Xavier cried out as he fell but his screams suddenly became whinnies as the huge, lilac Pegasus burst from his skin, shredding through his clothes as his wings unfurled and caught on an updraft.
I caught it all on camera, laughing excitedly as he levelled out then beat his wings and started flying up and up and up towards the clouds which were lined with silver as the moon shone through them.
Catalina rushed forward like she meant to rip my Atlas from my hands, but as her gaze fell on her son out of the window, her lips parted and a beautiful smile graced her mouth.
Xavier shot into the clouds and out of sight and I finally ended the recording.
I typed out a FaeBook post with the video attached and glanced up at Catalina with my thumb hovering over the post button. I had over a million followers on there now, and if I hit that button, the word would be well and truly out.
“The only reason Lionel maintains his hold over him is because it’s a secret. Pegasuses are one of the most common Order forms there are. Unless Lionel wants to alienate all of them, he’ll have to come out in support of his son. The only power he holds here is in keeping it a secret. Once it’s out, it’s out.”
“He’ll kill you for exposing this,” she breathed, her eyes wide with fear.
“I’m pretty sure he plans on killing me anyway,” I said with a shrug. “At least if he kills me for this, it was for something that matters.”
“I-”
“Tell him I came here and spoke with you about Darius. Tell him I made some excuse to get you to leave the room and by the time you came back I’d done this. Put all the blame on me. I mean that.”
“Okay…” she said hesitantly and I met her eye.
“Do I need to make you swear it on the stars?” I growled.
“No. I’ll tell him. Thank you, Roxanya.”
“It’s Tory. Only Darius calls me Roxy and I can’t make him stop, but I don’t want anyone else making a habit of it,” I said. Although at this point if Darius started calling me Tory it would probably just be weird. Not that I’d ever admit that I was okay with the Roxy thing.
“Okay. Thank you, Tory.”
I smirked at her and hit post.
Catalina gasped as Xavier’s secret went viral and I glanced down at my Atlas as reactions and comments began to pour in before I locked the screen.
Shit, what if Daddy Acrux really does kill me for this?
“Run, Tory,” Catalina breathed, real fear dancing in her eyes. “Run for the gate and get back to the academy before he comes back. If he finds you here-”
“Consider me gone.” I barked a laugh as nerves made my heart flutter.
Catalina smiled at me before ripping her dress off, knocking her hair free of its perfectly styled bun, flashing me those gloriously fake tits and leaping out of the window after her son. She transformed as she plummeted and my lips fell open as a stunning silver Dragon burst from her flesh.
She beat a path up towards the clouds just as Xavier dipped beneath them with an excited whinny.
I quickly raised my Atlas and snapped a picture of the two of them dancing through the sky before I took a running jump out of the window too.
My wings burst to life at my back and I flew hard and fast along the drive until I soared over the gates, beyond the anti-stardust wards where I landed quickly, my boots skidding in the gravel.
I grabbed the stardust from my pocket and winked at the startled guards half a second before I tossed it over my head and the stars whisked me back to the academy.
I stumbled as they deposited me and suddenly strong arms locked around my chest from behind, making me scream in surprise.
A hand slapped over my mouth and I stilled for a moment as the scent of smoke and cedar overwhelmed me.
Darius dragged me back through the hole in the wards, pulled me through the fence and shoved me up against a huge tree at the edge of campus before he took his hand from my mouth.
His hands landed either side of my head as he penned me in, glaring down at me with an angry as fuck Dragon peering out of his eyes, his pupils transformed into reptilian slits and a hint of smoke slipped between his lips. He was only wearing sweatpants and I got the impression he’d flown here to ambush me the moment I returned. I guess he didn’t like my FaeBook post.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded.
