Zodiac Academy 7: Heartless Sky

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.

“Did you seriously just curse us both?” I demanded as I snatched my hand away from hers and she tossed the crystal aside.

“No,” she replied. “I intend to keep that vow.”

“And what if you can’t? I can hardly release you from it beyond the grave.”

“You won’t need to if you stick to your word.”

“What you’re talking about is impossible,” I insisted.

“We were impossible once, Darius Acrux. So don’t try to put limitations on what we can or can’t do.”

“I love you, Roxanya Vega,” I said, my voice raw with the truth of that. “No matter what happens with this fate, the war, my father, the throne, all of it pales beside my love for you. And I know I’m not good enough for you but that just makes it all the easier for me to worship you the way you deserve because I won’t ever stop trying to live up to being the man you deserve to have. Not until my dying breath and beyond that too if it’s what you want.”

“You’re what I want,” she replied firmly.

“Now swear you won’t allow this fate to pass,” she said, her tone darkening and something sweeping through her eyes which reminded me of the shadows. There had always been dark in her though, exactly like there was dark in me. No doubt it was part of the attraction.

I wetted my lips, my heart tearing open at that demand in her eyes and the fact that she wanted me to make a vow like that at all.

“You know me swearing that won’t change it,” I said softly.

“I know you’re giving up,” she replied in a deadly calm tone, though I could see the pain in her green eyes. “And I know that the man who fought so damn hard to claim me from the stars wouldn’t just give up on me that easily.”

“That’s what you think?” I asked,