Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight
Sorrow and Starlight: Chapter 36

“We shall not rest! We shall not slumber! We shall not stop until our lady is returned to us!” Geraldine bellowed, thumping her breastplate and inciting a roar of agreement from the gathered rebels who raised their swords and sent crackling blasts of magic towards the sky as they hyped themselves up for a fight.

“Forgive me,” the former prison guard pleaded from his knees beside Geraldine, his eyes puffy from all the tears he’d shed. The other rebels who had been guarding the jail when Tory had shown up and released Miguel were in similar states of distress and had been for the thirty-odd hours since she’d gone missing with him.

“Geraldine,” I barked, shoving my way between the gathered crowd of around fifty Fae and making my way towards her. I used my gifted strength to force them to move when they resisted and shot between the last of them before coming to a halt mere inches from her.

“I thought we decided to trust Tory and give her a bit more time?” I snarled, the small army at my back seeming like anything but that.

“Oh, my sweet winter child,” Geraldine gasped, looking towards the rising sun and clutching her hand over her heart. “She is lost to the darkness of her grief, tempted by the night and now plunged into danger. She swore that she would return that very eve for her supper – so how can I linger knowing that she is lost out there in the world, after an entire night more has passed while she is at the mercy of that dastardly Nymph and who knows what else?”

“The princess chose to abandon the safety of our stronghold,” Tiberius said as he pushed his way through the crowd, my mom and Seth’s allowing him to forge a path between the clamouring rebels. “We cannot send much needed soldiers out in search of her on some fool’s mission. We have no idea where she has gone and no reason to believe she is even-”

“Hush your mouth, you sallywhacker!” Geraldine shouted, pointing a finger at Tiberius, and striding towards him with vines rising from the ground at her back, the challenge in her gaze clear as day.

“You don’t seriously mean to fight me over this?” Tiberius scoffed.

Geraldine slapped him with a vine that had snuck up over his shoulder while he was too busy puffing his chest up to notice, and his head wheeled to the side as a large, oval welt instantly appeared on his cheek.

I caught the tiny sound of amusement that escaped my mom as Tiberius roared furiously, metallic green scales erupting across his flesh and coating his arms and neck beneath the cuffs of his grey shirt.

He advanced on Geraldine with a cyclone building around his fists, and the rebels scrambled back as a fight looked about to break out.

“Dad! What the fuck?” Max yelled as he and Seth finally caught up to me, Seth running in his Wolf form with Max on his back.

“Stay out of this, son,” Tiberius demanded, and Geraldine howled like a banshee as her vines sped forward like a hoard of vipers.

I shot aside, leaving them to it and shaking my head as I came to stand beside the other Heirs.

“She’s determined to go after Tory,” I muttered, but Max wasn’t listening to me.

He jumped from Seth’s back and ran towards the fight between his dad and his girlfriend, a stray vine slapping his ass hard enough to make his knees buckle as he yelled at them to stop again.

Seth shifted beside me, and I looked to him, my eyes falling down his body instantly, tracing the defined curves of his abs before dropping to his cock. Flashes of memory spun through me of the two of us alone, mouths meeting, hands wandering, passion burning-

“My eyes are up here,” Seth teased, but there was an edge to his voice as I snapped my gaze back up to meet his, a moment of silence passing between us which held a question neither of us voiced.

“You great, gallumping sea whale,” Geraldine hollered as she was hurled through the air over our heads, and I looked up to watch her go soaring by with interest, the sharp points of her breastplate glinting in the sunlight as if she had diamond nips. “You shall rue the day you took on a Grus!”

Tiberius folded his arms as he watched his magic toss her away, the smug smile on his face the last thing I saw before the ground beneath his feet disappeared and he plunged down into an enormous pit.

My mom threw Antonia over her shoulder and shot her out of the way before they ended up falling in too, and the gathered rebels all ran in different directions to try and avoid the magic as it was thrown back and forth.

