Zodiac Academy 8.5: Beyond The Veil
Beyond The Veil: Chapter 15

The great orb in The Room of Knowledge was the object of my attention, my gaze fixed on my children while anxiety plucked a miserable tune from the chords of my heart.

Merissa stood by the railing, head tilted to one side, the space between her blinks growing longer as if she couldn’t bear to miss a mere flash of the reality painted before her. She was a mother watching on, torn away from her duty to love and care for her babies. I mourned the time I had missed with my family, but it was somehow worse to witness my wife’s suffering.

When I’d wed her, I had promised her a full life that would overflow with love, and I had sworn to offer her the deepest desires of her heart long into old age. Instead, that life had been fleeting. Our union was too brief, our family born and blooming for only a moment in the sun before darkness fell upon us all. I doubted I would ever rid myself of the guilt.

Darius might have been walking a fool’s path, but it was one I had walked myself once, seeking an alternative. But when the gates of death sealed at your back, there was no returning. Now…I had made peace around my own demise, acceptance the only path to follow after so many years. But in all this time, I had not made peace with Merissa’s death.

I rose, moving up behind her and shifting the hair away from her neck, placing a kiss there.

“Husband,” she sighed, a shiver of delight passing through her.

“I miss the sun in your hair,” I said, curling a lock of it around my index finger. “And the way it turned your skin to molten bronze.” I kissed her neck again. “I miss our summers swimming in the sea, our falls walking through frosted woodlands, our winters curled up with books in the glow of warming fires, and our springs watching blossoms fall and life flourish all over again.”

She looked back at me with a tear sliding down her cheek. “Oh Hail,” she whispered. “I miss it too.”

“If I had known how fleeting each moment was…” I shook my head, sorrowful and full of memories I could never truly touch again.

“It would not have made it last longer,” she said, smiling sadly and turning to me, pressing her mouth to mine.

I pulled her closer, grounding myself with the presence of her. “Had you not chosen me as your husband, you could still have it all now. Is there a part of you, no matter how small, that dreams of a life where I was not your bane?”

“Not for a moment, nor a breath, nor a fraction between seconds have I ever doubted my path. And you are not my bane, Hail Vega, you are my fate. I would not forgo you nor my children even if I were offered another entire lifetime in the sun in exchange for you all.” She fisted her hand in the gold cloak that hung from my shoulders and I released a breath of relief, my forehead touching hers.

At a thought, I stole her away back to our rooms and turned her to face the mirror that would show us memories of the past. I chose one specially for her, turning her in my arms to watch our wedding day. Merissa cooed and laughed, and I smiled at the perfection of that event, basking in its glow once again, but just as it was getting to our wedding night, something brushed my arm.

I wheeled around with a snarl, finding Felisia Night standing there. “Thanks for the show. How many people have the memory of that wedding? It was pretty small. That makes me special, I think.” She smiled at Merissa and my wife gave her an assessing look.

“So this is the cat queen you told me about,” Merissa said.

“That’s her. How did you get in our rooms?” I growled.

“Simple. You gave me an open invite, silly.” She nudged my arm playfully and my scowl deepened.

“I did no such thing.”

“You did, I’m afraid. When you made that little old deal with me which said I could have one of your memories or the like in exchange for my story. I couldn’t have come to see it unless I was allowed in your rooms. I guess the deal we made gave me a ticket.” She smirked, proving she had known it would do just that.

“Fine,” I muttered as Merissa laughed.

“Did you get outwitted, Hail?” she teased.

“He did,” Felisia answered before I could.

“I was not outwitted,” I grumbled. “Like you say, I gave you the invite.’

“Don’t go backtracking now, dead king,” Felisia said, stepping closer to Merissa with over familiarity. “Hello Savage Queen, I believe you are almost as legendary as I am.”

“Is that so?” Merissa hooked up an eyebrow. “Well I believe two legendary women would enjoy quite the evening together talking of all things legendary.”

“You and I?” Felisia asked excitedly. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”

“We don’t need more friends,” I drawled.

“She wasn’t inviting you,” Felisia said. “She was inviting me, and she and I clearly need one more friend at least.”

“At least,” Merissa agreed, and I huffed out a breath.

Felisia danced away towards the exit. “I shall be waiting in my rooms whenever you wish to continue with my story, dead king.”

“Will it be more to the point this time?” I questioned, but her only answer came in the form of a laugh as she went on her way.

“I’m not so fond of that woman,” I said.

“Really? I rather liked her.” Merissa moved closer to adjust my cloak which had been skewed crooked over my shoulders. “Go to her. I wish to speak with Marcel. He’s not himself of late.”

“He’s scattering. The Destined Door will take him soon. I bought him a little more time by taking him to see Gabriel, but-”

“You did that for him?” Merissa blurted.

“I wouldn’t say I did it for him. I simply…did it.”

Merissa gave me a knowing look and I pressed my lips together.

“I didn’t do it from the kindness of my heart,” I hissed, her expression accusing me of just that.

“I know,” she said airily. “Your heart is crammed full of dark deeds and wicked sins.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Of course not.” She beamed, then kissed my cheek. “Love you, darling. Now go seek the rest of that story, it may be of use.”

She walked away, but I caught her hand, yanking her back to me and kissing her with wild abandon. Her mouth parted for mine and I sank my tongue between her soft lips, my hand splayed across the base of her spine as I crushed her against me.

“Was that a reminder of who possesses my heart?” she purred against my lips, her nails digging into my spine and making me reconsider whether I would be letting her go at all.

“Perhaps.”

“And I suppose it has nothing to do with the fact that I am going to see Marcel,” she said questioningly.

“Marcel is of no consequence to me,” I said.