“Whoa, chill out dude,” I said, pressing my hands to his chest to push him back. He didn’t move a single inch and I just ended up with my hands pressed to his rock hard muscles, his heart pounding frantically beneath my right palm.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” Darius snarled. “Father could kill Xavier for this! He could-”
“He won’t,” I snapped angrily. “He can’t. Don’t you see that? The only power he held over Xavier was in keeping his real Order form a secret. Now everyone knows, he’s free. Killing him wouldn’t change the truth. And he can’t very well alienate every Pegasus in Solaria by making his Orderist bullshit public knowledge. He’ll have to let Xavier leave the house, join a herd, fly.”
Darius was staring at me like he didn’t know whether to kill me or kiss me and as my gaze fell on his mouth, I found myself aching for the latter. Fuck the stars.
“She has a point,” Caleb’s voice came from the shadows behind the massive Dragon who was taking all of my attention and I turned my head to find him, Seth and Max all watching this exchange with interest. That would explain the stars not smiting us or whatever other bullshit they might want to do. Though I was guessing I should really stop touching him…not that I did.
“You did this to…help him?” Darius asked like he couldn’t understand why the fuck I’d do that and I narrowed my eyes at him.
“I’m only an asshole like, ninety percent of the time,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “The other ten percent I’m a fucking saint. So yes, I did it to help him. Turns out I only hold two members of your family in low regard.”
“You pushed my brother out of a fucking window,” he growled.
“I would have caught him with my air magic if I had to. Besides, this way Daddy Acrux can’t try and claim he was in on it. It’s a genius plan and you know it. Plus, your mom told me to post it so I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Mother?” Darius scoffed. “She hardly notices anything beyond appearances. The last thing she’d encourage is a scandal like this. She-”
“That’s not true, she loves you, she just…” I trailed off as the deal I’d made with Catalina stayed my tongue. I’d sworn not to tell a soul about the way I’d freed her from Lionel’s Dark Coercion and I wasn’t going to take even more punishment from the stars by breaking my word.
“Just what?” Darius demanded.
Phoenix fire burned hot beneath my skin and my palms twitched against his chest as a thought occurred to me. One I really should have considered before now if I hadn’t been so caught up with studying, the shadows, cheer practice and just plain old pining away for this monster before me to think of it.
“Do you trust me?” I asked, my fingers shifting on his skin just enough to draw his attention.
“Why?”
“I want to try something. Something I did for your mother. But you’ll have to stay still while I do it.”
Darius looked at me for a long moment and a faint tremor in the ground beneath my feet let me know that the stars had realised just how close we were to one another. Even with company they didn’t like us to touch each other, though it seemed to take them a lot longer to notice if we were.
Darius exhaled angrily but his eyes shifted back as he managed to rein in some of his temper, their deep brown colour ringed with black once again.
“I trust you,” he growled and the other Heirs muttered something behind him, but I didn’t care to hear it because there had been a sincerity in his words which reached out and touched my soul. He meant it. For whatever reason, despite everything we’d been through, he was still able to put his trust in me.
His muscles tightened beneath my hands, his eyes widening as he looked at me but he didn’t pull back, waiting as the liquid fire tore beneath his skin and sought out any signs of Lionel placing restrictions on his soul.
It only took me a moment to find one then another and another. I gasped as I found more and more and more of them. So many binds and restrictions on things he could say and do that I couldn’t even count them as I tore them all down, burning through them one after another.
My hands began to shake and my legs trembled as I blazed through my gifts, but I refused to stop until each and every piece of dark magic was shredded from his soul.
I gasped as I burned through the final one, my knees buckling as I fell against him but he caught me before I could hit the ground.
“You…” Darius lifted me into his arms, staring at me with wide eyes like he didn’t even have words to explain what I’d just done for him.
“What happened?” Max demanded as he moved closer, trying to get a look at me while Seth and Caleb jostled him.
Thunder crashed through the sky overhead and as I looked up above Darius’s head, I realised we were being sheltered from the storm by a huge air shield.
