Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,38

the back of his neck. “They’re like a fix-all, numbing thing you see?”

“Right,” I muttered and Roary frowned at him.

Ethan leaned even closer, lowering his voice. “And basically, I can definitely get more of them if you want, but the guy got a rash on his balls that was so bad he had to have them chopped off.”

“Wow,” I deadpanned. “Please send them my way.”

“He felt pretty numb while it all happened if that helps. And people call him Eunuch Jim now. He always wanted a nickname,” Ethan snorted and Roary shoved out of his seat, giving me a look that said to come and talk to him when the Werewolf was finished offering me ball rash pills. The choices I had in here really were sublime.

A bell rang which sounded the end of breakfast and I pushed out of my seat with plans to head straight to the gym, but I knocked into some asshole behind me and turned around to find Gustard there, his juice spilling all down his chest. Great.

The guy had tattoos on his face and was the last motherfucker anyone wanted to cross in Darkmore. But since the stars had cursed me with bad luck for breaking the star vow I’d made with Darcy, I seemed to bump into him ten times a day and piss him the fuck off. I swear I’d been sent to medical five times more often than any other Fae in here, mainly because of this asshole.

“You again,” he hissed between his teeth and I clenched my jaw. It wasn’t that he on his own was a force of nature, but his entire gang flouted the way of the Fae and ganged up on their opponents ten on one. “Get me another,” he growled, trying to dominate me, but for all the stars in the world, I had too much pride to bow to anyone like a little bitch.

“Get it yourself,” I snarled, brushing past him toward the doors.

I’d have to pay for that in blood later, but I’d rather that than lose my dignity in this place. It was pretty much all I had left and if I was being honest, it wasn’t really intact when everyone in the world believed I’d Dark Coerced a Vega princess into fucking me. I was just some depraved pervert in most people’s eyes. But at least I’d done it for the best reason on earth. Her.

I headed down to the library, the guards’ watchful eyes following me on the stairs. When I pushed through the frosted glass doors, I headed to my favourite spot at the very back of the stacks, one of the few places where I could find solitude in the prison.

As usual, the old guy everyone called Poltergeist was there. He was ancient with his grey beard and sallow skin and he never said much. He drifted to the end of the aisle, throwing me cautious glances before disappearing around one of the stacks. He always haunted this part of the library, but he never bothered me, and I didn’t bother him either. And that made him my new best friend.

I grabbed out the tome I’d been reading yesterday, flicking to page five hundred and dropping down at a desk before working through it. I had one saving grace today. A visitation with Darius. It was kind of pathetic how much I’d come to depend on my contact with him. He visited me whenever he could, but now he’d started back at Zodiac, I doubted he’d be able to come as often. I supposed if I had one constant companion in here, it was loneliness. And once upon a time, that wouldn’t have bothered me so much. Being a Vampire meant I had an inclination towards alone time. But fuck if I didn’t ache for company these days. A very specific kind of company of course.

The Guardian bond tethering me to Darius was always begging me to be with him, and I’d once thought the pain of being parted from him would be unequalled by anything else. But since meeting Darcy and now being parted from her, it paled by comparison. There wasn’t a moment that went by that she wasn’t on my mind, my memories of her playing on repeat in my head. At least there were distractions in the day, but at night it took everything I had to fight off the shadows beneath my flesh, offering me the sweet bliss of a high that could help