“Am I missing something here?” I asked.
“He’s going to find out before the end of summer anyway,” Gabriel said with a shrug, his eyes on Roxy. “And he will keep it secret until we’re ready for the world to know.”
“Know what?” I demanded.
Roxy sighed and cut me a look. “During spring break, we kinda figured out that Gabriel is our half brother.”
“What?!” I yelled, my voice echoing off of the glass roof above our heads as Roxy arched an eyebrow at me. “You’re a Vega?” I demanded, looking back at Gabriel like I’d never seen him before.
“No. He’s our mother’s son,” Roxy said, rolling her eyes at me like I was being dramatic. “He’s also the greatest Seer of our time and we aren’t ready for Lionel to find out and paint a big fucking target on his back. So…”
“Shit.” I stared between them for a long moment then just swiped my hand over my face. “Anything else you’ve been hiding from me?”
They exchanged another look and I growled at them.
“Nothing you need to know right now,” Gabriel said, closing off the conversation as he offered me the deck. “Just focus on the question you came here to ask.”
I blew out a breath and forced myself to calm down, focusing on Roxy beside me. On how much I wanted her to be mine and what I’d be willing to sacrifice to make it so.
As I reached for the cards, one of them sang for me and I pulled it from the deck instantly.
Roxy placed her card down and none of us were surprised to see The Lovers looking up at us. I placed The Devil down beside it and chewed on the inside of my cheek. That wasn’t the end of the world, The Devil could represent restriction, but it could also mean addiction and I certainly felt like I was addicted to Roxy Vega.
Gabriel offered her the deck again and she placed The Tower down. Chaos, upheaval, personal transformations…the various meanings behind the card were the kind of things we could expect by trying to change our fate like this.
My next card was The Star which would have been good if it hadn’t been reversed. Despair, disconnection…failure, if I was reading it right, which I didn’t want to believe for a moment I was.
Gabriel’s jaw tightened and he offered Roxy the deck again. The Wheel Of Fortune. In reverse. Fuck.
Roxy chewed on her bottom lip and Gabriel gathered the deck without commenting, shuffling them again.
“I warned you,” Gabriel muttered, seeming irritated by the fall of the cards.
“Did you read an answer there?” I asked.
“Not really,” he huffed. “Heartache, chaos, carnage – that’s basically the recipe book for your relationship anyway. It’s certainly not a yes or no.”
Roxy released a breath of laughter as she drew another card. The Lovers.
This time Gabriel got her to draw every card and then he laid them out slowly, muttering beneath his breath as he interpreted them.
“It’s not looking good,” he admitted as he gathered the deck again.
“So how bad is it?” I demanded, but he just held the deck out for me without answering.
I went through another reading with him in silence and eventually he just huffed and gathered the cards up.
“Nothing,” he replied with a sigh. “Nothing concrete anyway. It’s like your fate is balancing on a knifepoint and until you tip the balance one way or another, I can’t see how this will play out for you. I won’t be able to get a better read than that unless something changes. And even then…”
“What?” Roxy demanded.
“I still don’t know how much the stars will reveal. I think that this is just something you’ll have to try and figure out together.”
Gabriel’s shoulders dropped and I huffed out a breath as I turned to look at Roxy. Her jaw was set in that stubborn way which I’d come to know as her don’t fuck with me look. It was actually pretty hot when she didn’t have it trained on me.
“I can try scrying,” Gabriel offered. “And tealeaves. I’ll get a crystal ball too and…”
I frowned at him as he trailed off and fell unnaturally still, his eyes glazing over as he was lost to a vision.
“Fire,” Gabriel growled in a voice which echoed off of the walls around us and sent a shiver of dread coursing down my spine. “Everything you know and love burning. Chaos and carnage. The end of all you seek. The rise of The Devil.”
“What?” Roxy gasped, reaching for him, but I snatched her hand and yanked it back. I knew better than to touch a Seer when they were lost to a vision.