“Well, he may not possess my heart or soul, but he is special to me, Hail,” she said.

“Mm,” I grunted. Fucking Marcel.

“As a friend,” she impressed. “And he is in need. So I must go to him.”

She pushed at my arms, but my body was rigid, and I found myself unable to let go.

She frowned. “What’s going on?”

“I miss you, that’s all. I’ve been…dwelling on the past. The future. The present.”

“The present?” She picked up on the extra emphasis I had put on that word and I sighed, giving her the real truth.

“Seeing Darius parted from our daughter, it makes me think of how terrible a fate it would be to be parted from you.” My brow furrowed. “I would shatter without you, Merissa.”

“And I you,” she said, sadness tainting her expression. “Which is why I must believe there is a path for Darius to get back to Roxanya, no matter how unlikely it seems.”

I weighed that possibility in my mind. “I just don’t see a way.”

“Sometimes our truest path lays hidden beneath a layer of impossibilities, but if we can find a way to believe it is there, then we can finally place our feet upon it.”

“You know more of fate and destiny than I, so I will place my faith in your hope,” I said, releasing her at last and she waved goodbye before exiting our rooms.

I carved a hand through my hair, glancing back at the mirror and urging a memory into the glass with nothing but a thought.

I held Gwendalina by the waist as she balanced on a little rocking horse, blinking up at me with those big green eyes. She trusted me not to let her fall, knowing that I would keep her safe no matter what, and I intended to keep that promise to her and my other children.

“I’ll find the Guild Stones,” I promised her in the here and now. “I will find a path that keeps you safe.”

I headed from my chambers with the intention of finding Azriel, but he was already waiting for me in the corridor, as so often happened in this place. We could feel the intentions of other souls we loved, drawing near to one another, especially when our need was dire.

He had his notebook in his hand and an eager look about him, but perhaps there was some darkness there too. “I bumped into Felisia. She says she has claimed what she needed from you to continue with her tale. Are you ready?”

“Indeed,” I said, and we started walking side by side. “Are you well, old friend?”

“Well? Ha,” he said humourlessly. “No, I am not so well, Hail. Lance is going through a gruelling torture and the shadows are binding to his soul. I believe he would have succumbed to them entirely, only Stella saved him.”

“Stella?” I balked. “She has shown little care for him before now.”

“It seems she has had a strike of conscience. Or perhaps guilt. I do not know. But I fear how very reliant Lance will be on her now. If she turns her back on him again, it could be the end for him.” He said it as if laying out simple facts, but there was a tightness to his voice which spoke of his desperation. “I am so frightened for him.”

“I have seen few Fae endure what he has, Azriel. He is stronger than we can ever know. I do believe he is capable of anything in the name of my daughter.”

“Yes.’ Azriel turned to me, clasping my shoulder with love in his eyes. “They protect each other with the ferocity of starlight. I think often of their Elysian Mating, the purity in it. To find such love is a rarity indeed, and for my son to find it with the daughter of my best friend. Well, I…” Azriel smiled at me, and I couldn’t help but return it.

“Yes, in all this darkness, we must not forget to cherish the light,” I said. “Truly, I am honoured to have our families joined in this way.”

“As am I, Hail. I have not forgotten what you told me the night of their Elysian celebrations.”

I recalled the night, the raucous party we had all descended into here beyond The Veil, while our children partied in kind.

“It had slipped my mind,” I said, recalling how I had kissed him on both cheeks, declared him my brother then climbed up to the roof of the Eternal Palace and hand painted the Orion constellation and the Vega star there myself.

“That night is never far from my mind,” Azriel said with a laugh. “Do you remember when Florence Grus did a naked handstand and commanded Radcliff to shoot an apple off her foot?”

“How could I forget?” I laughed as we rounded into the stairwell, finding our way barred by a naked man leaning through the window where he was perched on a large flying Pegasus, his mouth locked in a kiss with none other than Clara Orion.

“Clara?” Azriel gasped and his daughter whirled around to face him.

“Oh, shit. Hi, Dad.” She shot a sideways glance at the man who was now bracing his hand on the window frame, a smoulder on his face that I would have knocked right off of it had I found him kissing one of my daughters.

“Who’s this?” Azriel asked keenly, stepping forward to offer his hand to the naked man.

“Reth,” he said, taking Azriel’s hand. “I guess you’ve heard of me?”

“I’m afraid not,” Azriel said.

“He was just leaving,” Clara said quickly.

Reth looked a little crestfallen as she shut him down and he guided his Pegasus away from the window. “Oh I…thought I could take you for a ride, C?”

“You did?” Clara blinked up at him hopefully.

“Well don’t let us keep you,” Azriel said, taking Clara’s hand and helping her up onto the windowsill. “Up, up and away, I say.”

Clara shot him the widest smile I’d ever seen on her before Reth helped her climb onto the back of his Pegasus, tipped Azriel a salute then flew away with Clara whooping in delight.

Azriel chuckled, watching them go for a moment longer before turning back to me.

“You’re just going to let her go off with a stranger?” I asked in surprise.

“He’s not a stranger, his name is Reth.” Azriel continued striding up the stairs and I fell into pace with him. “Besides, she is long past the time when she needs my approval for anything. She can do as she pleases, and it seems that this new fellow pleases her. So long as that remains the case, I will delight in her happiness. The stars only know she deserves it.”

“And if he turns out to be a cretin?” I growled, and Azriel gave me a dark look that reminded me of the times we had gotten into so much trouble back in our Zodiac Academy days.

“Then I may be less inclined to be so accommodating,” he said, a promise of violence in his eyes that got my heart thumping, or at least, it almost felt that way. I ached to dive into one of our past memories, the two of us tangled in the fray of a fight. “Besides, he can hardly be a worse choice than Lionel Acrux.” Azriel shuddered at the thought and I held my tongue. Roxanya’s taste in men was poor enough, but I couldn’t imagine what I would have done if one of my girls had ended up in a relationship with Lame Lionel.

