Zodiac Academy: Fated Throne

by Caroline Peckham

  "I know," I said simply because the infection of dark magic into my limbs was anything but awful whenever I welded it. There was something addictive about it which I knew was what made it so dangerous. But with them living inside me, it was damn hard to resist them at all times.

  Relief spilled into Roxy's expression as thunder boomed overhead again and I realised that she'd erected an air shield which was the only thing keeping us out of the storm now that we were alone together again. Fucking stars.

  I took the pouch of stardust from my pocket without another word and tossed it over our heads as I concentrated hard on our destination.

  The stars spun and lurched around us and I gritted my teeth as I pushed us through the divide between realms. The stars finally spat us back out in a darkened alley where the scent of fried food and cigarettes rose up around us accompanied by the sound of a large crowd and busy streets.

  Roxy caught my bicep to steady herself then gasped as she yanked the sleeve of her sweater back and stared down at the Aries mark on her arm. She rubbed at it like she expected it to come off then frowned up at me in confusion when it didn't.

  "I can hardly even feel him," she said, her lips parting in astonishment. "How?"

  "Lance told me the mark didn't bother him anywhere near as much in the mortal realm. We guessed maybe because it’s impossible to actually measure the distance, the magic is confused by it or something," I explained, drinking in the relief that filled her features as she continued to brush her fingers over the mark binding her to my father. “Have you ever been to New York City before, Roxy?”

  Her eyes widened as she turned to look towards the street where bright lights lit up the far end of the alleyway and I just watched her as a smile tugged her lips up.

  "No freaking way," she murmured before taking off so suddenly that I was hard pushed to keep up with her.

  She jogged down the alley and straight out onto the busy sidewalk, sucking in a breath as she tipped her head back to look up at the bright lights and signs of Times Square.

  A man almost walked straight into her, banging against an air shield she'd placed close to her body a moment before impact and he swore as he stumbled back.

  "Get out of the way, you stupid bitch," he snapped and a growl escaped me as he stalked away while Roxy sighed in pleasure.

  "Did you hear that, Darius?" she asked, turning to look at me, her eyes bright with excitement which soothed something deep inside my soul. "Angry locals swearing at people just trying to have a good time - isn't it beautiful?"

  I snorted a laugh and she smiled at me a little shyly before turning and darting away into the crowd.

  I was taller than pretty much everyone here so it wasn't too hard to keep track of her, but I still muttered a curse to myself as I took off down the street after her. She navigated the crowd like she knew exactly where she was going even though I was almost certain she didn't.

  "Roxy!" I called as she managed to pull ahead of me, darting between the crowd and slipping around the flood of people as if they were hardly any bother to her even though I found it almost impossible to get around them.

  I lost sight of her as a yammering crowd of tourists following a guide cut across my path and bit my tongue as I looked over the heads of the people all around me with my heart thumping faster as I hunted for her.

  Just as I was about to roar at the people closest to me to get out of my fucking way, a warm hand slipped into mine and I looked down to find her smirking up at me with laughter in her eyes.

  "Come on, country boy, stay with me and I'll get you through the carnage," she teased tugging me into motion and pulling me between the throng of bodies.

  "I'm not a country boy," I growled, but the smirk on my face wasn't leaving and as she snorted a laugh at my expense, I found I didn't even care what she called me.

  "Says the dude who grew up on an estate even bigger than mine which housed four people instead of forty thousand. Come on, Darius, don't try to pretend you know how to survive out on the streets. If I abandoned you now you'd end up lost within thirty minutes and you'd probably be discovered wandering around down by the Hudson in three days’ time with no shoes and a wild look in your eye that said you've seen things you can never unsee."

  She laughed and I jerked on her hand as I stopped walking, tugging her back towards me suddenly and making her crash into my chest as her eyes widened in surprise.

  "I hope you're not trying to challenge me here, Roxy," I said in a low voice, not giving a shit about the flood of people who were muttering curses as they were forced to part around my broad frame to continue their walk down the street.

  "You can't seriously think you could survive out here without any magic or money, do you, rich man?" she teased.

  "I'm a big boy, people tend not to want to fuck with me," I assured her.

  "Hmm." She ran her gaze over my frame slowly and I suddenly realised that I was still holding her hand and as of yet, the stars didn't seem to be doing anything to force us apart. The crowd was hiding us even better than I’d hoped and to make it even better, in the mortal realm, nobody knew who we were. "So maybe no one would dare to beat you down," she conceded slowly. "But you'd still starve to death."

  "And you wouldn't?" I arched a brow at her and she shrugged innocently before pulling a handful of scrunched up dollar bills from the back pocket of her jeans. I counted over a hundred dollars as she waved it before me tauntingly.

  "Well, these tourists just offered to pay for my dinner tonight. Though I might have to work a little harder if I need to pay for a hotel room - especially here in the city."

  I probably should have called her out on stealing from all of these strangers where anyone might have spotted her, but we were in the mortal realm, so I guessed she wasn't really risking her reputation with anything she did here. Not that she’d ever seemed to give a damn about her reputation anyway. And I was not so secretly enjoying getting this look at the girl she'd been before she'd found out she was Fae and a princess and everything else that came with the Vega name.

