I felt the bitterest and sharpest of all the emotions, hate, malice, anger, hurt, all tangling together like I’d swallowed a hundred sharp objects and washed them down with cyanide.
Seth’s expression wasn’t goading anymore, his features were contorted in concentration and effort as he battled to keep his shield in place. I struck at it again and again, my arms aching, sweat pouring down my spine as I gave this everything I had. I did it for Orion and me and Tory and even Darius. I did it to spite the stars and to cut down my enemy who’d made it his personal mission to ruin me the moment I’d walked into this school.
With one huge, final, splintering whip, his shield gave out and the fire wrapped around his limbs, upending him and searing huge burns across his bare chest. I doused it in a heartbeat, my final move decided as I poured the last of my magic into ice, letting it encase every part of his body right up to his neck, binding him in a freezing chamber until he couldn’t move a single muscle except his tongue. Enough to give me my victory.
“Yield,” I demanded, the world falling quiet around me as I stood over him, panting, battered, bruised. But triumphant.
Seth bit down on his tongue, saying nothing and I let the ice sharpen to a collar of knives around his throat.
“Yield,” I hissed, the shadows whispering in my ears, telling me to end it. They wanted his blood to spill and part of me did too. They latched onto that darkness in me and added kindling to it, coaxing it until it was a blaze I couldn’t ignore.
“Yield, you idiot!” Darius barked and Seth groaned.
“I yield,” he huffed and my friends went crazy, diving on me and pulling me into their arms. But I couldn’t stop staring down at Seth as I melted the ice from his body and he rose to his feet. It felt good to beat him. But it wasn’t enough. It didn’t bring Orion back. It didn’t fix anything.
I lifted my head to find the whole school looking at me, some in awe, some in horror. I grabbed Tory’s hand, pulling her out of the crowd and giving her a look that begged her to come with me. She nodded immediately, stripping off her shirt so she was left in her crop top and we took off into the sky without a backwards glance.
We raced across The Wailing Wood and I spotted King’s Hollow in the distance, the roof of the treehouse calling to me. The Heirs wouldn’t be heading there until the lesson ended and the wards around it kept it private from weaker Fae, so I led Tory that way until we landed on top of the slanted wooden roof and sat with the evening birdsong filling the air around us.
I dropped my head into my hands and tried to take even breaths, but I couldn’t seem to manage it.
“That was incredible, Darcy,” she said, resting a hand on my back as I hid behind a waterfall of blue hair.
“Why don’t I feel any better?” I asked through my teeth. My heart was drowning in a vat of acid. My hopes and dreams had long since melted in it too. And when I thought of Orion, the pain of it made me sick all over again.
“Because beating Seth doesn’t bring him back,” she said gently and I nodded, clawing a hand into my hair and tugging to try and force myself to feel anything but the hurt in my chest.
“He can’t go to prison.” I looked up at her through watery eyes, desperation lacing my tone. “He can’t. He -I-”
She pulled me into her arms and I held onto her, clinging to the other half of me. My twin, the night to my day. She was in pain too, and somehow in her arms it felt a little lighter. Like she was carrying some of mine and I was carrying some of hers.
“We’ll figure it out,” she promised and I nodded against her shoulder, trying to find some sliver of a possibility to hold onto. But everything seemed so bleak.
Silence stretched between while we just clutched onto each other and the sky turned to dusk, then to total darkness, and the stars glittered pitilessly down at us.
“I spoke to Darius today,” Tory broke the quiet at last and I pulled back from her with my lips parting.
“I didn’t mean what I said, it was out of order-” I blurted, guilt swelling up inside me.
“No, you were right,” she cut over me, nodding firmly. “I needed to hear it. And you’re the only one I could have heard it from.”
I gave her a sad sort of smile. “What happened?”
“I told him the truth. How I feel and all that shit. And he…told me he loved me,” she breathed and tears pricked my eyes for a whole different reason.
“That’s great, Tor,” I said earnestly, though I knew it couldn’t change anything now. Not unless we found a way to fix this. And I swore on everything in this world, that I would. I took her hand and we dropped back to lie on the roof without a word passing between us, gazing up at the cruel sky.
“Do you think the stars hate us?” I whispered like they could hear me, my eyes automatically seeking out Orion’s belt and wondering if wherever he was, he could even see the stars tonight. Or if he was locked in the dark like some criminal, some heathen.
“Maybe,” Tory breathed.
“Maybe they’re the souls of all the spiteful Fae who came before us, stubbornly clinging to the sky instead of passing beyond the veil. Maybe they want to punish the world for the miserable lives they left behind.”
“I hope not,” Tory said, her fingers squeezing mine. “But if they are, then we can still defy them. They don’t control us.”
I wanted that to be true for her sake, for Orion’s. But a quiet part of me knew it wasn’t true. In a world where the zodiac ruled our lives, our paths were just a roll of the dice. And once the dice had landed, our fate was set in stone. I just hoped our dice were still rolling. And there was a chance for us all yet.
There were many things my father had taught me which I wished I could scour from my brain, but in some things, I had to admit he was right. Though I didn’t appreciate his methods of educating me on them.