We made it to Felisia’s rooms and Purrsy let us inside, leading us across the creaking ship. I admired the glittering moonlit water stretching out around us, the illusion feeling so beautifully real.

Purrsy led us down to the lower deck where Felisia sat on a wooden throne while Furnanda massaged her feet and Kitsy braided her hair.

“Good to see you again, Azzy,” she said brightly, then nodded to me. “And here’s the dead king who never smiles.”

“I smiled mere moments ago. You missed it, cat queen. I suppose you will try to steal one from me soon,” I said flatly.

“Oh he has a sense of humour today,” she said to her pride, cupping her hand around her mouth yet taking loudly so I could hear. “Purssy, give them the pieces of amethyst.”

He nodded, handing out the slivers of crystal and guiding us to the mirror. I shared a hopeful glance with Azriel before I was dragged away into Felisia’s memories once more, drowning in them so deep that I became her in the past, witnessing it all as if it existed right now.

No pressure, Felisia. You only promised to steal the Guild Stones from the Crown of Starfall right under the nose of Queen Leondra Vega in The Palace of Souls.

My nerves meant I’d had no appetite for breakfast at all this morning, only eating a bowl of oatmeal, two apples and a questionable nectarine. Oh and those wild strawberries I’d picked outside Terra House. I was practically running on empty.

Wilbur had come through on the ticket for the Jubilee and the whole of Zodiac Academy was already well under way with their celebrations when I left just before midday, praising Queen Leondra for her twenty fifth year in power. She was a pretty good queen, I guessed. I wasn’t much interested in politics or boring people who died a hundred years ago, so I usually took a nap in Professor Taffety’s history classes. Then he’d get mad, and shout, and it would seriously mess up my sleep patterns, and if I cast a silencing spell to block him out, boy did that make him go crazy. One time, he took my pillow, hurled it out the window and blasted it to hell in an inferno of fire. Instead of making his classes more interesting, he took it out on me and the cosy things I brought to help me get the best kind of snooze time. Completely unfair.

Safe to say, I wasn’t entirely caught up on the current events of the world, but I did know that the Vega Queen was pretty well liked around the kingdom. She was also the richest bitch in Solaria, so I didn’t feel bad about taking a couple of priceless artefacts off her hands.

If I pulled it off.

Which I would. Definitely.

I had to take two busses to The Palace of Souls, and they were crammed full of people wearing fancy dresses and shiny shoes, all of them headed to the celebrations. There were street parties going on everywhere I looked, little tables of liquor set up along the cobbled alleys of Tucana, and a market with Jubilee souvenirs running along the river in Asterella. It was getting really wild in the bustling roads of Celestia, Pegasuses flying overhead sprinkling glitter across the crowd, stalls everywhere selling Vega merchandise, from giant hats to gleaming faux Sphinx tails to celebrate the Queen’s Order. Everyone was wearing them, the tails enchanted to swish left and right.

Bells tolled somewhere off in the city towards the parliament buildings, but after a few more stops, my bus headed away from the excited crowd, moving out of Celestia towards my final destination.

The Palace of Souls loomed on the horizon and my heart beat harder as we passed through the lush countryside and tall trees that bordered the city. The palace had a sprawling estate that must have had hundreds of acres of lands, with a whole forest, a stream and no doubt all kinds of secrets nestled within. There weren’t many photographs in the newspapers, but the old blueprints I’d found had detailed some of the geography of the place, and the high fence that ringed it all in a giant oval shape. The palace had been built hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and it was still the biggest dwelling in the whole kingdom.

Take that, Professor Taffety. I might have been bored to death and beyond during his lesson, but I’d taken plenty of interest in the palace history during my planning sessions.

The bus finally met with another crowd that was gathered at the gates of the palace and I was forced to disembark and walk the rest of the way. My dress was baby pink and encrusted with little diamonds in the huge netting of the skirt, the bodice strapless and laced in at the back. I’d cast an illusion over my hair to make it appear brown so as not to draw too much attention. My beautiful golden locks were too damn recognisable. No one’s hair gleamed like that except mine. And though I had shuddered to hide my mane, it was only for a day. I certainly didn’t need people admiring the glossy golden hue of my true hair and committing it to memory. Brushing it five times a day and soaking it in lilla tree milk twice a week was the trick. I’d have to give it extra TLC to make up for hiding it. But it was a small, if a little painful, price to pay for this opportunity. My Momma would faint if she saw me like this, concealing my true Lionesshood, but then again, she might just have the energy restored to her by discovering the depths of my cunning plan.

My family may have appeared to be upstanding citizens, but they were particularly adept at trickery, deception and coercion. My father was a debt collector, and that just happened to be one of the most dangerous professions you could get into, considering the Fae he went after were willing to fight to keep their possessions. It was Fae nature, I guessed. Especially the Dragons. Father had taken one on last year and come home with burns on his arms, but a damn glint in his eyes too. He collected that debt, and he got one hell of a raise for it.

Father got his pick of the month’s takings. Literally. Twenty percent of anything that was seized for debt collection went right in the back of Father’s truck, and Mom and Momma took everything he claimed and sold it for the best price they could get.

They were savage with their sales pitches, and I swear to the stars, my mom could sell a family of fleas to a Werewolf. My siblings were following in their footsteps oh so perfectly, but me? I was yet to bring home the bacon. But today, I planned on bringing the whole pig with a little hat on and a name tag declaring him as Glory.

My hands trembled just a tiny little bit as I moved through the crowd, my ticket clutched in my fist like a weapon.

