Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight
Sorrow and Starlight: Chapter 77

The hunt was getting too close to our trails, the K.U.N.Ts everywhere and Nova analysing everything.

Gary was gone. Dead, most likely. The evidence discovered against him before any of us could do a single thing to stop them coming for him.

I hadn’t been able to sleep for the last week, not since we’d all tried to escape in the dead of night, only to replace the wards around the academy strengthened beyond all measure. There was no crossing them, no escape beyond the front entrance, and that was heavily guarded ‘for our protection.’ Students had been banned from leaving the academy grounds whilst a thorough search and investigation was underway to sniff out the rebels among us.

It was that fucking song.

The rage it had invoked in the man who claimed to be our king was beyond anything I could have predicted, and his retaliation had been swift and brutal.

Ever since that day in The Orb, the academy had been put into total lockdown under the guise of protecting us from the nefarious rebels who had supposedly snuck in here to sabotage him that day.

It was utter bullshit designed to placate our parents and anyone else on the outside.

Ever since that day, the K.U.N.Ts had been out in force, Nymphs and Dragon Guild members coming and going to aid in the hunt. Even the FIB had been tasked with discovering who had done it.

Gary had had the software on his Atlas, everything needed to create the song, as well as the original version which he’d spliced together.

We’d thought that we’d dealt with it by smashing it and hurling into the depths of Aqua Lake, but against all odds, some Siren K.U.N.T. had discovered it. The first we knew of that terrible twist of fate had been the thump of boots slamming against the floor of the Jupiter Hall corridor five seconds before the doors had been damn near blasted from their hinges, and our Cardinal Magic lesson had been invaded by a platoon of the FIB.

Honey Highspell had laughed as they pounced on Gary, and only Bernice’s hand snatching mine had saved me from joining him in his fate as I leapt to my feet, magic burning in my palms as I thought to save him.

It still gutted me to remember how I’d given in to the plea in her beautiful eyes, guttering my flames and retreating to the back of the room with the rest of our classmates as Gary was beaten and hauled from the room.

“Long live the true Queens!” he’d roared as they dragged him out of sight, nothing but bloodstains marking where he’d been sat mere moments before their arrival.

I’d been caught on those words, playing them over and over in my mind ever since he’d screamed them in that final act of defiance. Had they been the last words he’d ever spoken? Did I have the guilt of his death to lay as a burden upon me now? And was I an absolute piece of shit for half hoping they had been?

Because if they weren’t, if he had been taken away from here for interrogation, then I knew it wouldn’t be long before they came for the rest of us too. He knew our names, our faces, our crimes. All of it. And though I knew he would hoard those secrets with all he was, I also knew of the brutality the FIB used to extract information. No one could hold out forever against their methods.

That was why we needed a way out. But so far, every attempt we’d made had been thwarted, the wards too strong, the patrols too regular.

We were going to die here.

The thought had kept me from sleep night after night, even the moment of weakness I’d given into mere hours ago hadn’t been enough to calm those thrashing fears.

I tightened my hold on Bernice, trying to focus on how it had felt to give in to the desire between us at last. I’d offered her a bell and she had let me fasten the choker which held it around her throat. The tears in her eyes had told me she knew she wouldn’t be wearing it for long, that the future we might have hoped for wouldn’t come to pass now.

The purity I’d found between her thighs as I drove myself into her had eased the burden on my soul a little. I’d lost myself in the feeling of her body as the bell she wore rang with every thrust of my hips, letting everyone know she’d been claimed at last. And the way she’d mooed as she came for me, loving every inch of me, had made me explode inside her with a bellowing moo of my own. She was my cow now. The first of my herd and even as she lay sated and sleeping in my arms, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for that fact.

A bull was supposed to protect his cows. But my horns felt clipped, my hooves shackled in this place.

We’d struck a blow against the tyranny that was rife in this kingdom, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to fight, truly, in the army of the Vega Queens. I wanted to be there when they rose into their power and watch as they cut Lionel Acrux down.

I knew that future wasn’t certain, but I’d been dreaming of it every night for months now, aching to see that bastard’s head fall from his shoulders into the dirt at their feet.

A screeching sound in the distance had me bolting upright in my bed in Ignis House, Bernice complaining softly as I released her.

I pushed out of the bed, my pulse pounding as I moved towards my window on bare feet, a sense of unease pouring over me.

Dawn was approaching, but as I looked out, the sky was almost entirely dark, the rocky plane of Fire Territory spreading away beneath me towards the north of the school grounds and lit only by a faint glimmer from the waning moon.

I hunted the ground and sky, certain I’d sensed something out there and cracking my window open to get a better look.

There was a scent on the cool breeze which I inhaled deeply, frowning as I analysed the smell of something almost oily mixed with smoke. I was well used to the strange scents which coloured the air at the academy by now, recognising most of them from herbs to Orders to the taint of powerful magic, but nothing about that smell was familiar to me.

A flicker of movement caught my attention between a pair of jutting rocks in the landscape below, and I sucked in a breath laced with fear as I caught sight of eight huge legs, their knees turning back on themselves as a hulking beast of teeth and nightmares scuttled towards the House.

“Bernice?” I hissed, backing away from the window as my heart began to thunder in my chest, and I quickly grabbed some clothes, yanking them on. “Bernice, wake up,” I said more forcefully, yanking the covers off of her and exposing her naked body to me as she flinched at the cool air.

My heart ached as I looked at the bell hanging from her throat, and she blinked up at me in surprise. “What is it?”

“I don’t fucking know, but I think our time might have run out.” I swallowed thickly then snatched my Atlas into my grip, the only plan which I and the rest of the Undercover A.S.S. had been able to fully agree on coming together. We knew our days were limited. There was no way out of here, and it was only a matter of time before the K.U.N.Ts or the FIB or someone else came for us.

We would fight, but we knew we couldn’t win, so we’d offer the world the truth of our final stand instead. Each of us kept a chest strap with us at all times, ready to hold our Atlases in place so that we could live stream whatever happened to us out into the world via social media.

I didn’t want to die. But if our deaths were coming for us then I wanted them to hold meaning, I wanted the world to see what Lionel Acrux did to those who wouldn’t stand by and blindly follow him.

I hurried back to the window as I started the live stream on FaeBook and strapped my Atlas to my chest.

“My name is Milton Hubert,” I said to the microphone as Bernice dressed herself behind me and I hunted the darkness for any sign of that thing moving out there again. “And I am currently inside Zodiac Academy.”

I didn’t say anything else, unwilling to implicate myself in any rebel activities just in case I was wrong and they hadn’t come yet, but as the sound of breaking glass echoed through the building below me and the screams of my classmates carried into the air, I was filled with the certainty that it had.