Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,112

not that simple," he ground out, his jaw clenching.

Silence fell but I could see him wavering a little, watching me closely like he didn't know what to think so I wet my lips slowly as I tried to push him to help me. If I could just make him see how I felt now, surely he'd realise that this wasn't right. Surely he wouldn't keep me locked up in here.

"Please, Caleb, don't do this to me," I begged, letting him see how much I feared what they were planning. "I'm happy now that I'm bonded with my king. And nothing you can do will sever that bond. Besides, I want the shadows. I need them. Please don't let them take them from me."

Caleb groaned and dropped his head into his hands. "You're not yourself right now, sweetheart," he said. "But you will be. Soon."

Anger burned through me hot and wild and I lunged towards the bars, throwing the shadows at him with everything I had so that my whole world was consumed in a thick fog of darkness.

The impact they made with the bars had me screaming in agony within moments, but I refused to back down. I'd been reborn in suffering and pain and I could push through this torture to escape the fate they'd decided on for me.

I howled as the bars held, slamming down onto my back as my power ricocheted into me. I began to jerk and convulse with the magic I was wielding as it was driven into my body and the pain felt like magma running through my veins.

But I didn't stop. It would be so much worse than this if I stopped. If I failed my king then the torture I would endure would make this pale in comparison.

Memories of that stone room echoed around my mind. Of the jars of lightning and the metal tools that had carved into my flesh over and over. Darius had done that to me. It was all Darius. Every time I thought of him or woke calling for him in the night or screamed his name while begging for his help, that was what I'd gotten in return. He’d never come for me. He’d abandoned me to that fate.

I couldn’t let him take me. I wouldn’t.

I threw so much power at the cage that the whole thing shook and rattled while I jerked on my back until suddenly the darkness that surrounded me swept me up and devoured me whole.

And I was finally freed from all of it as I fell into a void of nothing.

***

Heat slid beneath my veins, thick and potent and full of too many memories for me to fully comprehend.

At first, I recoiled from the intensity of the flames, receding into a corner of my mind that was safe and dark and wrapped in shadow, but the stronger the fire grew, the harder it became to shield myself from it.

When I was certain I was going to burn up in the heat, my eyes snapped open and a cry of fear escaped me.

I gasped as I lurched away from the fire, but there was no escaping it, no retreating from this thing that seemed to be living inside me. I jerked around, finding Darcy looking in through the bars at me as she held a syringe tight in her fist and I looked down at my arm, finding a small puncture wound in my bicep.

"What did you do to me?" I gasped, scrambling back and crying out as I hit the bars of the cage again.

My lips parted on a grunt of pain and I slapped a hand over the puncture wound, looking around at the sea of faces surrounding me as my heart raced.

"Back up," Max growled, his hand landing on Geraldine's arm and tugging her back a step as she sobbed. "She's freaking out and she's about to lose control of her Order form."

"Shit," Seth cursed and he caught Caleb's wrist as he pulled him back too.

"Look at me, Roxy," Darius growled from my right and a shriek of fright escaped me as I found him too fucking close to the bars that contained me.

A blaze of heat raced along my shoulder blades as Max yelled something panicked and more energy than I could possibly contain rose up within me.

My body detonated into a ball of fire, wings tearing from my back and making the cage explode around me, shooting the metal bars out in every direction in a spray