I slinked my way through the thronging bodies, slipping past members of the press who were taking photographs of some famous Fae in front of the fence. The woman looked vaguely familiar, sharp features, sleek black hair. Pretty sure she was one of those Vampire racers. Birdie had been to watch the finals last year out on the salt flats in Evanda, though apparently she hadn’t seen much at all because the Vampires moved so fast. Sounded kind of dull to me, but each to their own.

“Miss Orion!” one of the press cried, trying to get her attention and I took the opportunity to dart for the gate while their focus was elsewhere. The last thing I needed was being caught in the back of a photograph when the lawmen showed up and started looking for the stones. Though I didn’t plan on them figuring out what I’d done for a long, long time if I could help it. The fake Guild Stones stuffed into my corset were devised just for that. Marigold had helped me craft them, her attention to detail ensuring they were a perfect match to the real Guild Stones.

I handed my ticket over to a man in a suit and he smiled and waved me through the gate just like that. I headed up the long drive with my heart in my throat, unable to believe the beauty of this place. The palace was stunning, the gardens were full of fruit-laden trees and white rabbits were hopping between them, nibbling the grass. My lips parted as I realised they were Shifters, and they must have been pruning with their little Rabbit mouths.

I hurried to join the group ahead of me, walking a couple of steps behind a dark-haired man and woman who were arm in arm and a blonde man and woman holding hands at their side.

As we made it to the giant doorway, another suited man greeted us, his eyes lighting up at the group I’d made myself seem a part of.

“Ah, Lady Acrux,” the man beamed, shaking the blonde woman’s hand and smiling to who I guessed was her partner. “So good to have you back. And Lord Capella, it is so good to see you and your wife again.” His eyes trailed my way, but Lord Capella started making a joke about the Rabbits on duty in the gardens, calling them the queen’s fur-vants, and getting a confused look from the suited man.

I took the opportunity to slip past them into the palace, and quickened my stride while the lord’s wife laughed wildly and kept all attention from me.

Inside, was the most opulent stairway I had ever seen, swirling away towards another level above, and perhaps another after that. The ceiling was painted with a littering of stars with the sun at the heart of it and an incredible painting hung at the top of the stairs of the queen in her shifted form. She was regal in her Sphinx Order, front paws crossed on top of one another, and her female face lifted towards the sky with chestnut hair falling around her shoulders. Stacks of books were painted around her, some lying open at her feet like she had just been reading the texts within. Sphinxes loved a good book, and I guessed if reading was how I charged my magic, I would have loved them just as much. Would I have enjoyed Professor Taffety’s dull reading list though? I highly doubted it. I’d be asleep in under a minute. Curse of being a Lioness. Dreamland was never too far away, and it didn’t take much to send me into it. Especially when the sun was shining, and I found a perfect grassy patch out by Aqua Lake on campus. That right there, was bliss. Except when Isla found me unawares and slipped skiller spiders in my hair…

“This way for the private tour, beautiful ladybug. They start upon the hour so don’t dilly or dally,” a woman called to me from an open doorway to my right, her dress bright yellow and made up of ruffles upon ruffles. “We are setting off this very moment.”

I hurried to join her, the way she spoke telling me she just had to be related to Wilbur. A large group was already waiting to go on tour around the palace, all of them dressed in such finery that the glitter and gleam of their dresses kept catching my eye.

“I’m Doris Grus,” the tour guide announced, patting her hair which was brown and swept into an extravagant do that just kept spiralling up and up, ending in a sort of waterfall of hair at the top. “My nephew Wilbur is here learning the ways of the wackadoodle today, because my family have been bestowed the great and wondrous honour of serving the Vega crown. I cannot even begin to count my blessings, I would get lost upon a cockle and wander right on out to sea.” She fanned her hands under her eyes and a few people clapped while one man simply cleared his throat then silence rang out. I craned my neck, spotting Wilbur standing a couple of steps behind her in a bright purple suit, his curly hair slicked back, and his moustache twirled within an inch of its life.

“So!” Doris cried. “Let us embark upon our voyage around the ancient rooms of this most prestigious of palaces.” She led us into an opulent lounge where chandeliers sparkled and even the ashtrays were made of solid silver. My fingers itched to take things as we passed by priceless ornaments and shiny, shiny things that called my name. But there were only four things I was here for today, and I could not get distracted.

The tour went on for over an hour and my eyes kept trailing to the clocks in every room, one of them whistling and singing a whole song from the mouth of a spinning partridge when it chimed two o’clock, and Wilbur caught my eye so many times that I wanted to berate him for it. He was working up a real sweat on his forehead and kept patting it with a handkerchief, until the thing looked sodden.

Finally, after another half an hour of walking through endless rooms that looked like wealth had vomited more wealth all over the place, we arrived in a long chamber that was simple in decoration, but held the most incredible jewels and artefacts in cabinets and on stands around the room.

“Please feel free to browse some of the most prized possessions of the Vega family themselves,” Doris gushed.

I glanced at the guards manning the doors and the ones positioned towards the middle of the room, dressed in royal blue robes with bright silver chest plates and swords at their hips. They likely didn’t even need those weapons, trained to kill with their magic alone, and the way their eyes roamed over the crowd set my pulse racing.

Fuck.

This is it. This is my chance.

The group split apart, and I drifted between the glass cabinets, eyeing the beautiful trinkets within. Tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, and breath-taking rings were among the hoard, but there were weapons too. Curved daggers with gemstones glittering on the hilts, ceremonial swords and staffs, and a whole host of divination objects, from a giant crystal ball that looked like rain was falling inside it, to a deck of tarot cards that were carved into gold plates. There was a scrying bowl that was famed for predicting a long-ago battle called the Night of Shattering Fates, and a pendulum that had famously decided the marriage of an ancient princess to an enemy prince, reuniting the once divided kingdom of Solaria. It was all sort of interesting, and yet… where was the star damned crown?

