I reached out for them on instinct before curling my fingers up and pushing them through my hair instead. Totally smooth. He was wearing Tory’s friendship bracelet, the leathery vines intertwined together in an intricate design. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I didn’t want to think it was sweet, but dammit I did. Orion’s dark eyes lingered on me for a moment, making my heart race as I gave him a cool look in return. Not that you’ll find out how sweet I think it is.
Gabriel moved to examine the rings on Orion’s wrists and I frowned as I realised they were shadows writhing beneath his flesh.
“I knew we couldn’t move you from here. But I couldn’t see why. I can never see the damn shadows,” Gabriel murmured. “Fuck Lionel.”
“Father clearly hasn’t thought of everything though,” Darius said with a look of determination in his eyes. “You can all get in here.”
“What good does that do?” I asked, feeling Orion’s gaze on me again which I refused to meet.
I felt like he was trying to examine my very soul, and it was making the hairs on my arms raise. I didn’t like him looking at me like that, but a part of me didn’t want him to stop either.
“Well I’ve still got my father’s diary. And now I know how to access it,” Orion said and I just had to look at him as my heart lifted.
“You do?” I asked.
He nodded. “I can read it under the light of the full moon apparently.”
“Which was two days ago so now we’ve got to wait for another fucking moon cycle,” Darius said and Seth punched him in the arm. “What the fuck?”
“Why didn’t you text us, asshole. We were worried about you,” Seth growled.
“Sorry brother, I left my Atlas back at the academy. And Father let me stay with Orion so I…” He cleared his throat as the two of them shared an awkward look. “We haven’t been able to really fulfil the needs of the Guardian bond in a long time.”
“Oh, I see. Say no more.” Seth winked, strolling casually over to me and slinging his arm around my shoulders. He turned his head, whispering in my ear. “Butt sex.”
“Seth,” I snorted a moment before a freight train collided with us as Orion shoved Seth away from me with a snarl, putting himself between us.
“Woah, what the hell?” I gasped as Orion went full fucking animal, his fangs on show as he glared at Seth in a clear warning to stay away.
Seth gazed back at him with a taunting smirk like he was wholly up to the challenge. But this was not going any further.
I ducked around Orion, shooting him a glare as I moved to stand beside Seth again.
“He’s on our side now. Me and him are good,” I growled, planting my hands on my hips. “Hasn’t Darius explained that to you?”
Orion’s pupils were fully dilated, his eyes moving from me to Seth as his jaw worked furiously. “He’s explained plenty, but I’m not so quick to forgive,” he hissed and my heart galloped faster.
“Trust me, I’m not quick to forgive either,” I said icily. “But things have changed with me and Seth. There’s a lot that’s happened since you’ve been in prison.”
“A lot,” Seth emphasised.
“I know,” Orion snarled, his shoulders tensing and Gabriel moved to stand in front of him and block me and Seth from view.
“Relax, Orio. Sit down. We need to talk about the diary,” Gabriel said, gripping his arm tightly and leaning in close to speak in his ear. “Oh and if you ever shove my sister like that again I’ll rip one of your arms off.” He said it so calmly, but the darkness in his eyes said he’d absolutely do it. Aw, I love my psycho big brother.
Orion tsked. “I didn’t shove her,” he growled then walked over to a drawer beside the bed and took out a leatherbound diary.
“No, you just bowled into me like a stampeding rhino,” I said lightly and I swear Orion smirked before he flattened his lips and turned away again.
That small, tiny, infinitesimal sliver of light between us made my stomach flutter and I internally started stamping on every bastard of a butterfly who dared show up for him.
Darius set about casting an illusion spell in front of the windows so it would look like only he and Orion were in here. Lionel may have been away for the weekend, but I wouldn’t put it past any of his minions to rat us out if they suspected anything strange going on here.
As I moved through the room, I gazed beyond the floor length windows along the far wall. They looked out onto an L shaped swimming pool and hot tub. I could just make out the palace in the distance and my heart clenched at the thought of Lionel residing in it. It didn’t belong to him. It was mine and Tory’s and I planned on dragging him out of it as soon as damn possible. Preferably in a body bag.
