Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,289

an ice cold pain shuddered through my chest. My magic was fully asleep, waiting to be taken. And I couldn’t let that happen. This wasn’t going to be it. Regardless of the pain, the fear, I wasn’t giving up. I refused this fate.

I fought against the shadows in Orion once more, feeling them recede and the blade suddenly pulled away from my throat. His hand came down hard and I stiffened in fear, expecting the slice of its sharp point, but the knife slashed across Drusilla’s probes instead, severing them off with a clean slice.

She wailed in agony, stumbling back, clutching the bloody mess of her hand to her chest in horror. The monstrous probes were still sticking out my chest, the pain of them agonising, but her power was cut off. I hurriedly twisted around in Orion’s arms, pressing my hands to his chest and forcing my fire deeper into his body, making the shadows recoil from his heart, knowing this was the only chance we had now.

“He’s dead!” Clara yelled. “Dead, dead, dead!”

Orion was still mostly under her control and I felt the shadows fighting back against my fire in a rush of power as they tried to kill him. But I wouldn’t let them hurt him. I placed my fire between them and his heart, keeping it safe from their touch as she tried to destroy him.

“Kill her!” Clara demanded. “Stab her, cut and slash and spill her blood, little brother!”

His hand slammed into my side and it took two full seconds to feel the pain, the shock of the freezing blade hilt-deep in my flesh. I clutched his shirt with a gasp of agony, refusing to let go, needing to keep fighting back the shadows in him. But my knees were buckling and suddenly Orion was falling down on top of me, drawing the blade out and ramming into my side once more as he released a strangled noise of anguish.

I screamed so loud, my throat was rubbed raw but I didn’t let go. I held onto him with every ounce of strength I had left, refusing to let the shadows creep into his chest as they took control of his limbs and she wielded him against me. The knife slammed into my side once more and Phoenix fire twisted out from me in furious, billowing blaze, all of it rushing into his body at once. I felt my Phoenix connect to some deep source of power within him and the blade clattered from his hand as he groaned. My fire combined with that piece of him and rushed through his body, his eyes glinting with it as it spread like wildfire and drove out every shadow it found. Please be safe. Please be free.

He fell over me, holding me tight like he was trying to protect me from something and suddenly a twisting storm of fire exploded out from me and him, blasting through the room like a bomb going off.

Clara screamed as she shot away at full speed to escape it, but I couldn’t see anything else as flames framed my vision.

When they finally died down, Orion leaned back to look at me. His eyes cleared until they were just his again, deepest midnight blue and full of terror. But not for himself. For me.

I couldn’t even feel the pain anymore, a numbness seeping into my body, but the growing pool of heat around me told me there was a lot of blood. And I suddenly found I had no strength at all.

It didn’t matter though. Because he was okay. The shadows no longer had hold of him and they never would again.

His mouth formed my name as he shouted, but the darkness was pulling me down, down, down and death whispered sweet promises in my ear. It would have been so easy to take its hand and let it guide me away, but somewhere in my mind, I felt a tug on my soul, binding me to a girl who was the other half of me. I couldn’t leave this world without her. Or the man who was calling my name.

Light shifted across my vision, red, orange, gold-

“Blue!”

Warmth surrounded me, but my eyelids weighed a thousand tonnes. I didn’t think I could open them any easier than I could hold the weight of the sky on my back. But I did. Somehow, I did.

And he was there, holding me in his arms as he stood in the burned out husk of the kitchen.