I did two circuits of the room before I gave Wilbur a desperate stare, my gut clenching with anxiety.

“Where is it?” I whispered as I joined him, painting on a smile that would disguise the tension I was feeling inside.

“Jolly jam sandwiches,” he breathed, dabbing at his forehead with his handkerchief again. “I do not know.”

“Relax,” I growled. “You need to get it together, Wilbur.”

He swallowed visibly, nodding and glancing over at a giant silver clock on the wall. “Time is fluttering away like a bag of feathers shaken to the wind.”

“Make way!” a male voice bellowed, making me straighten like a rod had been shoved up my ass.

A huge man walked through the door with the Crown of Starfall perched on a red velvet pillow, the thing so shiny it made me let out a possessive growl.

The guard was a little older than me, attractive as hell with all those muscles, his dark skin and sinful eyes looking like the kind of trouble I wanted to get wrapped up in. But it was his hair that did it for me most. A tumble of glossy black locks that were so well kept, so perfectly styled that he simply had to be a Lion.

He moved to an empty cabinet near the wall, touching his hand to it so it opened, and he placed the crown inside on its cushion before shutting it tight.

I caught Wilbur’s arm, towing him over to the guard as he took up position beside the cabinet and the crowd shuffled closer to get a look at it.

“You know what to do,” I whispered to Wilbur.

“Oh f-f-flapjacks,” Wilbur stammered.

“You’ve got this,” I encouraged, then tossed Wilbur towards the burly guard and slipped around the back of the cabinet where no one else was standing.

“The Crown of Starfall has an extremely ancient history, hailing all the way back to the blood ages when the Barbarian Queen reigned across Solaria,” Wilbur called out, gaining everyone’s attention. “A bloodthirsty Vampire at the head of the largest coven ever to roam the kingdom, the self-proclaimed queen lived in this very spot long before The Palace of Souls was even built. For this land is sacred, does anyone want to have a gander at why?” Wilbur asked and I shifted closer to the cabinet. “Legend goes, that the first star to ever fall from the heavens landed in these here holy grounds, and from there the first Elemental magic was born, bursting out into the earth like shimmering rivers of light.”

Wilbur painted the story well, gesturing wildly with his arms as he went on and I waited for my moment, sure it was coming. If only Wilbur could pull it off.

As he re-enacted the star falling from the sky and slamming into the earth, he slipped backwards intentionally – though it looked like an accident with how well he faked it – flying into the guard so hard that he sent him stumbling into the cabinet containing the crown. As Wilbur went down, he took hold of the guard’s sword as if to catch himself, drawing it from its sheath and making the crowd leap back in fright as he swung it around then dropped it with a clatter.

The guard’s hand landed on the cabinet, his signature unlocking it but simultaneously setting off the alarms from how hard he collided with it. I flicked my fingers, casting a vine across the ceiling and making it rip through the candelabra hanging above us. It came crashing down towards the crowd and screams rang out as burning candles fell from the thing.

Someone blasted water magic at it as it hit the ground, the light in the room snuffing out at once.

Wilbur grabbed hold of the guard’s leg with a pitchy scream that sounded almost feminine and I moved fast, my hand sliding into the cabinet while the alarm was still ringing and darkness had fallen. I took hold of the crown and yanked the four fat stones out of their clasps. I shoved them down my corset, taking out the fakes, my focus honing in on this task as the seconds ticked by, chaos descending around me.

Breathe.

You’ve practised this a thousand times.

A Fae light went up into the air, then another and another, my heart in my throat as I shoved the fake stones into the clasps and tossed the crown into the cabinet just as the guard looked my way. But I was already slipping into the crowd, crying out in fright along with them. I threw one small glance back to find the guard locking the cabinet once more then working to silence the alarm as a rush of air fell from my lungs in relief.

Wilbur was sobbing apologies on his knees, still tugging at the man’s trousers and keeping him half distracted from the task while I helped to restore order.

“Gracious, Wilbur!” Doris grabbed his arm, hauling him to his feet and giving him a stern look. “What hullabaloo and honky dang doo is this?”

“Apologies, dear Doris,” he said, bowing his head shamefully as the guard gave him a cool look, folding his arms tightly against his chest. “I am but a crud-footed cretin with a wobbling carriage.”

“That you are,” Doris said, shaking her head and apologising profusely to the guard.

The crowd muttered as Doris led Wilbur out of the room and I kept in the middle of the throng, glancing at the guard who gave me a piercing look that made my bones shiver.

I offered him a little smile, flirtatious maybe, and he frowned, his lips quirking up at the corner like he liked that. But a law-abider and me weren’t meant to be.

I headed off to the next part of the tour, the power of the four Guild Stones humming against my flesh and making my skin buzz with magic. I couldn’t believe I’d done it. That I was walking away from the scene of the crime with the stones tucked tight between my breasts.

A hand locked tight around my arm and panic bolted through my chest.

“Wait,” a harsh voice growled, and I nearly blew my own cover, ready to fight and run and run and run, but as the guard spun me around, he had a grin on his face that made my cheeks heat.

“I shouldn’t do this but…there’s something about you.” He slid a piece of parchment into my palm. “My name is Purrsy, you can contact me via this crystal.”

“And why would I do that?” I asked, all mysterious and sexy and stuff.

“So I might court you,” he said in a gruff tone that set my heart racing.

“I see. Well, Purssy, maybe I’ll be in touch.”

“Maybe?” he asked with a frown as I pulled away.