On my eighth birthday, Mother had been throwing one of her grand parties to celebrate and half the damn kingdom were invited, very few of whom were actually my age. As the youngest of the Heirs, the others had been teasing me about my birthday mattering the least and I’d made the mistake of muttering complaints about the entire affair within earshot of Father.
Even then, I really should have known better, but I could admit that being born to be one of the most powerful men in the kingdom had made me into a bit of a brat at times. He’d moved to stand over me, his hulking form blocking out the sunlight as I sat pouting by the marquee and casting me in shadow as he’d sneered at me. The key to being the most important man in the room is in knowing it’s true right down to the very fabric of your soul, Darius.
He’d driven his point home by making me choose one of the servants at random and I’d picked a Fae called Osmond who was four times the size of me and had been employed to tend the gardens at our manor for my entire life. He was a man I’d been fond of, who’d played ball with Xavier and me from time to time if our father was away for work. He was kind and had plenty of friends and I was young and stupid and didn’t realise that whoever I picked would be in for something bad.
Father called him into the house and brought him to the music room where the open space was built with perfect acoustics in mind.
At eight years old I was a big kid, my Dragon blood showing through even then, but I was still only around the size of most thirteen year old boys.
Father had wrapped me in a silencing bubble with him and explained just how much more important my life was than pretty much every other Fae alive. He told me that that meant I could take any of them and do whatever the hell I wanted to prove that point and they would thank me for my efforts while kissing my feet.
I was still in awe of my father then, naïve enough to take him at his word and act on his commands eagerly as I tried to win his approval, but that was the first time I hesitated to follow through on what he wanted.
He hit me so hard, I was deafened in my left ear and blood coated my tongue as I fell against the wall.
You are under no illusions that I’
m the most important man in the room now, aren’t you, Darius? So go and show that Fae how important you are.
I’d lifted my chin and stalked into the music room where Osmond was waiting. He offered me this strange, sad kind of smile which I couldn’t understand at the time but I realised now was something between acceptance and pity.
In my coldest voice, I’d commanded him to his knees before me because he was far too tall for me to attack effectively while on his feet.
The first strike of my fist against his jaw had rocked pain up through my arm and a spike of fear through my chest. I’d glanced back at Father where he stood watching lazily from the doorway and he’d raised a single brow at me as if to ask if that was all I had.
The next punch I landed was harder and then harder again. I kept hitting Osmond until he fell to the floor before me and my knuckles were split and bleeding, then I started kicking him. My muscles burned with strength and this incredible feeling of power as he took each and every strike I dealt him just because of who I was.
When I was out of breath and speckled in blood, I finally fell still and looked down at him in triumph, though guilt twisted through me too. Father had approached slowly, his polished shoes echoing on the hardwood floor as he closed in on me and my victim.
Do you want to pay the man for helping you learn this lesson, Darius? he’d asked, pulling a thick wedge of auras from his pocket. I could see enough hundred aura bills to know there was well over ten thousand there. But the look in father’s eyes said that that was another test too.
I’d reached out carefully and taken a single aura from his hand, dropping it onto Osmond dismissively and the smile Father had given me in return was all monster. He was thrilled.
He’d healed my ear but left my knuckles split and bloody for the party to prove to me that I could do anything I wanted and no one would ever dare question me. Because I was more important than them.
No one aside from the other Heirs asked why my fists were busted and Father bought me more gifts than any child could possibly need, including my first motorbike and a Faerarri. And for too long I’d been proud of that act.
Osmond still didn’t raise his head in my presence to this day and now when I looked back on that lesson, I knew that the worst part of it all was the value I’d put on his life. A single aura. It was somehow worse than if I’d offered him nothing.
It was a lesson I wished I’d learned in any other way, but it was a valuable lesson all the same. From that day on, Father had enforced my superiority complex by teaching me to belittle and ignore other Fae as easily as breathing. And it might not have been a pretty lesson to learn, but there was some truth to it. In almost every situation I ran into, I was the most important man in the room. And I had no trouble at all in reminding other Fae of that.
I strode down the grey corridor in the Fae Investigation Bureau building in central Tucana with Mr Kipling keeping pace three steps behind me where I didn’t have to look at his sombre face. He was the best lawyer I knew, more than capable of handling any and every little problem which came my way. From persistent stalkers who I wanted off my case, to covering up any accidental murders I might have to deal with. Luckily that last one hadn’t been an issue for me yet, but if it ever was then I knew who to call. He was a Griffin, smart as a whip and one of three brothers who ran a legal empire based on fixing anything and everything a Fae might need. And best of all, they weren’t affiliated with my father. Dante Oscura had pointed me in their direction years ago and if they were good enough to keep half of the infamous Oscura Clan gang out of prison then I was more than confident that they would be able to help Lance too.
We strode through the waiting room where other Fae sat in hopes of gaining an appointment and I ignored them entirely.
Several uniformed officers stared at me in shock as I strode straight through a set of security doors and three of them actually tried to stand in my way. I knocked them aside with a blast of water magic and encased them against the wall in ice for good measure without even slowing my stride. Each of them were well trained and more than capable of fighting back, but they didn’t. Because I was Darius Acrux, the most important man in the fucking room.
