It should have felt wrong taking comfort from him, but it felt awfully, frighteningly right. Like he would have my back through anything now. But that couldn’t be true. It made no sense. We were still on opposite sides of a war. But I guessed that war would never come if Lionel seized the throne. He was an enemy to all of us now. Which currently made us allies.
“We need to deal with Kylie,” he said in a low tone as the storm around us started to fall away. “That girl has grown far too big for her fucking boots.”
I drew back, swallowing down the last of my tears. “Kylie Major is mine.”
He pressed his tongue into his cheek, a dangerous shadow entering his eyes. “You wouldn’t deny me the pleasure of being a part of that show though, would you babe? I have a few words I’ve been dying to say to her for weeks. But I figured you’d want first dibs so I’ve held off.”
I nodded, finding it strange to be on the same team as him for once. He lifted his hand, checking the flashy watch on his wrist. “It’s lunchtime. She’ll be in The Orb.”
“Then let’s go.” I stepped past him and sensed him following as I headed into the stairwell, the last of the storm flittering out behind me. My heart turned to stone as I hurried downstairs and Seth Capella walked at my side like a prowling animal on the hunt for a kill.
When we walked into The Orb together, eyes turned our way and Geraldine stood up with her mouth agape and a sandwich falling from her grip.
I ignored the stares, hunting for Kylie and spotting her with Jillian, Marguerite, Mildred and a bunch of their mindless Hores. I made a beeline towards her as adrenaline rolled smoothly into my limbs alongside a wave of magic. Tory moved to walk beside me, wordless as she realised where I was headed and suddenly Darius, Caleb and Max materialised too like they were drawn magnetically to Seth’s side.
Marguerite tapped Kylie on the shoulder to point us out as we approached, her face paling as she looked from the Heirs to me and my sister.
“Get up,” I demanded of Kylie as we crowded around their table and her eyes widened as she rose to her feet in front of me, looking to Seth.
“Sethy, what’s going on?” she asked innocently. “What are you doing with the Vegas?”
I’d spent the last two weeks thinking up all the horrible ways I wanted to destroy Kylie. And now she was before me, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wasn’t going to lower myself to her standards and humiliate her, ridicule her, hurt her. Not in the way she expected anyway.
I grabbed a fistful of her shirt, dragging her nose to nose with me and she shrieked, her hair bursting into venomous snakes that lunged for my face. But I was ready, casting an air shield close to my skin so their fangs slammed against it, unable to reach me as her complexion turned green and her eyes sharpened to slits.
“Get off of me!” she yelled, shoving my shoulders with a blast of air magic, but I cast air into my own back to keep myself rooted in place.
“You cost me the love of my life,” I said in a calm but dangerous voice. “He’s in prison because you couldn’t wait to destroy me the second you got the chance. And all over a Wolf I never laid a hand on. Do you understand what that makes you to me?”
“Your enemy?” she asked bitterly, looking to Seth again like she was expecting him to vouch for her.
“No, it makes you nothing,” I growled. “Just a worthless, waste of oxygen who I now no longer acknowledge as existing.”
“Why are you standing there beside that street trash over me, Sethy baby?” Kylie asked, her lower lip betraying her with a tremble.
“I’m not your baby,” Seth said coldly. “Haven’t been for a long fucking time. And even when I was, I wasn’t just yours. Never have been. I made it clear I fuck around. I don’t settle with one person until I find my mate. But you just kept denying it to yourself until I stopped correcting you.”
“I am your mate, you just haven’t realised it yet,” she insisted, pouting in defiance.
Seth stepped closer with a growl. “I am an Heir to the Solarian throne. You haven’t got enough power in your veins to fuel a bus. How could you ever think we would be mated? You’re just a low born, low mannered, low class snake.”
Her jaw dropped and though I’d pitied her in the past for Seth breaking her heart, I was done feeling sorry for her. She’d actively ruined Orion’s life. And I wanted her ruined in return.