Lightning slammed from the sky, crashing into it and Seth cursed as he just managed to take the brunt of the blow with his magic.
“Put me down,” I murmured.
“You can’t even stand,” Darius snarled.
“I’ll take her,” Caleb offered and a ferocious growl tore from Darius’s lips as he reached out for me.
Caleb bared his teeth right back for a moment then managed to school his expression.
The ground beneath our feet was shaking even harder now and with a curse, Darius closed his eyes and handed me over to Caleb.
Everything began to calm down almost instantly and Darius growled again as he looked at me in Caleb’s arms.
“Just chill out, man. I’m only holding her,” Caleb huffed.
“Tell us what the hell she just did to you,” Seth pressed, his gaze fixed on Darius as he reached out and brushed a hand over his arm in a comforting gesture.
“She…I think she…but I don’t understand how-”
“Phoenix fire burns through bullshit,” I supplied. “I just released him from every Dark Coercion spell Lionel has ever placed on him.”
The Heirs all turned to stare at me like I’d just told them an alien named Clive lived up my butt and I sighed as I leaned my head back against Caleb’s shoulder. I felt like I’d just gone ten rounds in the ring against a Dragon with toothache. My eyes were hooded already and I was pretty sure that if we stood here much longer I’d fall asleep.
“Thank you, Roxy,” Darius breathed and the look he was giving me made my heart do a weird squeezing kind of thing as I bit down on my bottom lip.
“Well, like I said. I’m only an asshole ninety percent of the time,” I joked, not really knowing what to do with the way he was looking at me. “But, if it’s all the same to you guys, I just want to go back to my bed and-”
“Take her back to my room,” Darius said, his gaze flipping up to meet Caleb’s. “Make sure there’s a fire roaring in the grate so she can restore her magic while she sleeps. I’ll sleep at the Hollow tonight. There’s things we all need to discuss.”
“Fuck yes,” Seth said enthusiastically as Max laughed darkly and I had to wonder just how many secrets Darius had been forced to keep from the other Heirs and what exactly was going to change now that he didn’t have to keep them anymore.
“I’ll meet you there,” Caleb said, tightening his grip on me as Darius handed over his room key.
Darius hesitated right beside us and reached out to run his fingers along the side of my face. “You were right you know,” he breathed as if the others weren’t surrounding us and as I looked into his eyes, it almost felt like they weren’t. “I’m not good enough for you.”
I didn’t even have time to respond before Caleb shot away from him, leaving the safety of Seth’s air bubble and tearing off into the storm with me in his arms.
I scrunched my eyes up against the hammering rain as we sped through it and before I knew it, we were outside Darius’s door and he was turning the key in the lock.
“I’d rather just go back to my own room,” I protested but Caleb ignored me, shooting straight inside and placing me on my feet beside the bed.
In a blur of motion, he shot around me, yanking off my boots, jeans and crop top before dumping one of Darius’s shirts over my head on top of my underwear then scooping me straight into the enormous bed and tucking the blankets right up beneath my chin.
“Caleb!” I snapped, but he just laughed.
“I’ve seen it all before anyway, sweetheart,” he joked as he sped off again, yanking the window and shutters closed before using his magic to light a huge fire in the grate.
The warmth of it washed over me and I sighed as my inner Phoenix bathed in the magic of the flames.
“I don’t wanna sleep here,” I muttered as Darius’s scent enveloped me and a whole host of regrets came whispering in my ears. But I was so exhausted from using my gifts that I just couldn’t stop my eyes from fluttering shut.
Caleb laughed softly. “I’ll lock the door and push the key back under it so you can escape in the morning.”
“Asshole,” I murmured.
“Always,” he agreed, flicking the lights off and the door clicked shut before the sound of the key turning in the lock followed.
I was too tired to argue further but before I gave in to sleep, I snagged my Atlas from the nightstand and forwarded the photograph I’d taken of Xavier and Catalina flying together in their Order forms to Darius. He deserved to see evidence of his mother’s love after all of these years and the knowledge that they’d all been denied that bond for so long made my heart ache for them.