The crowd ran in every direction, not knowing where best to go to escape any wayward magic which was blasted from the fight, and a huge, muscular Bear Shifter smacked into Seth as he was almost knocked from his feet by the rioting.

“Sorry, man,” the guy breathed, backing up a step and offering a peace sign which instantly froze my blood in my veins.

“It’s fine,” Seth replied dismissively, the peace sign he gave him in return making a stone drop into my gut as I fought against any outward reaction.

I narrowed my eyes on the Bear Shifter and his puffed-up chest, noting the shitty pornographic tattoo on his right bicep and scowling at it as I considered shooting after him and showing him what a real predator looked like.

I felt Seth’s gaze on me as I scowled at his latest conquest, and I wrenched my eyes away, my face a careful mask.

Max had dropped Seth’s clothes when he’d run off, and I grabbed them in a blur of speed, dropping to my knees in front of Seth and holding his sweatpants out for him to step into.

He blinked down at me in surprise as I tapped his calf to get his attention, heat rising in my blood as I worked not to look at his dick again from my new and much closer position.

Seth stepped into his pants obediently and I stood, my knuckles grazing the backs of his legs as I gently pulled them up for him, our eyes meeting once more as I drew them over the hard muscles of his ass.

I hesitated there, meaning to step back but replaceing the task impossible as the heat of his skin reeled me in like a fish on a damn line. I gave in to that sensation instead of drawing away from it as I inhaled a lungful of air laced with his breath.

I slid my fingers around his waistband, tracing my way from his spine to his hips, following the curve of the fabric along his sides then across his lower abs all the way to the line of hair beneath his navel. My fangs snapped out as I hovered there, too close to him for propriety and yet too far to take what I was really aching for.

Seth made no move to touch me in return, his eyes two hard chips of ice as he looked at me, reminding me that I was crossing a line, that there were other Fae here and that we didn’t do this. But my unspoken want for him was starting to blur the lines which I once hadn’t even had to look for, and it was getting harder to resist replaceing these kinds of excuses.

“Did you run last night?” I asked him, and he nodded, a flick of his fingers stabilising the ground beneath our feet as it started to tremble beneath the force of Tiberius’s power as he worked to dig himself out of the grave Geraldine had dug for him.

“Are you thirsty?” Seth asked slowly and I took my turn to nod, my fingers still skimming beneath the line of his waistband. “Well, stop dancing around the point then,” he snapped, and I flinched the smallest amount because his words had cut a bit too close to the truth that I couldn’t admit to him.

I covered my reaction to his accusation by yanking him towards me and sinking my teeth into his throat. I barely even heard Geraldine yodelling a battle cry as I was stolen away on the tide of his moonlit power, a groan escaping me as the decadent taste of him rolled over my tongue.

My fingers flexed, pushing a bit lower beneath the fabric of his pants, hidden between our closeness, and he growled at me as he took hold of the back of my neck and fisted his hand in my curls, cementing our bodies together.

“Fucking…stars…balls,” he panted in my ear, his chest heaving against mine while I took my fill of him, my cock stirring at his nearness, my mind on the feeling of his mouth wrapped around me as I pushed my hand a little lower.

I was supposed to be forgetting about that, supposed to be okay with my place as another notch in his belt, but every time I got close to him like this, it was all too easy to forget that. All too easy to let myself think of other things I wanted to try with him. All too easy to indulge in the idea that he might think of me differently to the others he took to his bed.

“Take that, you cantankerous cretin!” Geraldine’s voice was accompanied by something splashing against my cheek and I forced myself to pull back, releasing Seth as I looked around to replace Tiberius coated in mud from head to foot. Geraldine was eighty percent trapped in a block of ice, just her head, arm, and one pointed metal boob poking out the top of it.

“Oh, Cally,” my mom’s voice made me flinch away from Seth, snatching my hand out of his waistband so that the elastic snapped against his taut abs, making him curse. “You always were a messy eater.”

“Gah, stop it.” I tried to bat her off as she licked her thumb and made a move to swipe at the corner of my mouth where I was guessing some of Seth’s blood was showing on my skin.

