Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight
Sorrow and Starlight: Chapter 40

I left Lionel sated and recovering in our bed, his eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling as he panted and twitched, the echoes of the pleasure I’d delivered him lingering even after our flesh had parted.

“I will have a new heir for you by dawn,” I purred, running a finger down the valley between my exposed breasts as I remembered the bite of his touch as he had thrown me down beneath him.

Such a powerful beast, my husband. And such a beast he had wed when he joined himself to me.

I bit my lip as I thought back on the lust-filled shriek that had escaped him as I took control, the desire and wariness which had melded in his gaze when he was forced to look upon my power and remember who the true might in our relationship was. It scared him, and yet it thrilled him too. I could tell. As he fisted the sheets and called my name in a beg for his release, I had heard it, the need for me. Even if he was a creature not prone to accepting his own vulnerability, he was forced to explore it with me, forced to look inside himself and face the weaknesses he found there. But I didn’t mind his vanity or the need he had to cling to his supposed dominion over me. No, I didn’t mind pretending for him, so long as I got what I needed from him.

And with the sticky evidence of our joining glistening between my thighs, I knew I had it. The Dragon seed. My shadows were already drawing it deeper inside of me, pulling it up into the void where my womb had once been and fusing that seed to a seed of my own, creating a tendril of shadow and power beyond anything that had been seen in this realm in all the years I had haunted the earth.

I fed myself into that seed, a tiny life forming inside of me even as I stared down at my Dragon, tangled in the sheets and covered in perspiration from our union.

He wasn’t thinking about that pretty little nothing now, was he? Wasn’t distracted by the idea of sinking his little cock into her pathetically willing body. No. He had been reminded what a true match for him was capable of, and I could tell by the way he had fallen into silence that the only memories on his mind now were the things I had just done to him. My pretty little Dragon.

I moved to sit beside him, and he stilled, his eyes shifting to me as a tug on his shadow hand had him caressing my cheek lovingly, the way I had seen my pet do to his blue-haired princess.

“I can feel it inside me,” I breathed, parting my thighs as he glanced down, letting him see everything while my belly began to swell with new life.

“Will this one be Dragon-born like you promised?” he hissed, some of his grit coming back to him as he caught his breath.

“This one will be so much stronger than the last,” I swore to him. “A Dragon child with a heart of shadow. An heir both of us will be proud to call our son.”

A flicker of something passed through his gaze, and I pouted.

“Are you thinking of the one you killed? Do you miss your poor, dead boy?” I asked curiously, and his lip curled back as he wrenched control of the shadow hand away from me, wrapping it around my throat and squeezing until my breath was cut off. I grinned at the game, enjoying the pressure of his fist around my neck and the threat of violence which danced in his eyes.

“Darius was a failure in the end, but his potential was there in spades. He was a perfect specimen. A worthy Heir. Or at least he would have been had that Vega whore stayed out of his fucking bed. I often think of what he could have been and regret not doing more to shape him into such. But no, I do not mourn him, nor regret what I did. He was tainted in the end. A failure. So do not think I won’t destroy the thing growing inside of you in a similar fashion if it disappoints me too.”

I smiled at him through the pain of his hold on me, my hand moving to his spent and flaccid cock as I tried to stir some reaction from it.

“Do you want to go again?” I purred, forcing the shadow fingers to relax enough for me to speak, before letting him crush my throat in his hand again while wondering if I might find release this time if we did.

“I am not some performing dog,” he snapped. “My cock won’t be ready to function again until at least tomorrow, as you well know.”

I pouted and his eyes flashed with fury as my disappointment in his performance blazed clearly across my features.

“Then I suppose I should focus on giving you the Heir you so desperately desire,” I said, blinking at the shadow hand and grinning as it flew from my neck and slapped him across his own face.

Lionel roared furiously, but I was already gone, twisting away into shadow before floating beneath the door and heading towards the north tower. I shifted back into my corporeal form and took hold of the closest wall, scuttling up the side of it, shadows peeling away from my skin behind me as I began to crawl my way to the highest floor.

My belly swelled larger with every passing moment, the life inside of me growing fast, a claw scraping against my insides in ecstasy-laced agony. Sᴇaʀch Thᴇ (F)indNƟvᴇl.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

I moved faster, scuttling over the ceiling as it spiralled up and up above the stairs, until I finally reached the door to the chambers I’d claimed for my own in this highest point of the palace.

I became nothing but shadow once more, slipping beneath the door and emerging in the round chamber beyond it, finding my nest of harmony awaiting me inside.

I had been building it for months now, knowing I would need the power of it to gift this shadow child the power its sibling had been denied. This child would not be as easily ended as its brother. It would be born in blood and ruin and unthinkable power.

The nest had been built with the bones of my enemies, dark artefacts set amongst them, carved with ancient runes and cloaked in the darkest of my shadows.

Four Fae heads stood on spikes, each looking inward to witness this birth, the souls of the dead trapped within them, unable to move from their positions while forced to watch every moment of this. They screamed as I fell to my knees in the middle of the room, my hip cracking as the child within me kicked so hard it broke bone. Their torment and desperate pleas for release into the world set calmness washing through me as I fixed the damage to my body and moved to squat between the rotting heads.

The shadow child fought to break free of my womb, but I refused the urge to push, cursing as I reached for a sliver of malachite, the green and black stone glowing with the essence of darkness I had forced inside it in preparation of this. The crystal was used for manifestation, change, and empowerment, all the things this child of mine would need before it broke into this world.

I tipped my head back and began chanting to the shadows, drawing them to me even as the life within me fought and writhed for freedom, coating my arms and hands in their power, pushing as much of it as I could into the shard of crystal.

When my fingers burned with the power I was wielding, I turned the sharpened point in my hand and plunged it into my stomach, breaking through the wall of flesh, blood, and shadows while driving it into the creature I was still growing.

The babe roared, and the heads witnessing its creation screamed at the sound of nightmares erupting from the opening between my thighs.

I met the horror-filled gaze of the closest head, the Fae who had wielded fire in his living form and now remained trapped inside a decaying skull.

He would be the first.

I smiled at him, a wicked, sinful thing which saw my teeth growing to sharpened points in anticipation of this next part. For he would not be finding release beyond the Veil. No, he would be joining with the new life inside of me, becoming a part of him and lending his Element to him while no doubt screaming forever more from his place trapped inside my darling child.

There were three more heads for me to devour once I was done with his and countless shards of darkness to pierce my skin and my babe’s too.

The night would be long and filled with endless pain for every one of us trapped inside this chamber. But with the dawn, I would birth the strongest creature this world had ever known, and all would bow at his feet when he turned his hunger upon them.

Sᴇarch the FindNovel.net website on G𝘰𝘰gle to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.