“Can you go anywhere on the grounds?” I asked Orion.
“Pretty much,” he grunted. “Only during the day though. Lionel has guards lock me in here from six pm ‘til dawn.”
That’s gotta be better than Darkmore, right? I moved to sit in a chair, but Seth caught my hand and dragged me down beside him on the couch, nuzzling into my hair. I batted him off absentmindedly, working to focus on the diary and nothing else as my eyes kept skipping over to Orion and the taut muscles of his stomach. I mean seriously, could someone just put a shirt on that man?
You’re not distracted by Darius going around all shirtless and shit.
Well he’s a tuna sandwich dammit.
Orion started telling us about everything he’d learned from the Guild member he’d met in Darkmore. When he mentioned the password which had revealed a secret message to him in the diary from his father, my mind whirled with all that it meant. Had my mother and his father really foreseen all of this happening? Had they been friends?
“So what does Lionel know exactly?” Gabriel asked, resting his elbows on his knees to the left of me.
“He doesn’t know much as far as I can tell,” Orion said thoughtfully. “Just that I’m the only one who can read the diary and decipher what’s in it.”
“How long is he going to keep you here for?” I asked. Was he going to be forced to return to Darkmore once Lionel was done with him? And how were we supposed to stop Lionel getting any information while Orion was stuck here being made to work on the diary? I couldn’t help but be relieved that at least he was away from the psychos in Darkmore, but now he was living in a maniac’s backyard. It was like being pulled out of a box of acid slugs only to be thrown into a pool of Griffin shit.
“I don’t know,” he said, levelling me with a hopeless look. My heart clenched. I had the urge to smooth the frown on his brow and tell him we’d find a way to fix this, but it wasn’t my place anymore. And he wasn’t owed shit from me anyway. “He forced me to make a star vow with him that I’d make every effort to find the Imperial Star. But that’s pretty vague so he’s left me a lot of wiggle room.”
Darius smirked. “My father’s so cocky, he’d never even consider the possibility that you might work around his vow.”
“Well, that’s because he thinks I give a shit about what he’ll do to me if he finds out,” Orion said dryly and my gut yanked.
“He won’t do anything to you,” Darius growled, though the silence following his words said we all knew he could make no such promise. And I despised knowing that.
“Have you seen Clara?” Gabriel asked gently and Orion shook his head.
“No,” he sighed, then turned to me, his eyes full of sadness. “Is Tory like her?”
“She’s not like Clara really, she’s just…lost,” I said as something inside me shattered.
“I’m sorry,” Orion murmured. “Have you made any more progress with figuring out how to rid her of the shadows?”
I shook my head and Darius stood up suddenly.
“Try it now, we missed our session last night,” he said, beckoning me up from my seat.
I frowned. I hated hurting him every time I did it wrong, but I knew it was the only way to work it out. “Maybe we should wait until we get back to Zodiac.”
&n
bsp; “I want to see,” Orion said firmly. “Maybe I can help.”
“You’re not a professor anymore,” Seth pointed out super unhelpfully and Orion growled dangerously.
“He knows about dark magic though, idiot.” I shoved Seth in the forehead and he grinned at me, looking like he was about to jump up and start a play fight. “Stay,” I mocked him like he was a dog, pointing a finger at him and he nipped the end of it with a smirk.
I shook my head at him with a half smile and turned to find Orion standing right behind me, looming over me like a damn tower.
“Come on, show me this shadow shit,” he demanded.
“Did you have to come all the way over here to say that?” I muttered, side stepping him and feeling him follow a hair’s breadth behind me as I walked over to Darius. Goosebumps rose along the back of my neck and I was glad of my long hair to hide them from the intimidating shadow currently following me. What was with the stalking??
I reached for Darius then my eyes snagged on a pile of jewellery, blades, metal objects and coloured stones laying on a table beyond him. “What’s all that?”
Orion shared a look with Darius. “Lionel is having his Nymphs bring me all kinds of shit that could be concealing the Imperial Star.”