“What have I told you about letting your chums feed on your magic in public, Seth Capella?” Antonia barked, clipping him around the ear like he was a naughty pup and making him snarl as he tried to escape her too. “Do you want the whole world to see pictures of you submitting for an Altair? Do you want them to think you let him push you down beneath him and have his way with you day and night, at his each and every whim, plunging his huge-”

“Mom, what the fuck?” Seth cried but she continued regardless, managing to clip him round the ear again.

“-teeth into you whenever the urge arises?”

“Ugh, you make it sound so weird,” Seth howled while I tried to shoot away from my own mother, but she just shot right into my path and managed to get me with her licky thumb, stealing the drop of blood from the corner of my mouth.

She promptly sucked the blood off, and I snarled at her furiously as her eyes lit at the taste of his blood.

“Mom,” I snapped angrily. “He’s my Source. You can’t just go around drinking his fucking blood, or I’ll-”

“You’re his what?” Antonia cried, her fury cutting my words in two, and Seth shot me a look which said he had half a mind to beat the shit out of me. “Since when in the history of the stars themselves has a Capella ever been the Source of a Vampire? Oh heavens, I can see the headlines now. ‘Seth Capella, on his knees for an Altair.’ Think of the polls. The whole world is going to think you’ve bowed for him, and then they’ll question everything about the balance of power – as if Darius’s death hadn’t already thrown enough of a rotten egg into the mix.”

“Mom, for fuck’s sake, stop it,” Seth barked. “You’re making it into a much bigger deal than it-”

“You will relinquish your claim on him this instant.” Antonia whirled on me, her eyes flashing silver with her Wolf and a finger pointed straight in my face.

I bared my fangs at her in reply, every muscle in my body going rigid in a clear refusal of that demand.

“No,” I snarled. “I won’t. He’s mine.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is, Toni,” Mom said, baring her own fangs at Seth’s mother. “Maybe I should think about claiming you or Tiberius as my own on-tap blood supply too.”

Antonia snarled ferociously as her attention whipped from me to my mom, but before the chaos could descend any further, a crack seemed to tear through the air itself. The wards surrounding us were wrenched open by some incredible power, and a flash of light had us all spinning to look as Tory and Miguel appeared from thin air, stardust twinkling around them for a moment before vanishing.

Tory lifted a hand and the wards sealed themselves up again, a dome of pure power glittering high above our heads for a brief moment before it cleared and became invisible once more.

My lips parted as I took in the sight of her skin covered in smears of blood, her beautiful black dress torn and filthy, and a haunted look in her eyes as she sagged against Miguel for support.

“What happened?” I demanded, shooting forward, and snatching her from him, hoisting her into my arms where she expelled a breath and let herself slump against me.

“I’m fine,” she muttered. “Just exhausted and tapped out. Miguel is still one of the good guys.”

Geraldine was wailing from her giant ice cube, and everyone else seemed torn between surrounding Miguel and getting closer to Tory for an explanation.

“Where the fuck did you go?” Max half yelled as he stomped towards us. “Gerry has been having kittens. We didn’t know if you were dead or kidnapped or-”

“Watch out, Max, or people might start to think you care about a Vega,” Tory taunted, and I was glad to see that she was still very much herself despite the state of her.

She shifted in my arms again and I realised she was pushing the Book of Ether between her side and my chest, using the material of the gown she was wearing to try and hide it. No doubt she didn’t want any of our parents asking questions about it, and I gave her a slight squeeze in understanding.

“Does Miguel need locking up?” I asked, drawing her nearer in my arms to help hide the book as everyone closed in around us and the sound of shattering ice signalled Geraldine breaking free of her prison.

“No,” Tory said firmly. “He’s on our side. Maybe get him a bagel or something, Geraldine?”

“But, my lady,” Geraldine protested, looking at a total loss as her bottom lip wobbled.

“I’m fine, I promise.” Tory tried to wave her off. “I just want to get near a fire and have a bath, then I’ll fill you all in. Focus on what we need for tomorrow, okay? The Hydrids meteor shower is almost here, and we need to be ready to move, for Darcy’s sake.”

