his eyes dipped to my huge bosoms which were straining within a dark green corset I had woven from the silk of a dewmoth.

“You cannot look at me thus and not expect to dive deep into my lady waters,” I panted. “Avert your eyes or make true on the vows that shine within them like the star you are named after, Max Rigel.”

“Is that code for ‘please fuck me’?” He smirked, and gracious, that smile was a mountain which I wished to climb, to bury my flag in its peak and announce it as mine.

“I could not be clearer,” I panted. “Take me to Davy Jones’ Locker, and plunder my treasure chest with your sea cucumber.”

He deftly unlaced my corset, my bustsome breasts springing free, and he lowered his mouth to claim one of my nipples between his luscious lips. I cried out like a fig on a fiddle, my hands pushing into that dark, short hair of his before raking down the line of his back. I could not put words to how this swain made me feel, for it was as if there were no words yet forged to put a name to such emotions.

I yanked his hair tight, forcing his mouth to part from my rose bud and he looked up at me with an offer in his eyes, an offer of all I could ever dream for my Lady Petunia to be presented with.

“Ravish me like a knight of the Esterburn army. Seize me like the Castle of Norington and plunge your weapon into my moat,” I gasped.

Max picked up me up like I weighed no more than a buttercup, even though I was rumbunctious, all muscle and curves, and he tossed me onto the bed, tearing my knickers from my Lady Petunia. I lay bare for him and his eyes oozed carnality as he crawled over me, trying to pin me down as if I were a teaspoon on his tea tray. But I was the tea master in this game, and he had better learn it fast.

With a, “Hi-yah!” I swung a leg over his hip and forced him to roll beneath me, capturing his wrists and winding them around my waist. I fused them to the base of my own spine with ice, then froze his ankles to the bed too.

“Gerry,” he gasped, fighting like a turtle in a tailspin.

I pushed his pants down and sank down upon his Long Sherman, silencing his complaints, his groans filling the air and mixing like a cocktail with my own, giving into the delights of my petunia. I wetted my hand with my water Element, then slapped him this way and that across his cheeks, making him growl like a gunderghoul.

I kissed him next, my tongue between his lips and he garbled some wordage I couldn’t decipher. Yes, I knew just what pleased him best even when he didn’t know it himself, but my Maxy boy enjoyed a slip and slap just as much as he enjoyed a whip and whap.

“By the stars, you drive me crazy. I love you, Gerry,” he panted as I did a hip wiggle followed by a jangle jive.

“Love!” I cried, throwing my head back and riding him as if I had an urgent message to deliver and only a simple pony between my thighs. “True, I love thee in return, despite your Heirsome flaws, your roots grown from a mighty tree of anti-royalists, and your muckly lineage.”

“Fuck all of that,” he said seriously, looking up at me with all the sparkles of the crown jewels within his eyes. “I mean it, Gerry. We’ll work all of that out. I want you. Only you. The other shit is just politics.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “And politics may have ruled my rivers once, but I have sprouted new springs from the earth. I tried to resist you, my dear dolphin, but alas, fate drives me to your waters time and again. Swim with me, Maxy boy.”

I rocked my hips faster and his biceps bulged like two fine blowfish, his head tipping forward to watch as he thrust up beneath me and showed my petunia the full extent of his daring Daniel. He was the largest I had experienced, though I was yet to bestow that truth upon his ears, lest I let his head garner too much size. But my, my, he was the possessor of a sea beast between his thighs, and I welcomed it deep into my coral reef, rolling my neck and crying out for more, though perhaps even I could not take more than what he gave.

I crested a wave and fell with a warble, singing like a song thrush for him as he sent me into the garden of ecstasy. And as I looked down at him, dazed, through spangled eyes, I knew we were not done. Not even close. My quails a-quivering, my cockles a-cantering.

I gave myself to him, knowing it was selfish when the world was falling apart beyond these doors, but I was a weak, weak waif of a whelk right now, and all I wished for was a moment in my lover’s arms before I had to face the day once more.