There was a strange smell in the air like sulphur and the iron tang of blood.
Gabriel gasped and tipped his head back, looking up at the glass dome above our heads.
We looked up too and my heart leapt as I watched the water writhing against the glass until a vision appeared within it.
Roxy’s fingers tangled with mine and I grasped her tightly as a ripple of dark energy coated the room.
I watched as the vision showed my father, lifting something wrapped in a red cloth and holding it close to his chest as triumph blazed in his eyes. The stars screamed and cursed as he began to unravel it and I shook my head in a fierce denial as the object he held bent them to his will.
The heavens turned against everyone we cared about. I could only stare as they showed us Lance in prison, silent threats lurking all around him and growing more dangerous the longer he remained behind bars. Darcy fell into a well of sorrow and rage, lashing out against the world without a care for her own fate. The other Heirs and Xavier were swept up in the carnage as bad luck trailed them, keeping them from happiness and putting them in danger time and again.
Meanwhile, luck favoured my father. He wielded the Imperial Star and used it to achieve his plans as he cast my mother aside and rose to the throne with Clara at his side.
A shadow fell over the whole of Solaria as his power grew and grew and even though I knew the visions couldn’t predict the movement of the Nymphs, I felt in my heart that it was their influence I was watching.
“Chaos, carnage, despair, death,” Gabriel’s voice echoed off of the walls and an unbearable coldness slid into my veins. “Unless you find the Imperial Star first.”
The vision faded and my gaze slid to Roxy’s as she looked back at me with a fearful look in her eyes.
“Is he going to win?” she breathed, tugging her hand back out of mine like she was going to bolt, but I moved to block her escape.
“Wait,” I begged, my voice cracking as I tried to get my head around what we’d just seen. “There has to be something we can do. Maybe if-”
“What if it’s already too late, Darius?” she demanded. “If his power grows like that he’ll kill me. He’ll kill Darcy. I can’t let that happen.”
Gabriel panted as he shook off the effects of the vision. “He hasn’t found it yet,” he growled. “There’s still time. Still things that could change this fate.”
“What can we do?” Roxy asked, shifting forward like she wanted to comfort him from the horror of the vision he’d just been subjected to.
“I…” Gabriel concentrated for a moment, his eyes glazing before he huffed in frustration. “The exact answer is hidden from me. But I do know that he’s on the right trail and if we don’t come up with a way to draw his attention away from his search then we won’t have the time to find it before him.”
“How long until he finds it?” I demanded and Gabriel’s gaze unfocused as he dove back into the swirling current of his visions to try and find our answer.
“Three weeks. Unless you manage to stall him,” he replied finally. “There are six ways this can go and only two of them will stop him from finding it in that time frame. But the price of stalling him will be high.”
“What?” Roxy demanded. “What is the price?”
Gabriel frowned as he hunted for the answer and when he finally gave it, my blood ran cold.
“A royal sacrifice,” he announced. “Of the highest kind.”
“It won’t come to that,” I growled, refusing to even consider it. No one would pay in blood and death to stop my father. He’d caused too much pain already.
“That’s all I know,” Gabriel said, dropping his head as he fought against the weakness brought on by the intensity of the vision.
“Then we’ll find the star before him,” I announced. “Three weeks is plenty of time to screw with his fate.”
Roxy watched me with wide eyes as I got to my feet and strode from the room, leaving her to care for her brother.
It tore at me to abandon her after I’d just sworn to fight for her, but I had to figure out how to find that fucking Imperial Star before my father did. Because as much as I’d been raised to hate and fear the blood of the royals, I knew now that the real monster in this kingdom had always been much closer to home.
And I refused to let him hurt Roxy or her sister while I still drew breath.
I trudged back to Aer Tower in my filthy Pitball uniform, my mood somewhere between misery and despair. It was the last day of term and we’d lost the final Pitball game of the season, meaning Neversky Academy had won the tournament.