“I’ll take you to your room,” I said, glancing between the others for the briefest of moments, making sure Seth and Max understood that I needed to get her out of here before shooting off and leaving them all behind.

The world passed us in a blur, and I raced over the drawbridge and up the sets of stairs to the extravagant rooms Geraldine had created for the Vegas, turning to the right into Tory’s.

I tossed her down on the bed, making her bounce as she rolled over, the word asshole carrying back to me in a muffled voice as she faceplanted the pillows.

Fire blossomed in my palm and I filled her fireplace with it before dropping down on the bed beside her with more flames licking their way across my hands and forearms.

Tory kicked her boots off, leaving the Book of Ether in the space dividing us as she sighed at the warmth of the flames and unbuckled her sword too, tossing it on the carpet.

“What’s with the bloodstains?” I asked, pointing to her arm where it looked like someone had been doodling all over her in gory ink. The marks were hard to make out, so many of them drawn on top of others but I recognised a couple of runes drawn in the freshest of the blood.

“Oh, you know. I went to some creepy cave and met these three witches who practice dark magic-”

“No such thing as witches, Tor.” I gave her a nudge and she rolled her eyes at me.

“Well, they were Nymph witches who called themselves oracles. And they looked like goddesses given flesh. I swear to fuck, I almost wish I was gay for the sake of those women alone.”

“Almost?” I teased.

“Well, I have a pathetically prevalent obsession with cock, but aside from that…”

I choked out a laugh and she gave me a grin, but it died somewhere along the way, her eyes glazing as they moved to something else that had happened.

“Tell me,” I urged, and she blew out a breath.

“It was…honestly, Caleb, it was all kinds of fucked up, and I’ll admit that I pretty much just gave in to the call of their magic and promised them the world if they would only help me replace my way back to him.”

I didn’t need to ask who she meant, my own heart aching as I reached out and took her hand in my flame-wreathed fingers, giving her a gentle squeeze which she returned before withdrawing her hand from mine.

“You can’t come back looking like that-” I waved a hand at the bloodstains and filthy dress “-and not explain it properly.”

“Fine.” Tory turned to look up at the ceiling, expelled a harsh breath, and said, “I may have spent an entire day and night engaging in what could objectively be called a memory orgy where the three of them all lived through a hell of a lot of mine and Darius’s sex life by bringing my memories to life and watching me fuck him repeatedly until I blacked out.”

“What the fuck?” I spluttered, and she groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes so she didn’t have to look at me.

“I dunno, dude. It was…so real. He was there, he was touching me and kissing me, and I could feel all of it. But he wasn’t there at the same time. The places I could see didn’t actually exist around us, and I honestly don’t know if I was just laying on a stone table masturbating the entire time while the three of them all pawed at me and got their kicks from the show.”

“Wow,” I said, not entirely sure what the hell I was supposed to say to that because it sounded seriously fucked up, as well as at least a bit hot, and if the ache in her voice was anything to go by, it had only really served to sharpen her grief. “If they were so beautiful, then why don’t they just get their own kicks instead of wanting to watch you and Darius go at it all night long?”

“Well, they were all virgins to aid with their dark magic shit – which doesn’t exactly bode well for me if that is integral to using it fully, by the way – and they’d also made a few interesting choices like sewing their eyes and lips closed to keep a certain level of evil from fully corrupting them – not that I’m convinced it had helped. But either way, I’m not sure all that many Fae would be brave enough to fuck them, even if the virginity barrier wasn’t there-”

“Aside from you, who effectively fucked all three of them,” I pointed out, and she scowled at me.

“It wasn’t like that. Well, I guess it was but… It was…me and him.” She sighed, the pain of his loss pressing down on her. “Me and him with a trio of witnesses,” she added with an amused snort.

“Witnesses who were getting off on it,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” she agreed with a shrug, like that was the least of it.

“So what did this orgy get you? A night with him?”