“Did I stutter?” I grinned then hurried to catch the crowd, glancing down at the silvery crystal in my palm before sliding it into my cleavage along with my other prizes.

I waited until the tour returned to the entrance hall, gave Wilbur a little wink, then I was gone. Off across the grounds as if taking in the sights before slipping out the gate and heading straight for the bus, Guild Stones seized and glory calling my name.

Felisia Night, you’re going to go down in star damned history for this.

“So where are they?” I blurted as Felisia’s memories spat me out, and she gave me a twisted smile.

“You’ll find out if you keep watching, dead king,” she said, sitting on her wooden throne while Kitsy, Purrsy and Furnanda brushed her hair and preened her.

“Nice morals by the way, Purssy,” I said with an arched brow.

“Is the Savage King judging me?” he laughed. “My life was dull until this one walked into it. I gave up the law for love.”

“Eventually,” Felisia said with a laugh. “I think I recall you trying to arrest my ass a bunch of times.”

“Well you were a wanted criminal,” he said with a smirk. “And besides, I recall we had a lot of fun fighting each other.”

“Mm.” Felisia bit her lip. “Can’t deny that.”

“What happened to Ren?” Azriel asked. “He seemed to object rather strongly to your dangerous antics.”

“Keep watching,” Felisia sang.

“This is an extremely roundabout way of telling us where those stones are,” I growled. “You could summarise the final parts of the story and we’ll get out of your hair.”

“I would never let you in my hair in the first place, dead king,” Felisia said, shutting her eyes and moaning as Kitsy began massaging her head. “Besides, the story needs to be told. It is legendary after all. Do you know how privileged you are to see it like this? Only my descendants were gifted the truth of it, and even they didn’t get the story direct from the cat’s mouth. You are rather lucky for a dead person.”

“Where do the music boxes come into the story?” Azriel asked in fascination. “Are the stones contained within them for protection?”

“Azzy, you know I like to tell stories all at once or not at all,” Felisia said with a little pout.

“Ah indeed,” Azriel conceded. “I shall be patient.”

“Well I shan’t. This is ridiculous. We are on a merry-go-round and she has no inclination to let us off it,” I said in frustration.

“Hm,” she smiled. “You sounded a little like Wilbur then.”

“Perhaps I shall seek him out instead and ask his version of the story,” I said.

“Wilbur moved on a long time ago, and anyway do you really think a Grus is capable of saying anything succinctly?” Felisia laughed. “Nights tell their stories well, weaving all their magic into the details, and I am nothing if not a Night.”

“I have seen a fair bit of your descendants’ antics, and I cannot say I see the appeal in making everything into a parade with whistles and balloons, songs and dances. Just cut to the point,” I pushed.

“How boring, dead king,” Felisia said sadly. “Even in death you do not have time for life. We are stuck here with nothing but time to spare, and yet you act as if yours is running out.”

“Not mine, but my children’s. They are in grave danger, my son and daughter are imprisoned while my other daughter seeks a man who is long beyond the grave, and all the while Lionel Acrux gets his claws deeper into my kingdom.”

“There’s your problem, see? You haven’t let go,” Felisia said. “It is not your kingdom anymore.”

“No,” I admitted heavily. “But it will soon belong to my family again if I can help them.”

“Poor little ghost,” she cooed. “I know what that’s like, watching them. Our cubs, living on as we fade into the past. And how we love them so, but the past cannot catch up to the present. We’re not meant to interfere with the now.”

“This time I am. I’m sure of it,” I said fiercely and Azriel nodded.

“He’s right, Felisia,” my friend confirmed. “I believe we can help them, and your story may offer us the knowledge we need to do so.”

“Then continue,” she said, frowning a little like she empathised, pointing to her mirror. “I’m not withholding the truth, you just have no patience.”

“Alright,” I muttered. “But I swear to the stars, this best be coming to a conclusion soon.”

“It is,” she said, sadness weighing down her features and horrors sparking in her gaze that seemed rather ominous. “I promise you that.”

The stunned silence that filled the room wasn’t quite what I had expected. A round of applause maybe? A standing ovation. The popping of a champagne bottle. No?

I waved my hands above the four fat gemstones on Ren’s coffee table, wiggling them a little for dramatic effect.

“Wow,” Bridie exhaled, shifting closer and reaching out to touch them.

Marigold was slowly nodding her head, a look of mystery and analysis on her face, but one of her eyebrows was drifting towards her hairline, and I guessed that was pretty profound when it came to her steady emotions.

Ren was behind me, as silent as a duck holding in a fart, and I didn’t want to turn to look at him, because maybe, just maybe, I cared what he thought most of all. Wilbur was still at the palace, and I was sure he would have been gushing with a stream of ‘oh my gobbles’ and ‘would you take a gander at that’ if he had been here now.

“Well come on, say something,” I pleaded, hearing Ren step closer behind me.

He took hold of my wrist and a roaring fire built in my core, the burn so deep I had to close my eyes for a moment to centre myself. The thrashing of my pulse was all I could hear as he turned me around with a sharp tug that made me feel like I was twirling on top of a cloud, precariously balancing on the edge of nothing.

My hand came out to steady myself and it landed on his chest. I didn’t want to look up, to see the anger in his eyes, see his lips twist before he hurled a string of profanities at me for doing something so unbelievably reckless. But then his rough palm gripped my face and I blinked, glancing up at him, daring to look and finding an ocean of pride, admiration and perhaps I was crazy, but I swear I saw love there too. More than the friend kind, the kind we had been dancing around for months now.

“You are more remarkable than I ever imagined, Fee. And I’m so fucking sorry for doubting you.” The words were full of grit, but I felt them surround my heart like the softest of feathers. And in the next second, his mouth was on mine and my head was in a rush like no other, my fingers grasping at his shirt and pulling him closer. It was hard and warm and full of promise, ending far earlier than I wanted it to and leaving me aching for more.