“That’s not true!” she shrieked, still in denial and at this point it was just embarrassing.
“It is true,” Seth snarled dangerously. “You were just a handy lay when my pack weren’t around. And I am thoroughly fucking tired of your obsession with me.”
She finally fell quiet, her eyes turning to me full of blame as if I’d somehow caused Seth’s dislike of her. But she’d managed that all on her own.
In my periphery, Tory was squaring up to Marguerite and I could tell this might end in a brawl, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to strip Kylie of the one thing she valued above all else. Her pride, the respect she had from her little friends, the circle of safety she surrounded herself with.
“Kylie Major is no longer visible to anyone who supports me and my sister!” I called to the room and Seth flipped his fingers so my voice was amplified ten times over.
I caught Darius’s eye and he nodded with a dark glint in his gaze before I continued.
“You will not see her, hear her, or even smell the sickly sweet perfume she wears to hide the scent of evil on her,” I spoke clearly, my voice ringing around The Orb and Tory let out a little laugh of triumph.
“That goes for anyone who supports the Heirs too,” Seth suddenly boomed and I looked to him with a smile twisting up the corner of my lips. It was dark and savage and tasted new on my mouth. But it felt good to wield our power at long last over someone who deserved it. I thought of all the times she’d cursed me, laughed at me, of the time she’d spat on me. She thought I was beneath her, but she was going to get a rude awakening when she found herself at the bottom of the food chain in the next five seconds.
“If anyone is seen with her, they’ll get the same treatment. She is officially nothing,” Darius took over, a hungry glimmer of vengeance in his eyes.
Kylie’s jaw fell slack as if I’d punched her, but it was really much sweeter than if I had. Her friends started backing away from her and Mildred strode resolutely to the other side of the room with her shoulders pressed back and her head held high. Marguerite glowered at Tory then me for a long second before looking to the Heirs, bowing her head and scurrying away with the rest of her friends.
Kylie was left alone, shifting back out of her Order form as she started to shake.
The Heirs turned their backs on her and we followed suit.
“Wait!” she cried with desperation in her tone, but I couldn’t hear her. No one could. She was going to suffer alone and pay for what she’d done. Invisible, ignored, nothing.
The Palace of Souls felt like home and that was so fucking unreal that I didn’t even know what to do with it.
Spring break had been like a dream of escaping reality where me and Darcy had parked our relationship baggage at the door and made a damn good effort to leave it there. Mostly.
I may or may not have been messaging Darius a bit in the evenings. Or a lot. After seeing that video of what he’d done to Zane, I’d been pleased then pissed then unsure how to feel about it. I didn’t want him to charge off and fight my battles for me and Zane was someone I’d clearly left in the dust for a damn good reason. But then, after a few days of stewing over his Dragon macho bullshit ways, I’d watched the video again, seen the actual remorse in Zane’s eyes and felt…good. Vindicated even.
That asshole had sent me countless messages after I’d gotten out of hospital. Never once asking if I was okay but demanding I return to him, asking what my problem was, even chewing me out for the accident and trying to blame me for the argument that had caused it. Apparently, I should have realised that him letting another girl suck his dick was no bi
g deal because he didn’t kiss her or fuck her and he was thinking of me the whole time. Douchebag. I honestly didn’t know what I’d ever seen in him.
Okay, that was a lie. I’d seen freedom in him. He was twenty one, starting up his own gang, he commanded respect on the streets and always had a roll of cash in his back pocket. I’d stupidly thought that a guy like him could take care of me and Darcy, offer us a place to belong. That was before I realised that relying on someone else to take care of me was a dumb bitch move and vowed never to do it again.
And he was hot. Not Darius Acrux hot. But I’d always had a thing for danger and darkness, and wrap that combination up in a bundle of muscle and you basically had yourself some Tory kryptonite. Damn hot douchebags, I always knew they’d be my downfall.
