Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,1

use ever stronger flames, but they were coming closer to roasting me alive from the inside out than they were to destroying the shadows. She’d refused to attempt it at all this past week since I’d passed out from the agony of them and Max had struggled to heal me in time to save my life. But I didn’t want to stop trying. I needed to break free so that I could stand against my father and rescue the girl I loved.

The pain of my separation from Roxy cut me open and made me bleed with every day that passed.

Father held her life in his hands and he’d threatened her to stop me from trying to track her down. Not that that had stopped me. I knew he held her somewhere in the manor and I’d been spending every waking hour searching for her, but I’d never even found a clue to her whereabouts. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I woke suddenly, sure I’d heard her screaming, alone in the dark.

I hoped that I was just having nightmares. But I was almost certain I wasn’t.

A huge blast of Phoenix fire came from the clubhouse at the centre of the clearing and Nymphs screamed as they died beneath Darcy’s wrath.

I raced forward, cutting through the Nymphs who were trying to escape her flames until I finally made it to the stone house where she was waiting for us.

For a moment the light from her fire cast her in shadows, making her blue hair appear black as she smiled savagely in victory, looking so like her sister that my heart dropped right down into the pit of my stomach. Guilt rose up in me like an all too familiar curse and I forced my mind off of it so that I could focus on this fight.

“Did we get them all?” Darcy called as her flames guttered out and the illusion was lost to me.

“What the fuck was that?” I demanded as I came to stand before her, my muscles burning with fatigue from hefting my axe which now hung loose in my right hand. “The plan was to stick together.”

“Calm down, Darius,” she replied, flicking a lock of blue hair back over her shoulder. “I was just rounding up the stragglers.”

“You could have gotten yourself killed,” I snarled as Seth padded up beside me in his Wolf form and Max slid from his back.

“Well, I didn’t. So you don’t have to worry about breaking your precious promise,” she muttered bitterly.

“It’s the only thing I can do for her at the moment,” I growled in reply, my heart twisting with the truth of those words. We’d vowed to do everything we could to get Roxy back, but it turned out that there was nothing we could do. Not so far anyway. Even Gabriel hadn’t been able to see anything to help us. The whole situation was fucked.

Darcy’s gaze softened at that and she nodded. “I know. But I’m not some fragile thing that needs protecting.”

“Well you are a princess,” Seth teased as he shifted back into Fae form.

Darcy rolled her eyes as she turned away from him flashing his junk and Max tossed him a pair of sweatpants from his bag.

Caleb shot towards us as we waited for him to pull them on, a wild look in his eyes as he extinguished the Phoenix flames which coated his daggers.

“There are more coming,” he panted as he pointed away through the woods. “Too many. We need to search this place and get the fuck out of here.”

I cursed as I looked up at the huge stone building which had once been home to the Zodiac Guild. Darcy had discovered this place mentioned in an old tome which had been kept at The Palace of Souls and we’d come here as soon as we could, but the damn Nymphs had still been faster. Just like they had at the last four places we’d searched.

I didn’t know how they were managing to do it, whether the stars really were against us or if they were spying on us somehow, but it was like we couldn’t catch a fucking break.

“Let’s make this quick then,” Darcy snarled as she turned towards the building and made a move towards the door.

I caught her shoulder, my gaze flickering to Dragon slits as she huffed at me and I moved her aside so that I could go in first. She might not want me to protect her, but I’d