His mouth quirked up at the corner and I stepped away, glancing back at the others to see their reaction. Marigold did little more than blink, her focus still on the stones, but Birdie’s face was twisted, and her eyes were sharp.

“What in the stars was that?” she barked, and my spine straightened at the challenge in her voice.

“A kiss,” I said simply. “Have you got a problem with that?”

“We are meant to be a team,” she said coldly. “If you two get together, it unbalances us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Birdie,” Ren scolded. “We aren’t getting together.”

I looked to him in surprise, the scold burning me too. “No,” I agreed, throat thick as Ren’s walls went up and his eyes didn’t slip my way. “We were just caught up in the excitement. A friend’s kiss, right Ren?”

“Right,” he said with such conviction that the burn sizzled a little deeper.

The door sounded and all of us stiffened, thoughts of the FIB and royal guards flitting through my head and making magic crackle at my fingertips. I grabbed the stones, shoving them in my pocket and when I turned back to face whatever was coming our way, I found Ren had placed himself between me and the hallway.

“Well pick a daisy and call it a rose,” Wilbur’s voice filled the air, and the tension ran out of my body. “You did it, dear Felisia!”

He ran around Ren and suddenly I was swept into his arms, a tickly moustache brushing my cheek as he placed a kiss there and started singing some crazy old war song about an army of fifty winning a battle against a thousand. By the second chorus, I’d picked up the words and was singing along, arms raised in the air while Wilbur leapt onto the table, kicked off his shoes, rolled up his trouser legs and did some wild, bare-footed dance that made me laugh so hard, I forgot the tension in the room and soaked in my glory at long last.

“So four of us keep one Guild Stone for a day, then we rotate?” I suggested as we sat on our hilltop in Earth Territory. Ren had come to visit, and though alumni were allowed to use the library on campus, the principal was starting to make comments about how much time he spent at the academy since graduating.

“No, we should take it in turns to have all of them,” Birdie said. “And as you’ve been holding onto them for three days now, it’s someone else’s turn.” She shifted closer on the grass, the sun just cresting the hills of Earth Territory and painting them in gold.

“I haven’t used them,” I said. “I’ve been looking after them.”

The first couple of days had been stressful to say the least as we waited to see if news would spread of the missing gemstones, but no announcement was made. The crown would be returned to the treasury until the next ceremony called for its use, and that could be years down the line. But one day, someone might realise the stones in it were fakes, and that the greatest heist ever had been pulled off long, long ago. By me. Felisia Night. Not that I ever planned on them finding that out. But maybe I’d make a point of having it etched onto my gravestone so my name would finally be known across the land and get the recognition it deserved.

Birdie pouted, but before she could pipe up again, Marigold spoke. “I have been researching the usage of such stones and how they were wielded by the Zodiac Guild. Unfortunately, it seems we cannot unlock their full potential without possessing all twelve and forming a-”

“Cut to the cusp of the cookie! How do we jabber their jellies as they are?” Wilbur cut in. “Do we flay ourselves beneath a blood moon? Or perhaps a Sandellion salsa when the tide is high, stripped down to our bare bottoms and-”

“Why do all your suggestions involve us being naked?” Birdie laughed and I snorted, sharing a look with her that ensured me the previous anger between us was long gone.

“There is much magic in being a nude Jude,” Wilbur said, matter of fact.

“Are we sure wielding them is the best idea?” Ren questioned and I shoved his arm.

“You’re such a bore, Ren Imai,” I teased, and he shoved me back playfully, his hand falling to my knee and staying there. The heat I felt through my uniform skirt was like the kiss of the sun and made me want to lay my hand right on top of his. But then my gaze caught Birdie’s and I remembered the way Ren had dismissed our kiss as purely platonic. I subtly pushed his hand off of me, and felt him withdraw.

“What did you find out, Mari?” I looked to Marigold who produced a book from her tartan bag and took out a long, white piece of wood that was knotted and gnarled. As she placed it on the grass, the blades withered a little, leaning away from it as if the thing were cursed.

“What is that?” I breathed, the thrum of power it emitted like a warning beating through the atmosphere.

“Bark from a damned tree, fashioned into a wand by my hand,” she said.

“Call me Wendy and hammer me in the cockles,” Wilbur whispered.

“A damned tree?” Ren gasped. “Impossible.”

“How impossible can it be if it lays right here at your feet?” Marigold asked and Ren fell quiet.

“Can I touch it?” I reached for it, but Ren caught my arm.

“Is it safe?” he demanded of Marigold.

“Quite safe, if it is used correctly,” she said, then added. “I would prefer if someone else was its keeper for now. I find its texture rather arousing.”

Birdie burst out laughing as my lips parted and my eyes flicked sideways to meet Ren’s. Wilbur didn’t seem particularly phased. But as long as I’d known Marigold she had never shown sexual interest in any Fae, so this was a little surprising to say the least.

“Is it the dark magic?” I guessed.

“No, not at all,” Marigold said blandly. “I am a dendrophile.”

“And what’s that when it’s at home?” Ren questioned.

Wilbur laughed, flicking the ends of his moustache up with his finger and thumbs. “Oh Ren, I thought perhaps you had swung your Long Sherman to the tune of the Mulberry bush enough times to know of such things! Perhaps my experience of the sensual world is a canary more than yours though, eh chap?”

“If you’re swinging your Long Sherman anywhere, I think you’re doing it wrong,” Ren said through a grin.

“Ah-ha, see. You are but a fig missing a pickle, dear friend,” Wilbur said with a smug expression. “The sauce is in the pickle.” He tapped his nose like he held some secret.