  "I'm not sure you've got enough there to buy yourself a dinner in one of the fancy ass restaurants around here," I teased, laughing as her nose wrinkled in distaste.

  "I'm really not meant for mixing with high society," she said and I could see that she meant that in the purest possible way. She wasn't bitter about it, like a girl standing outside a grand party looking through a window and wishing she could join in - no matter how much wealth and prestige had come attached to her family name, she really had no desire to become a carbon copy of every other vapid heiress I'd ever met. Roxanya Vega was the kind of girl who pick pocketed from strangers to survive and rode fast motorcycles while calling mean bastards out on their shit and making no apologies for who she was. And I was thoroughly addicted to finding out everything about who that might be.

  "Good. Because that ass of yours isn't destined to sit on the throne, so I wouldn't want you getting any crazy ideas about being above me," I taunted and her brows went up as she shook her head at me.

  "So cocky, Dragon boy," she said, backing up and tugging her hand back like she was going to pull it from my grasp, but I tightened my hold, ignoring the gasp of fear that escaped her lips as I dragged her after me along the street.

  "Come on," I urged as she hesitated. "If I don't feed you fast you're gonna keep running your mouth at me and I'll have to put you on your ass to remind you which one of us is more powerful."

  She scoffed indignantly but let me tug her through the crowd and away from the tourist trap as we headed down side streets and I tried to remember where I was going. It had been a few years since me and the Heirs had come here for a night out, but we used to do it fairly frequently just to get a night off of everyone knowing who we were. Of course, Cal and Max had always made sure that we went to the best, most exclusive places in the city whenever we came, but I'd found a few more interesting places here too.

  We finally spilled out onto another street and I
tugged her along to the Mexican restaurant which was so packed that people were spilling out onto the street with food in their hands.

  Roxy groaned longingly as I led her up to the door and I released her hand as the first spots of rain fell from the clouds and people around us cursed in frustration. The crowd may have been helping us to hide, but the stars were clearly taking note now and I’d been holding her hand for too damn long.

  "It's over an hour wait," a server called as she passed us by, carrying a tray with two pitchers of beer and a plate of nachos on it.

  I glanced at Roxy as she pouted, giving a woman's half eaten burrito a longing look. My girl wasn’t going to wait for a minute, let alone a fucking hour.

  "Not good enough," I said, striding inside to follow the waitress through the brightly lit restaurant.

  The walls were painted a deep red colour and there were paintings of brightly coloured skulls hanging all around the place. There were tables packed end to end and little booths lining the far wall while loud music blared out over an even louder crowd.

  As the waitress reached a couple in the back corner of the room and placed the beers and nachos down, I caught her arm.

  "This is our food," I said, lacing my voice with Coercion as she widened her eyes on me. "These people were just leaving," I added, looking to the couple and including them in my command.

  Mortals had such open, malleable brains that it was no effort at all to get them to bend to my will. Maybe that made me a dick, but that was hardly news to me.

  I couldn't even bring myself to give a shit about screwing them over as they scrambled away either. My girl was hungry and she wasn't gonna wait in line like some regular fucker.

  I looked back around towards the door and beckoned her in as she rolled her eyes at me like I was a total douchebag. Any other girl would be falling at my feet if I'd done that for her, but Roxanya Vega somehow managed to call me an entitled prick with a roll of her eyes and I found myself loving every second of her disdain.

  "Two bean and cheese burritos," I said to the waitress as I gave her my attention again for a moment, ordering the meal Roxy had been salivating over. "Plus every side you've got on offer and some tequila. Don’t make us wait."

  The girl nodded, her brow furrowing in confusion for a moment before she hurried away to get my order and I looked back across the room to my girl.

  My blood heated as I spotted her in the centre of the restaurant, standing by a table full of drunk looking assholes as one of them held onto her wrist and made her stop to talk to him.

  He was leering at her, loudly urging her to come sit in his lap while the guys around him all laughed their encouragement and rage lit my blood on fire as I strode back across the restaurant at a fast pace. Roxy was saying something in reply which had his friends laughing at him, but I didn’t give a shit if she was already handling it. If he didn’t take his hand off of her right now then I was going to break it off.

  A waiter stepped out in front of me but I just shoved him back, making him drop his tray of food and not even looking at him as I stepped over his legs and finally made it to the dead man with his hand on my girl.

  A few of his friends saw me coming and straightened in their chairs, pointing me out so that the asshole swung around to look at me a moment before my hands landed flat on the table in front of him. I leaned down to glare at him, certain the Dragon in me was clear for him to see.

  "Take your fucking hand off of her," I growled in a low tone that had him dropping his hold on her wrist instantly and stammering apologies to me as if I was the one he needed to be offering them to. "Apologise to my girl for laying your hand on her," I snarled as several people around us started sidling away like they could tell I was about to beat his smarmy face in.

  "I'm sorry - I didn't know she was yours," he gasped. "Sorry, man. Sorry-"

  I reached out and grabbed hold of him by the collar, half lifting him out of his seat and twisting him to look at Roxy. "Say it to her."