Anyway, I’d moved on from Zane the-fucker-who-left-me-to-die-and-only-had-an-average-sized-dick-which-he-didn’t-know-how-to-use Baxter a long time ago. Even when I had nightmares about drowning in that car, he didn’t really feature in them. It was more about being trapped and alone than him abandoning me in particular. So I hadn’t had any grand plans of revenge for him. He really wasn’t even on my agenda in any way, shape or form. But seeing him brought so low and forced to admit he actually gave a shit about what he’d done to me was pretty gratifying. And the idea of Darius beating the shit out of him for me was kinda hot. Not that I’d ever admit it.
So following a week of giving Darius the cold shoulder over treating me like a princess who needed her honour defending, I looked around my giant ass palace one evening, admitted to myself that the princess part at least wasn’t entirely inaccurate, and decided to reply to one of the messages he’d sent me. It was a single word. Thanks. And it had kinda opened the floodgates for about a thousand messages since.
I now knew a hell of a lot about what it was like to grow up in a house with a tyrant, and he’d even opened up about some of the darkest shit that Lionel had put him through. I knew more details about his favourite Pitball team than I’d ever cared to know, countless funny stories about things him and the other Heirs had gotten up to over the years and much more besides. I’d traded him tales of shitty foster families, bike heists, the love I shared with my sister and a refusal to tell him how many ex boyfriends I actually had. Because there was no need for him to go hunting down all of them. For example, my fifth grade boyfriend Johnny Briggs really couldn’t be blamed for dumping me – I had flashed my panties at his best friend behind the slide after all. No way he deserved to have a Dragon visit him while he slept.
I didn’t let myself think about the reality of my situation with Darius when I was messaging him. Like the fact that this strange new relationship that was growing between us couldn’t actually result in anything more than this. I didn’t want to focus on the fact that I couldn’t really have him or even admit to myself that I wanted him. His messages made me smile. And for now at least, that was enough.
Darcy seemed to have come to terms with her separation from Lance. At least in some small part. She was still devastated and heartbroken, but she was also managing to compartmentalise it, force it out of her mind as much as possible during the day. She’d admitted to me that she was still crying herself to sleep at night though. But she didn’t want me to share her bed anymore. She wanted to learn to live with the pain of it on her own because there was a horrifying chance that this really would go on for years.
Each day we chose a new section of the palace to explore and now I hardly even got lost in the sweeping hallways and vaulted corridors. We’d decided to keep the Queen’s quarters as our main residence while we stayed here and I didn’t like to admit it out loud, but there was something comforting about being in the rooms that had belonged to our mother.
We were beginning to piece together more and more about our birth parents and had even faced reading some articles about the reasons for the Savage King earning his reputation. He was a monster alright. He’d been a ruthless and vicious leader, creating laws that were impossible to follow and punishing Fae who broke them with death.
But we’d also found a box filled with love letters he’d written to our mother hidden in their things and the tender way he spoke of her and even of his joy over her pregnancy made my heart ache.
It was so difficult to marry the two sides of him together and I still couldn’t figure out what kind of a parent he would have been to us.
Our mother was easier to get a feel for. She’d run charities and funded projects in the rougher parts of the kingdom. She’d started scholarship programs so that promising Fae from poorer families could get into academies, and had funded women’s shelters to help people escape from power abusive relationships. Though she clearly had a ruthless streak too. She’d swapped us for mortal children, knowing they would die because of it. She’d also intervened in some of the king’s cruel plans, but stood by his side while he executed others. I didn’t understand it. But I supposed what I did know about them for sure was that they loved each other and us. And maybe that was enough for me to make peace with some of my demons.
The palace was so huge that we’d eaten every single meal in a different room, terrace, veranda or garden since the day we’d arrived here and we still hadn’t run out of options in nearly two weeks.
We were eating breakfast out on the Duke’s Terrace (there were six freaking terraces in this place) on the last morning of our stay when a butler arrived to announce a guest.