The past three months in training had been abysmal. Professor Prestos had taken over coaching, but between her busy social life and the Elemental Combat classes she’d taken over from Orion too, she was finding it hard to cope. It made me realise how much of his time he’d given to this school, how he’d actually been more dedicated than half the staff here. Our training had fallen apart without him, and with me and Darius constantly distracted, it hadn’t helped in our final match. We’d only been two points down, but it was still a sore loss for the school. Especially when they hadn’t lost out on winning the tournament cup in years.
I didn’t even remain at the stadium to get changed, I was heading back to my room for the longest shower in the history of Fae kind then I’d pack for tomorrow. Tory and I would be heading to the Palace of Souls for the summer. We’d passed our exams with flying colours, but even that wasn’t enough to soothe the eternal, crushing ache in my heart over Orion.
My friends had said it would get easier, but if anything it was getting worse. A bitter reality was setting into me now and part of me just wanted to curl into a ball and hide away for the summer. But I couldn’t do that. We had to try and find the Imperial Star before Lionel did. And with nothing to go on except a few ancient legends we’d dug up in the archives, I wasn’t sure how we were going to pull it off.
Darius had Xavier spying on his family as much as possible and Gabriel was spending hours every day forecasting to try and get a glimpse of where the star was hidden. So far, they’d had little luck. But we wouldn’t give up. Tomorrow, Tory and I were going to hunt through the library at the palace. Geraldine said there were whole tomes about the star in there, so the sooner we could start looking for more clues, the better.
I kicked off my shoes as I arrived at my room, locking the door and stripping off as I headed into the shower.
After a couple of hours, my bag was packed and I sat on my bed in some black shorts and a grey sports bra as I thumbed through a book about the ancient royals, the heat in the air growing stifling. I cast frost over the ceiling and cooled the air to shake off the summer warmth, listening to the laughter of students out in the halls as they readied for tonight’s celebrations.
My Atlas pinged and I checked my messages, finding a couple from Tory after I’d missed dinner. She hounded me at every meal to make sure I was eating and I loved that she cared to make sure I didn’t fade away. It had been a while since I’d skipped a meal, but tonight held a weight to it that I couldn’t escape. It was the last day of our first year at Zodiac and I should have been celebrating with Orion. I should have been thanking him for everything he did to help me get here. Instead, we were thousands of miles apart and he was stuck underground in some miserable hellhole. I’d kept to my word and hadn’t written to him, but even so, Darius had made no progress in encouraging him to agree to the appeal. Which made me truly fear he was never going to.
I spent the rest of the evening reading everything I could about the royals, but found no clues to the star’s whereabouts. When I finally finished the book, it was gone midnight and my mind was on overdrive with worry. We really have to find something tangible to go on soon or we’re screwed.
I moved to the window, cracking it open to let some air in and my gaze snagged on a light in The Wailing Wood. It was in the direction of King’s Hollow, but it was too dark to tell exactly where it was coming from. I guessed the Heirs were still up partying.
My mind played tricks on me as shadows danced down on the grass below and I shivered as I moved away from the glass and dropped onto my bed.
I picked up my Atlas, scrolling through FaeBook posts as I tried to stop the quiet from dragging me back to the dark thoughts which were always hovering on the edges of my mind. A post about Orion made my stomach knot and I couldn’t help but pause on it.
Marguerite Helebor: Three reasons why I believe Professor Orion would never Dark Coerce a Vega into screwing him…
1. Er, why would he bother? The girl has blue hair and talks to ravens. Unless he’s got a thing for freaks, there’s no way he’d pick her of all students to risk his reputation on. #hehadbetteroptions
2. He wouldn’t need to Coerce her to do shit. She was always drooling over him in class (according to a reliable source). I bet she begged to suck his dick on a daily basis. #teacherspet #ibetshegotonherkneesforit
3. See number 1
Conclusion: Darcy Vega can perform Dark Coercion! Isn’t it obvious? She forced Professor Orion to screw her then made him take the blame for it in court. We need to watch our backs everyone! Even Professor Highspell agrees. #darkvegas #likefatherlikedaughter #theressomethingnotrightaboutthem
I tossed my Atlas down beside me with a growl. Now why did I torture myself by reading that?