  Roxy had fallen still and beneath the bloodlust that had taken hold of me at seeing that asshole manhandle her, I realised that she was afraid of me again. Fuck.

  "I'm sorry," the guy gasped and I used my grip on him to toss him to the floor as I tried to fight back my temper, my gaze fixed on the girl I loved as she regarded me like she thought I might turn on her next.

  But then she lifted the asshole's beer from the table and dumped it in his lap, swallowing thickly as she stepped over him and moved to my side.

  "I don't need you to fight my battles," she said firmly, fighting off her fear as she folded her arms and met my eye with defiance in her gaze.

  "I know," I replied and she nodded as she headed over to the booth I'd gotten us and sat down.

  I followed slowly, working to try and push back the Dragon in me as the asshole and his friends scrambled out of the restaurant. The owner came bursting out of a door beside the kitchen, calling out something about me needing to leave, but it only took a couple of words laced with Coercion to send him scurrying away again.

  I sat down opposite Roxy, finding the table piled up with all the food I'd ordered and eyeing her hesitantly and she narrowed her eyes on me.

  "You told him I was yours," she said, reaching out to take a nacho and loading it with guacamole.

  "You are," I replied simply and she held my gaze as she thought on that.

  "I never said that."

  "No, you didn't. But you were mine from the first moment I laid eyes on you. You're just too damn stubborn to say it out loud."

  Silence lingered between us as she scowled at me and I was pleased to see she’d pushed her fear aside again.

  "Maybe," she said finally before giving her attention to eating her food and I tried not to grin like a smug motherfucker as I joined her.

  We didn't say much while we ate, I just drank in her company while she moaned appreciation over her food so loudly I was beginning to think her goal was to get me as hard as stone for her.

  When we'd finally eaten so much that there was no chance of us managing another bite, she slammed back her shot of tequila without even flinching and eyed me with mischief dancing in her eyes.

  "So what now?" she asked. "Did you have some grand plan for our evening of escaping our problems or are you just winging it?"

  I shrugged because I definitely hadn't expected to take her out like this and though I was aching to get her alone somewhere, I was just happy to be in her company without shadows flickering in her eyes. And being in a crowd of strangers was close enough to alone all the time I had her undivided attention.

  "Maybe we should just stay here," I teased. "Hide from all of our problems and never go back."

  "It'd be that simple, huh?" she asked, glancing around the room heaving with people as if she was considering it for a moment.

  "No," I replied honestly. "They'd hunt us down. There are ways to trace magical signatures which are especially effective here where there are hardly any Fae. Besides, even if we could hide from them, Fae can't live in the mortal world for long periods of time once their magic is Awakened. The balance of power isn't right here. This place slowly eats into your magic if you hang around too long. Even the Fae who work here importing goods back to our realm rarely stay more than a month at a time and even then, they pay a cost for it. We just don't belong here."

  "No," she agreed, looking around at the humans who seemed so like us in some ways and yet so different in others. "What would happen to a mortal who came to Solaria then?" she asked curiously.

  "They'd lose their minds," I replied. "The magic in our realm is too much for them to handle."

  "Okay...so what about a couple who fell in love Romeo and Juliet style?" she asked. "A Fae and a mortal-"

  "Destined for failure," I said with a mocking smile. "They can't even have children together. The magic in our blood and the lack in theirs makes it impossible."

  "Good thing I'm not a romantic or the idea of that might just break my heart," she t
eased and the two of us fell silent as we looked at the black rings in each other's eyes. Being here with her like this felt so damn good, but I knew I was just kidding myself into thinking we were alone. There were people all around us and the stars were clearly still watching even here. But it was still pretty nice to pretend.

  “So come on then, what's next?" she asked and I shrugged.

  "If this was a proper date and I'd actually organised it, I guess we would have gone for a race on our bikes," I said. "I still want a re-match after the last one."

  She smiled at that suggestion and my heart leapt as I looked at her. She was so beautiful. Why hadn’t I just let myself see that before? I’d been so caught up on the idea of it just being lust and wanting to hate fuck her that I’d refused to see that her beauty went so much deeper than her appearance. She was everything I wasn’t and everything I wanted. A princess, born to live her life in a specific way just like I had been and yet she refused to blindly follow any path. At least until my father had forced her onto one.

  "Well, I guess it's on me to solve that little problem then, isn't it?" she asked, getting to her feet and pulling out the cash she'd pick pocketed before tossing it all on the table.

  "What the hell are you doing?" I asked as I stood too. "You're not paying."

  "Well I don't see you hiding any mortal money in those jeans," she said lightly. "So just suck up your pride and let me pay. You can be all bitch hurt over being emasculated tomorrow when I'm not around to witness the tears."

  She offered me a taunting smirk and I wasn't sure whether to laugh or growl, but she didn't give me the time to decide before turning and striding out of the restaurant.

  I was forced to jog after her as she led the way back up the dark street with her long hair swaying down her spine. When I called out to her to slow down she just laughed before ducking into an underground parking lot and out of sight.

  I cursed beneath my breath as I ran after her, vaulting the barrier blocking the way in and heading into the dimly lit parking lot where there was no sign of her.