Kipling breathed heavily behind me which was enough to let me know he was loving this power play. He was a man of few words, not wasting time on anything he didn’t deem necessary, but over the years, I’d learned to read his ticks and tells. And I was pretty confident he liked me. He was the oldest brother of three and was the one I dealt with most. With my constant issues with the press, admirers, straight up stalkers and so on, we spoke pretty damn regularly. He was only in his late twenties but something about him made him seem so much older, like his soul had seen and done so many things that it had lost all the lustre of youth too young. He was tall and heavily built with a square jaw and cold, calculating eyes. In fact, the three brothers all looked so similar that it was hard to pick them out of a line up, but this one was the leader. Just.
I kept going until I reached the commanding officer’s door and threw it open without knocking. Agent Hoskins shoved himself to his feet with something akin to a snarl on his face. He was a big bastard, a Manticore with a reputation that had the criminal underbelly of Solaria pissing their pants in their sleep. But I wasn’t afraid of him.
“Save it,” I snapped before he could try and reprimand me. “I’m here for a meeting with Lance Orion. I brought his lawyer and I suggest you don’t keep me waiting if you like this job.”
Hoskins puffed himself up as his muscles tensed defiantly. “Lord Acrux, I-”
“Lord Acrux isn’t here and I assure you, I’m a lot less amenable to bullshit than he is,” I growled, my eyes shifting to Dragon slits as I stalked towards him and used every inch of my height and bulk to intimidate him. He might have been big, but no fucker could rival an Acrux Dragon for muscle mass. “You will go and get Lance Orion now, or you’re going to find yourself with one hell of a problem on your hands.”
The head of the FIB swallowed thickly as he held my gaze for five long seconds while the weight of my power settled over the room so potently that it made the hairs prick up along the back of my neck. He finally dropped his eyes to somewhere around my chest and inclined his head to show submission.
“I’ll have him brought to an interview room. If you can just wait-”
“Now,” I snarled and he blanched just enough to let me know he was afraid of me. Good. He should be afraid.
Hoskins lifted a phone on his desk and quickly dialled out to get some other agents to bring Lance out to meet with me.
“If you can just wait for Agent Bravas to come and escort you to-”
“You’ll be escorting me,” I snapped before turning my back on him in the most insulting way I could manage and striding back out into the corridor.
Kipling was hiding the edge of a smile as he followed me from the room and all of the agents beyond the door were trying their damn hardest not to point and stare as their boss hurried around me to lead the way on like a whipped little bitch. No doubt they’d all suffer his rage once I was gone but for now, I had his balls firmly cupped in my palm.
We headed down long, grey corridors and through locked doors before I spotted Lance walking towards me, herded on by a group of six agents.
They ushered him through a door before I could do more than meet his eye and I strode in a moment later to find him sitting in a bare room with a table and three chairs laid out for us. His hands were manacled in magic blocking cuffs which one of the agents was about to chain to a bolt in the centre of the metal table.
I flicked a ball of fire at the agent, striking his hands and making him drop the chain with a shout of pain before he could lock it in place.
Every other agent in the room lurched to whip guns from their hip holsters and I growled loud enough to make them shit themselves.
“If any one of you aims a weapon at me, I’ll gladly cook your ass in Dragon fire for treason and piss on your smouldering bo
nes for good measure.”
Mouths popped open, guns were lowered, wide and terrified gazes were levelled at me from all around and I growled again to make my point.
“Get the fuck out,” I snapped and they all fucking ran to do so without even waiting for Hoskins to okay it.
“Attorney client privilege states that this conversation remain private and cannot be spied on,” Kipling said in a curt voice as he turned to face Hoskins in the doorway and pulled a small, cylindrical device from his pocket. He pressed it to the wall and raised a solitary eyebrow. “You have three hidden cameras and an amplification spell cast on this room.” He slid the device back into his pocket with a calculating look. “That’s a major infraction. When was the last time you were given food, Mr Orion?” he added without looking at Lance.
“They gave me a slice of bread last night,” he grunted.
“Three square meals a day, a clean cell, a shower and fresh clothing are mandatory requirements for Fae incarcerated in a holding cell while awaiting prosecution. This isn’t Darkmore Penitentiary, Agent Hoskins, Mr Orion has Fae rights which must be adhered to. Innocent until proven guilty.”
“I’ll get him a proper meal and a change of clothes for his return to his cell,” Hoskins grunted reluctantly.
“He will require a suitable, clean mattress, warm blankets, constant access to toilet facilities and water at all times. I’ll be checking in to make sure he has all of those things,” Kipling said in a flat tone as he turned to place his briefcase on the table.
“Consider it done,” Hoskins grunted.
“Oh, I do,” Kipling agreed. He pulled out his curofile and I couldn’t help but watch the magical object with fascination as he opened the white binder and lifted a freshly inked page from the top of it before pressing his finger to the base of the paper and imbuing it with his magical signature.
Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates: An Academy Bully Romance (Supernatural Bullies and Beasts) Page 52