Darcy looked up from her french toast and I shoved the last bite of my pancakes into my mouth just as Gabriel walked out to join us. His chest was bare and his wings were out and the butler looked like he might just choke on his own tongue as he looked at him. But after a week of tolerating my booty shorts, crop tops and sailor’s mouth, the staff were starting to realise that we were never going to be the traditional kinds of princesses, so I guessed he was trying to adapt.
We both jumped up to embrace Gabriel and he grinned at us before taking a seat at the little wrought iron table in the sunshine as we looked out over the stunning grounds beyond the palace. There were gardens dedicated to each Element and season, a winding river with magical little boats which took you on a circuit of the grounds if you hopped into one of them. There was also a menagerie of various magical creatures, each housed within their own perfectly acclimated habitat and more besides that which we hadn’t even begun to explore.
“Have you eaten?” I asked Gabriel as he turned his chair backwards and straddled it so that his wings had room.
“Not yet,” he admitted. “I was woken by a damn insistent vision which demanded I come and see you two today.”
I glanced at the lingering butler and leaned back in my chair. “Be a lamb, Jeeves, and get our friend some pancakes?” I said with a grin.
The servants had refused our insistence to stop waiting on us hand and foot and actually got pretty damn upset if we tried to do things for ourselves, so we’d eventually caved to the peer pressure. But I refused to take bossing them around seriously, so I asked for everything in the most douchebaggy way I could manage and layered on a heap of sarcasm for effect. I was actually pretty damn sure they loved it. But maybe not.
The butler scurried off and Darcy rolled her eyes at me. “Ignore Tory, she calls all the butlers Jeeves because she can’t remember all of their names.”
“Neither can you,” I pointed out.
I swear, that guy was one of about fifteen butlers and it wasn’t like they introduced themselves, they just appeared at random intervals with snacks and shit before disappearing again like ghosts. I was pretty sure they used hidden passages to get around, but I hadn’t figured out a way into them yet.
“No, but I just smile politely and don’t mention it,” she said like that was so much better.
“So, what else did your vision tell you to do?” I asked Gabriel as I looked at him with a smile.
“Nothing,” he replied. “But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was really important I come here today, so here I am.”
/> I exchanged a glance with Darcy and a shiver ran down my spine. I could admit that I wasn’t the biggest fan of divine intervention these days, but Gabriel’s visions had rarely been wrong. They’d also rarely been able to help either of us and I knew Darcy was feeling a little bitter over the fact that he hadn’t foreseen Kylie-the-cow planting cameras and fucking up her and Orion’s lives. But I guessed it was hard for him to focus on visions about so many different things and people all the time. And I knew enough about the way The Sight worked now to understand that if he wasn’t actively trying to focus on having a vision about something or someone in particular, then they didn’t often come to him unbidden.
Darcy opened her mouth to say something else, but as she did, she fell still, her eyes landing on the steps which led down from the terrace to the immaculate lawn beyond.
“Do either of you see that?” she asked in a low voice.
I frowned as I looked more carefully and my heart leapt as I spotted a bare footprint on the top step, glimmering with a faint silver sheen in the sunlight.
“We need to follow them,” Gabriel announced, pushing to his feet so suddenly, he almost upended his chair.
“Where to?” I asked as me and Darcy rose as well and the hollow look in his silver ringed eyes made my breath catch.
“The answers,” he replied in a voice filled with power which at once sounded like him and not like him at all.
His shoulders relaxed as the vision released him and I reached out to take his hand as he looked down at us in confusion.
“Are you alright?” I breathed as he shook his head like he was trying to clear it.
“That…it wasn’t like a normal vision. It was like the stars spoke through me.” The frown on his brow told me how unnerving that had been and I squeezed his fingers as Darcy moved closer to him too.
“We don’t have to do what they want,” I said defiantly. “If you don’t want to follow this path then I’m happy to tell them to go fuck themselves again.”
Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates: An Academy Bully Romance (Supernatural Bullies and Beasts) Page 63