A moment later, a message came through from him and I smiled to myself as I read it.
Darius:
Thank you, Roxy. This means more to me than words can convey.
My cheeks flushed at his reply and I bit my lip as exhaustion pulled at me. I sighed to myself as I nestled down in his bed, trying not to linger in the memories of sleeping here with his arms wrapped around me, feeling like nothing and no one in the world could ever hurt me so long as I just stayed right there. Maybe I should have listened to those instincts. Because his bed didn’t feel the same without him in it. And for the first time that I would admit to myself, I had to wonder if I’d made a terrible mistake when I said no.
I ran on the treadmill at full speed, pushing my body to its very limits. I’d taken the beating of a lifetime last night. There’d been so much blood, I’d feared for a second Father wasn’t going to stop. But I shouldn’t have doubted, because now that my Order was exposed to the world, he couldn’t kill me. Not anytime soon at least. Tory Vega had given me the protection I needed. And not just that, she’d saved me from any more sessions with Gravebone too. His mind tricks had made me question my own head, but since last night, I felt like myself again.
I never had chosen the Dragons in my hypnosis, but he’d gotten frighteningly close to persuading me that way. Closer than I liked to admit. I just hoped that asshole took a long walk off a short pier sometime soon and fell into a fiery pit of lava.
In an hour, the press were going to arrive along with the other Councillors and the Heirs to celebrate my Emergence. It was laughable. In fact, after my mother had healed me from Father’s attack last night, I’d laughed my fucking ass off. Because now he was going to be forced to let me out in public. He was going to have to send me to school. To Zodiac. It was only a matter of time before I’d be Awakened in the summer and ready to start my education in September. I’d move out of this house, this hell.
My gut twisted suddenly and I banged my fist against the emergency stop, the treadmill slo
wing to a halt beneath me.
I took in heavy breaths, my mind latching onto Mom. She’d stayed with me late into the night, apologising for everything. I didn’t care that I was nearly a grown man, I’d curled up into her arms and drank in the feeling of her surrounding me, trying to make up for every lost hug we’d missed out on. But then she’d gone away. And now we had to act as if she wasn’t healed. Because that was what she was. My father was a disease that ate into the minds and hearts of others. His desire for power had corrupted him a long time ago and his need for control meant he’d fought to mould us into the ideal, mindless little puppets he needed us to be. If people really knew what he was like, if they knew what he’d done…
I swallowed the hard ball in my throat and stepped off of the treadmill as I caught my breath. Leaving this house and going to Zodiac Academy was something I’d hoped for my entire life. But that was when I’d thought that Mother was as heartless as Father. Now…how could I leave her here in good conscience?
The answer was simple: I couldn’t.
So I needed a plan, some way to get her out of this life before I was carted off to school in September and she was left to the misery of Acrux Manor alone.
I headed out of the gym and was soon showered and heading back to my room. Mother had laid out a fine white dress shirt and dark trousers on my bed for the photoshoot. The Acrux family crest was embroidered on the breast pocket in gold; two dragons reaching toward a single flame above them, their tails intertwined where our surname was printed.
I dressed in the smart clothes and headed to the mirror on the wall, using some product to push my curling hair back. I never usually bothered, but today was a special day. One I was determined to enjoy. I wanted to see my father’s skin stretching back over the shiniest smile he could muster for the cameras. I wanted to feel the discomfort hiding behind his eyes, sense the blood rising in his neck when his friends congratulated him. I was going to bathe in every delicious moment of it. I’d take a hundred beatings for that. Today was mine. And I was going to own every second and commit each one to memory. I knew things weren’t going to be plain sailing from here. But they were surely going to get better. They had to.
Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates: An Academy Bully Romance (Supernatural Bullies and Beasts) Page 34