“Yeah…” She trailed off, glancing towards the door before taking a rolled piece of parchment from inside the front page of the Book of Ether and holding it out to me.

I extinguished the flames on my hands, taking it and opening the scroll, frowning at the cryptic message while trying to gain some understanding of what it meant but coming up blank.

“Do you know where the Damned Forest is by any chance?” Tory asked me and I shook my head.

“Never heard of it. What’s there?”

“Answers. Maybe. The only chance they thought I might have of replaceing a way to him without passing beyond the Veil myself.”

I frowned at the words again, but they meant nothing to me. “If that’s some place in Solaria, then it isn’t on any map I’ve ever studied. And believe me, I’ve studied way too many of them,” I said, handing her the note back, and she sighed as she tucked it into the book again.

“Figures. But I’m going to work it out. I have to.”

I nodded, understanding that just as I understood how dangerous this magic she was messing with might be. But it was Darius. I would go to the ends of the earth with her to bring him back if that was what it took, no price would be too steep.

“I need to wash this Nymph blood off,” Tory groaned, brushing a hand over the stains on her arm.

“Did they kill someone for all that blood?” I half teased, half questioned seriously.

“No. Vidi, the one who had sewn her eyes shut, slit her wrist for it. I think ether requires a sacrifice and an anchor to work fully. She was using the tie of her blood to my skin to draw the memories from me and make them as tangible as they were. She made him real.”

Tory swallowed thickly, and I didn’t need to ask how being with him like that had left her feeling. It must have been like stepping into the past without having any chance to change the future she knew he was going to face.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it didn’t do anything to help her, but she gave me a wry smile all the same.

“I understood what it was when I agreed to it. And it wasn’t something I could have refused, no matter how badly I knew it was going to hurt when it was over.”

Tory stood and moved to the huge bathtub beside the window, casting hot water into it with a mixture of water and fire magic, her power already replenishing from the flames in the room.

I picked up the Book of Ether as she stripped off, not looking her way as I started leafing through it, despite having done so multiple times before. I kept replaceing new notes or incantations every time I looked at it, like the book had been judging me every time I gave it my attention and was willing to release a little more of its knowledge on each visit. I knew that made no sense, but I didn’t know how else to explain it.

“It says here that soul walking can be used to replace your heart’s desire, but the description doesn’t seem entirely like what you did when you located Darcy and Orion,” I said thoughtfully, reading over the use of various crystals to locate things like riches or lost treasure. “It’s not as simple as replaceing someone you share blood with, but I think it can be done.”

“What’s the cost?” Tory asked, her back to me as she climbed into the bath and sank down into the hot water.

I skimmed the page and winced. “Err, there’s heavy indication that an infant animal could be used in a sacrificial-”

“Ew. No. Give me a green Dragon asshole to bleed out in payment and I’ll be all over it, but I’m not murdering a baby bunny. What else?”

“It’s a little unclear, but there is a notation here which says ‘one month.’ Do you think that’s a month off of your life or a month of servitude to some goat beast, or-”

“A goat beast?” Tory asked, turning her head and arching an eyebrow at me over the rim of the tub. “What would I have to do for the goat beast? Feed it shoes and take it on walks up mountain trails?”

“Probably. Hang on, I think there’s more to this anyway…”

I trailed off as I read more from the book, turning the pages and cross-referencing with indexes and other chapters. Honestly, the entire thing seemed to have been written with the sole intention of confusing the reader, not a single spell or divine rite laid out clearly.

The door banged open, and Geraldine shrieked like a new-born velociraptor as she flung herself over the threshold, tears streaming down her cheeks as she raced towards Tory with her arms outstretched.

“Well, isn’t this cosy?” Seth commented as he and Max followed her into the room, closing the door again behind them while Geraldine half submerged herself in her efforts to hug a rather wet Vega. “All snuggled up in bed while Tory gets naked.”

“She was covered in blood,” I replied, my eyes still on the book as I beckoned him closer. “She needed to wash it off, don’t you think?”