Gabriel started laughing, cracking up and we all turned to him while he tried to pull himself together.
“What’s so funny?” Seth asked with a grin.
Gabriel reined it in, shaking his head then his face returned serious. “I can’t really say.”
“Oh come on,” Seth pushed. “You can’t do us like that.”
Gabriel shook his head. “If I say, it’ll change everything.”
“So it’s good news?” I asked hopefully, but Gabriel said nothing, obviously fighting the urge to laugh again.
“Come on, let’s get on with it,” Darius said, turning me to face him again and Orion stood beside us, watching closely. Yep, him just standing there like a big hot Vampire ex-boyfriend is really helping me focus.
I took a breath, reaching up and resting my hands on Darius’s shoulders and letting my eyes fall closed to concentrate. My Phoenix flames burned hotter under my skin as I tried to feel out the shadows living in Darius. He brought them to the edge of his body and they brushed against my flesh like a cold caress. They didn’t call to me anymore. There was no way for them to get past my defences. I just wished I could offer the same to those I loved.
My flames rushed out along my arms to meet with the darkness in him, burning it back, but I could only destroy those that coiled outside of his flesh.
“Do it,” Darius commanded and I knew he’d cast himself into my flames and be consumed by them if it would help bring Tory back. Because I’d do the very same.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to do it, pushing my flames into his flesh and urging them to seek out the shadows in him. He hissed between his teeth and my eyes flew open, meeting the deadly gaze of a Dragon as he allowed himself to burn in my power. His skin began to blacken and I groaned as I forced the flames deeper, hating myself for hurting him but knowing I had no other choice.
Orion groaned then suddenly dragged me away from Darius, forcing my arms behind my back and burning himself in my fire as it circled up around me.
“No!” I cried, but he held onto me as he drew me away from Darius and I realised it was his Guardian bond. It wouldn’t let him stand by as I hurt his Ward.
Orion clutched me hard against his chest and I quickly extinguished the flames, my heart hammering at the scent of burning flesh. Seth rushed over to Darius, lending him magic to heal fast and I twisted around in Orion’s arms, inspecting the damage I’d done to him with frantic hands. My fingers brushed the burns on his chest and arms as I quickly cast healing magic, my breaths coming heavily, matching his. The scent of cinnamon hung around him and I wanted to lean in and drown in it. Oh god, oh god.
“Stop,” Orion grunted, catching my wrists and I looked up at him, finding his eyes were a sea of pain that I wasn’t sure had anything to do with the burns I’d laid on him.
His jaw tightened and he released me, shooting away across the room to stand behind Gabriel on the couch.
I straightened my spine, averting my gaze from him and making sure he didn’t see how shaken I was. I was flushed, angry, hurt, turned on, all the emotions that burned. It suddenly struck me that all the times I’d hurt Darius in an attempt to burn the shadows out of him, I’d been hurting Orion too. He felt all of Darius’s pain, cursed to feel it and know his Ward was in trouble. But he could never come and help. I couldn’t even understand the kind of agony that must have caused him. All this time I’d been torturing him and I hadn’t even known. It made me feel sick.
“You can’t do it while I’m with you,” Orion said with a sigh, but I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. If I did right then, he’d see through me to the deep and bloody wound he’d left on my heart that still wasn’t healed. “Keep practising at the academy.”
“You can record it,” Gabriel said to me and Darius, reaching into his pocket for something then tossing Orion an Atlas. “Here, it’s got all our numbers in it. No, don’t hide it there,” he said as Orion took one step toward a large blue dresser with little sea animal ornaments on it. “Hide it in the cupboard under the sink.”
“Got it,” Orion muttered, pocketing it.
I frowned at Darius, silently asking if he was alright and he nodded, but his jaw was tight, clearly frustrated I’d failed once again. As much as I needed to continue trying to destroy the shadows in Darius, I despised the idea of hurting both him and Orion again. But what choice did I have?