Marguerite only had a couple of brain cells, but she’d worked real hard at rubbing them together to come up with that vicious little post. It had fifty likes already and I couldn’t believe people were actually lapping up her bullshit. It was bad enough that they swallowed Orion’s story, now they were making up their own too.
I rolled onto my side with a huff, taking comfort in the fact that I at least wouldn’t have to see her or any more of the bitch squad for the whole summer.
My Atlas pinged and I picked it up again, my heart beating out of tune at the sight of a group message from Gabriel to me and Tory.
Gabriel:
The love of my life just went into labour! I’m heading home. Wish me luck!
P.S.
I’ll come to the palace soon and help you search for the Imperial Star. If I see anything in the meantime, I’ll let you know.
The biggest, most genuine smile I’d worn in ages spread across my face and I sat up in bed as I tapped out a reply, sending him a string of happy emojis at the end of it. I couldn’t wait to meet my little niece or nephew. It was crazy to think we had a family, one that was actively growing too. After meeting Gabriel’s family a few months back, I couldn’t wait to have them over to the palace in the summer. Especially now there was going to be a whole new little life to meet. Oooh and have cuddles with. I shot Tory a quick message though she hadn’t replied to Gabriel’s yet so I guessed she was asleep.
Darcy:
Dibs on first cuddles!
My smile wouldn’t go away and it was so good to actually feel happy for once. I gave up on trying to settle down and slid out of bed, kicking my sneakers on and heading out the door, not bothering to bring my Atlas as I didn’t have any pockets. I’d go for a walk to expend this wild energy and try to calm my mind enough to get some sleep. Though I couldn’t see it happening anytime soon. On top of this exciting news, I also had a pile of books to work through on my desk that might glean us some information about the Imperial Star. If I couldn’t sleep then I could see a long night ahead of me searching through them. But right now, I just needed some air.
I soon stepped out onto the plain of grass beyond Aer Tower and headed across it into The Wailing Wood. I moved into the glowing orange light of one lamppost to the next, wondering if I should swing by The Orb to see if any of the A.S.S. were hanging out there. A lot of people had turned in for the night or headed home already. It was strange to think of this place sitting empty all summer and I was sure I was going to miss it.
The air was hot against my skin as I wound deeper into the forest, taking the long route that circled back around toward The Orb.
Footsteps padded somewhere along the path behind me and I turned to look back, finding no one there. I tried not to let that unsettle me, but found myself upping my pace when the footsteps sounded again then the leaves rustled somewhere above me.
It’s just Fae in their Order forms.
But for some reason, it didn’t feel like that. It felt like I was being watched….hunted.
I upped my pace and readied magic in my palms just in case and the footsteps sounded behind me once more.
I glanced back over my shoulder, casting fire into my palms and hunting the darkened path with my heart pounding harder against my chest. I’d travelled a fair distance from the last lamppost and this corner of the track was thickly shrouded in shadow.
Maybe I should fly out of here.
A bone curdling rattle started up right behind me and fear slashed through my heart as I swung around. Hands grabbed me and a scream tore from my lungs, echoing up into the night before magic pressed into my lungs and stopped the sound dead, trapping it in my chest and cutting off any chance of anyone knowing I was in trouble.
I growled at the world as my Atlas rang, drawing me from sleep and I tried to hide beneath my pillow in an attempt to ignore it.
Who the fuck is calling me now?
The moment the call ended, another one started up and a tingle of unease ran through me as I wondered who the hell would call me so insistently in the middle of the night.
Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates: An Academy Bully Romance (Supernatural Bullies and Beasts) Page 73