Zodiac Academy 7: Heartless Sky

“I love you more, beautiful.”

“Woah, sorry. Didn’t realise things were getting Fifty Shades of Blue in here,” Seth laughed obnoxiously. “I mean, I did ‘cause I heard you, but don’t mind me. I’ve seen everything before and I mean eve-ry-thing. I once watched a guy ear-fuck a girl.”

“For the love of the moon, Gerry,” Max growled, hurrying forward to grab the hoody and trying to drape it over her again, but she kept elbowing him away as she continued her speech.

I wheeled around, casting a silencing bubble and leaping back onto the bed as Orion chugged more of the bourbon. It was almost like he wanted to be drunk to endure my company, but it couldn’t be that. I was a delight.

I saw her soaring across the sky burning hotter than the sun itself. She was so endlessly beautiful, so powerful, so strong.

My heart.

My love.

My queen.

And that was the way I wanted to leave this life, because when it came down to it, I knew that she was it for me. The only thing I’d ever truly needed and for the briefest span of time she had belonged to me. And that was enough.

There is only her.

“Stay close,” I breathed and a promise flared in his eyes.

“I’m always in your shadow, you only have to look to find me there,” he said, raising his chin with a flare of determination in his gaze.

“Love you, Tor,” I whispered to my sister and she looked to me with that same love blazing in her eyes.

“Love you, Darcy.”

A smile broke across her face like sunshine through the clouds and she took it, stepping in to me and taking my hand, pushing the ring onto my finger without so much as a proclamation.

“I claim this man to be my husband,” she said, a ring of power to her voice which defied the heavens themselves to deny her.

“I claim this woman for my wife,” I replied, taking her lead and slipping the ruby inlaid ring onto her finger in return and giving her a hungry smile.

I swept my girl into my arms.

Roxy’s eyes burned with love for me and I dipped my mouth to claim hers, unable to believe that I would be this damn lucky as I found the woman of my dreams in my arms and my ring firmly placed upon her finger. She lifted her shin to meet me, her fingers curling into the front of my shirt and I closed the last remnant of distance between us, kissing her breathless beneath the grey clouds without a single fucking star in sight.

She’d been right about that. We didn’t need fate or rings in our eyes to know that we belonged to one another. And right here, without any of that, I felt the power of our connection far deeper than any bond could have granted us as I laid my claim on the woman who I had hungered for for so damn long.

And I knew that even death could never tear our souls apart again now.

“Marry me, Roxy,” I said, knowing it was unfair of me to ask but doing it all the same. Because there were a lot of things I wasn’t going to get to do with my life now but I didn’t want to miss out on that.

“Stay with me, Darius,” she replied, asking me to do the one thing I was almost certain I couldn’t. But if there was any way in which I could, then I’d do it for her.

“If I can then I will,” I replied honestly, hating that I couldn’t swear it any more definitely than that.

“Then I’ll marry you,” she replied. “No bullshit. Just us.”

“Really?” I asked, my chest swelling with the idea of that, of her being mine in such an unmovable way.

“Really.”

I deepened our kiss, wishing our first could have been like this, that she could have felt how much she meant to me in it instead of only ever seeing the worst of me.

But that wasn’t true anymore. I stood before her ripped open and without barriers and still she was here in my arms, her hands clasped behind my neck as she held me close and kissed me like I was the sole reason for her existence. I was the empire she was looking to conquer. I was the destiny she had picked for herself. So if she needed me to keep fighting for us beyond this life then I would. I’d fight to stay and I’d refuse to leave even when the heavens came to drag me from this unworthy body, even if it cost me my place in the afterlife.

Because an eternity with the stars meant nothing to me in comparison to a life in her arms.