I walked over and hugged Darius, thinking of Tory with everything inside me just hurting. It wasn’t only him I was letting down, it was her. I just wished I knew what to do.
Seth joined our hug, nuzzling into Darius and whimpering softly. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, and I wanted to believe that, I really fucking did. I just didn’t know what I was doing wrong so I could fix it.
Seth’s hand roamed down my back and fell onto my ass, squeezing as he pulled me and Darius closer.
“Er-” I started, but he was suddenly ripped away from me by a whip of air and thrown across the room. He flew over a chair, his foot catching on a vase and sending it crashing into a wall before he hit a window face first.
Gabriel lost his shit as he laughed, this clearly being the exact thing he’d seen before.
“What is your problem?” I rounded on Orion with a growl as Seth leapt up and cast two spears of wood in his hands.
“Come on then, asshole,” he snarled. “Bring it the fuck on.”
“Seth,” Darius warned as Orion bared his fangs at the Wolf.
I put myself between them and glared at Orion with my hands raised and shards of ice growing on my palms. “You wanna fight? Then you can have one.”
“I’m not fighting you,” Orion snarled, trying to side step me so he could aim at Seth, but I moved into his path again.
“If you’ve got something you want to say, then spit it out,” I demanded and Orion’s eyes flashed furiously as we just stared at each other.
Silence stretched between us and my breaths came unevenly as I waited for him to spill it. He looked like a predator on the hunt, but I wasn’t going to be his prey. Never. Again.
Orion dropped his hands, shaking his head and turning away from me with his shoulders dropping.
Gabriel stood up with a frown, his eyes shooting to the sliding doors that led out toward the pool. “Someone’s coming. We have to go.”
“Shit,” I cursed, running into the kitchenette with Gabriel and Seth.
I glanced back over my shoulder as Darius pressed a hand to Orion’s back and they shared a tense look which I didn’t understand.
“I’ll be back at school on Monday,” Darius said, throwing us a taut look.
“I have some ideas on how to remove the shadows, I’ll talk them over with Darius,” Orion said, like he was speaking to me but
he didn’t look my way.
“Fine,” I said stiffly as Seth took my hand and pulled me down to unlock the hatch. There was a faint marking in the grain of the wood, but it was barely noticeable. It lit up as I touched it then we quickly slipped inside and pulled it shut, my chest tightening as we headed into the dark.
Seth squeezed my hand. “Forget him, babe.”
“He’s forgotten,” I said lightly like I wasn’t affected by seeing him again. But I was. And I knew I’d forget about Orion the same day the stars decided to give us all a break and blast Lionel to pieces with a flaming meteor.
Well, a girl can dream.
“Oh, by the light of the big, blue moon, a narwhale sang in the great lagoon. ‘I am but a fish in need of a kiss, and I tell you this as my dying wish.’”
“What song is that?” Angelica asked as I sang my dilly dally to the stars, offering it up to them in hopes of buying us some good fortune after a long day of classes.
It was dark out here between the trees and there was no one to hear us despite the silencing bubble I’d used to hide our passage.
“It’s nothing, dear Angelica,” I said. “Merely a ditty to appease the stars on this – the night of the great A.S.S. ramming.”
“Are you certain you want to stick with that name?” Angelica asked, that dubious tone to her voice which she kept using when I brought this up.
“Angelica, dear,” I began on a sigh. “Are we or are we not about to meet in a clandestine, Order mixing, law flouting, gathering of the biggest A.S.S.es you know?”
“Well, yes, but-”
“And are we, or are we not about to ram our truth down the throats of those vile K.U.N.T.s?” I proceeded.
“Yes. But-”
“So are we A.S.S. ramming or are we ramming the K.U.N.T.s? Because so help me, Angelica, I can’t think of a simpler way to phrase our noble work.”
She seemed on the cusp of further nonsensical arguments when we rounded a turn in the bend and we came upon the place where it was all to take place. The first official meeting of the A.S.S. since that unworthy reptile had placed his scaley behind upon the throne of my ladies and sullied it with his loathsome presence.
Zodiac Academy: Fated Throne Page 21