“I’m surprised your tongue didn’t manage to get all of it without the need for the tub,” Seth sniped, his tone making me look up at him with a frown.

Max rolled his eyes at the two of us and headed into the en suite, muttering something about a public shit being less uncomfortable than this as he went.

“Nymph blood doesn’t really do it for me,” I deadpanned, wondering why Seth was being so fucking pissy. Was he considering what his mom had said about not being my Source? Was he really thinking about breaking off our bond like that for the sake of appearances?

My heart began to thrash unevenly as I considered it, and I dropped the book onto Tory’s pillow as I looked at him more closely.

“No? What does do it for you then, Cal? Because I’m replaceing it pretty damn hard to tell these days,” Seth practically growled at me as he held his ground by the door, and I shot towards him, meaning to meet that challenge in his eyes but falling still a mere breath from him instead, my hand snapping out to grip his throat. I didn’t squeeze though, my fingers brushing over his Adam’s apple softly instead, grazing his skin until I found the still unhealed bite wound, then lifting my eyes to his.

“If you plan on doing what your mom told you to, then just say it,” I challenged, my voice a rough whisper which I doubted the others could hear over Geraldine’s loud recounting of how worried she had been about Tory while she took on the job of washing her hair for her.

Seth’s lips parted on the words, the rejection shining in his eyes just like that fucking peace sign, waiting to taunt me tirelessly, but he didn’t speak them.

Something shifted and hardened in his eyes, his gaze sharpening as the Alpha in him rose its head and he bared his teeth at me again.

“No one else can handle you the way I can, pretty boy,” he taunted instead, knocking my hand from his throat before grabbing me by the front of my shirt and whirling me around so my back slammed into the door with a solid bang.

He was in my face instantly, speaking so close to me that I could taste every word as they passed his lips.

“The next time you come looking for a drink from your Source, I’m going to make sure you remember that. I’ll pin you beneath me and remind you who the most powerful Werewolf in Solaria is, and you’ll be offering me your throat in submission to prove that you haven’t forgotten.”

My heart thrashed at his words, blood thundering through my body at an impossible pace and my breath catching in my lungs as he shoved himself away from me and left me panting for him against the fucking door like some pathetic fan girl.

Seth stalked across the room, scooping a half empty bottle of tequila out of Tory’s things and taking a long swig from it, his back to me in a clear insult which I knew I should have been calling him out on.

But I couldn’t replace it in me to do it. He hadn’t rejected my claim on him. He was still my Source. And the promise he’d just given me made me ache for the hunt despite the fresh supply of magic I still had tearing through my veins from biting him less than half an hour ago.

Geraldine had bundled Tory out of the bath and wrapped her in a black silk gown, despite the half assed protests she was getting over all the fussing.

But as Tory let herself be guided into a chair and Geraldine bellowed a command for someone to bring a fresh platter of bagels, I could tell that she didn’t mind the attention nearly as much as she claimed.

The sound of the toilet flushing reached us, and Max returned to the room, a scowl passing over his face as he looked from me to Seth. I tightened my mental shields, not wanting him to see the messed-up shit I was dealing with at the moment. Max had his own pain to contend with, his relationship with Geraldine too, and I knew he was drowning in the constant flood of fear and grief the rebels were emitting at all times as well. He didn’t need my bullshit piling on top of that, and I refused to place the burden of it on him.

“Are you going to tell us where the fuck you’ve been then, little Vega?” Max asked, dropping down onto Tory’s bed and lacing his hands behind his head.

“I’ll tell you,” Tory agreed as Geraldine began brushing her hair, murmuring about wildebugs and snaggletooths living in it soon if she didn’t get all the snarly-gnarlies out. “But we’re going to need to focus on our plan to rescue Darcy, Orion, and Gabriel before we can do anything about it. The Hydra is still set to bellow at The Palace of Souls tomorrow, right?”

“As clearly as a moonday maw, my lady,” Geraldine agreed, and Tory visibly relaxed.

“Good. Because I am more than ready to get my fucking twin back.”