Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,158

to bite back at me over that. And it killed me. “The stars wanted us to see this,” I went on and her features hardened.

“How can we even trust them after everything?” she hissed as we got to our feet and I gazed around the pit which had once served as an execution ring, a shudder rippling down my spine.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But there must be a reason they showed us this. Maybe they’re on our side in some ways.”

“Gabriel says they don’t pick sides,” she muttered and I nodded. But why would the stars give us this information if they didn’t want us to fight Lionel? Or maybe it was all just part of some bigger, crueller plot I couldn’t see yet. I knew the stars couldn’t lie, but I still never understood why they showed us what they did.

I guessed all we could do was take what we’d been gifted and use it against Lionel as best we could. Because there was one thing we now knew for sure, the Imperial Star held unimaginable power. And if Lionel ever got his hands on it and it granted his wishes, the whole of Solaria was doomed.

I sat in my chair beside the fire in King's Hollow, my elbows on my knees as my hands trailed down towards the wooden floor. I leaned forward, letting my head hang as I just looked at the space between my feet and tried to focus on the positives. But shit, sometimes it was really hard to see any positives in the world right now with Father on the throne and nothing ever seeming to go our way in the fight against him.

It wasn't long since classes had finished, and Roxy had been taking part in them for a few weeks now without anyone seeming to realise she was no longer fully under Father’s thumb. We had to keep giving her the antidote to the Order Suppressant whenever Father or Mildred dosed her, but I was just relieved that the shadows didn’t suck her back in the moment she lost contact with her Phoenix. She was herself again, though she was clearly still a prisoner too. I knew it was endlessly better than it had been before, but I still despised her having to pretend.

It meant she was alone all day, keeping to herself while she sat with the K.U.N.T.s and maintained her cover. I hated that she had to do that. That after months of being cut off from everyone she was still segregated so much. But with the bond between her and my father still linking her to him, we didn't have many other options right now. I just wished I could do more about it. He had me backed into a corner and I was desperate to break free and prove to the world that you couldn’t tame a Dragon.

I'd been back to visit Lance almost every night since he’d returned from Darkmore and we'd been spending time in the palace library where there were countless books on every subject imaginable. We'd begun to search through the tomes for anything that we might be able to use to break the Guardian bond. I didn't want to be negative about it, but I was having trouble maintaining any hope that we would find anything. Especially as Gabriel hadn't been able to see us making a discovery and we'd spent years looking into this subject in the past when trying to disconnect ourselves.

But Lance had thrown himself into it wholeheartedly, seeming glad of the opportunity to do something productive for our cause while he was stuck waiting on the full moon to reveal more of his father's secrets to him. And I was glad to have given him a task if nothing else because he seriously needed a distraction from everything that was going on in his life. The two of us were a pair of sorry sons of bitches right about now and I knew all too well the pain of being hung up on a Vega who wasn't yours.

I'd stayed with him for most of the night yesterday, researching all we could and then I’d flown back to campus instead of using stardust, preferring to stretch my wings for several hours than get back to my empty bed too soon. I didn't sleep much these days anyway. All I ever did was fall into dreams of the girl I should have been able to call mine and get caught