“So the drendo-thing?” Birdie pushed. “What does that even mean?”

“It means I am sexually aroused by trees,” Marigold said, and my lips parted.

“All trees?” I blurted, as if that was the most pressing question. But I had far bigger questions, mountains of questions. Like, what were the logistics of that? Did she have sex with them? Had I passed by trees in The Wailing Wood that she’d…what? Dated?

“Not saplings, of course,” Marigold said. “And I have a general aversion to pines because of their arrogance. Evergreen trees in general have a rather haughty demeanour, but the deciduous trees…oh yes, they are far more inviting. I am currently in an open relationship with a gentle sycamore and a titillating oak. They have such rough bark…”

She breathed a little heavier then pushed the wand towards me. The object should have been the centre of my attention, but the news that my friend was not only into trees, but was in a serious relationship with two of them was the sort of news that needed a minute to be digested.

“Do they have names?” I asked, fascinated.

“Of course not. They are trees, Felisia,” Marigold said, shaking her head at me.

“Oh, right,” I breathed. “So how does it all…work?”

“Lots of grinding,” she said. “And my oak has a particular notch at just the right height for penetra-”

“I think we should all respect Marigold’s privacy,” Ren said quickly. “But er, I’m happy for you.”

“Are you?” Marigold frowned. “It must be difficult to learn of your friend having such robust sexual conquests when you are going through a particularly long dry spell, Ren.”

“I’m not going through a dry spell,” Ren scoffed, though one glance at him told me he was flustered. How dry was this spell exactly? Not that I cared. Although maybe I did. A little.

“My cousin Glorinda told me that if you do not walk the nobbled path to blissville regularly, your garden bloom or Long Sherman can wither and crumble,” Wilbur said ominously.

“Let’s get back to the wand,” Ren said firmly, and all of our attention turned on it again.

“Felisia, if you place the stones inside the holes I have carved into the bark…” Marigold shivered a little at the memory then pushed the wand towards me with the toe of her boot. “It should act as a conduit and channel the power of the stones to you. It cannot access their full strength, but it will certainly give you a boost – though how much so is yet to be determined.”

Wilbur rubbed his hands together excitedly as I picked up the wand, the dark energy rumbling through it making the hairs rise on the back of my hand. I slid the stones from my pocket and placed them one after the other into the grooves Marigold had made for them, each slotting in perfectly.

“Now what?” I looked to her.

“Now you simply make the wand an offering and the power should last as long as you keep feeding it.”

“Feeding it?” I grimaced, not liking the sound of where this was going.

“Blood, of course,” Marigold said. “Yours, or someone else’s. Either will do.”

“I don’t think we should be messing around with this kind of thing,” Ren said. “There’s no need for this. Fee proved she could beat Cyrus. And Wilbur, you stuffed Isla Draconis in a trash can and buried it.”

“But Isla has been a nightmare since then,” Birdie snapped, pain flashing in her eyes. “She gets in my head and makes me watch my little sister die over and over again.” She winced and my heart tugged for her. Her sister had died of a rare disease when Birdie had been eight, and the loss had never left her. Isla was sick to use that against her.

“So challenge her,” Ren encouraged. “Fight back.”

“I’ve tried,” Birdie growled. “She is more powerful than I will ever be. And it’s not just the stuff she does in my head, she has tortured me so many times – and Cyrus too. He might have backed off on you, Felisia, but him and his pride are more than happy to play with me like a weak little mouse.”

“Birdie has hit the halibut on the noggin,” Wilbur said solemnly. “I may have come out victorious once, but nary a time again.”

“And you?” Ren rounded on me, making my heartbeat falter a little at the ferocity of his stare.

“I want to taste true power,” I admitted. “I want to know what it’s like to never fear finding myself in the dirt again, made nothing in front of everyone.”

“You will never be nothing,” he gritted out. “You have no idea, Fee. Look what you have achieved.” He pointed to the stones. “Isn’t that enough?”

My throat thickened and I glanced at Wilbur, Marigold and Birdie, then back to Ren, thinking of all the times I’d seen them on their knees, forced to submit, to suffer in the shadow of our enemies.

“No,” I said darkly, my fingers curling tightly around the wand.

“Please,” Ren said quietly, just for me. “If you’re found with this…” He shook his head at the dark contraption in my hand, and the four glittering gemstones that could land me in Darkmore for the rest of my days if they were ever found in my possession. But I’d known the taste of dirt too many times, and I craved a taste of the sky.

“I won’t be found,” I said firmly, then cast a little silver blade in my free hand and cut a line along my finger. The blood seeped out and I pressed it onto a series of runes that were etched into the handle of the wand. The wind picked up around me and I swear I felt the stars curse as they watched on.

Birdie shifted closer, her tongue whipping out to wet her lips as she watched with rapt attention.

The power flooded me all at once, a merciless wave of strength burrowing deep into my core and latching on tight to my own magic, fuelling it. It felt unnatural, ungodly, but as that power coursed through my blood, a head rush followed that was like nothing I had ever felt before.

A moan passed my lips and a shiver tracked down my spine, my head tipping back as I let it all take over, trying to grow used to the ecstasy of the strength washing through me.

“We’ll take it in turns,” I said breathlessly. “It’s mine today, tomorrow it’s Wilbur’s, then Marigold, Ren then Birdie. We’ll cycle it.”

“Why am I last?” Birdie growled, but I couldn’t hear her anymore, a deep laugh falling from my chest as I rose to my feet and raised my free hand to cast magic. It poured out of me like a hurricane, and I wielded the earth at my feet growing a circle of silver spikes around our group, the sharp tips glinting in the morning sunlight. And I got the feeling we were untouchable now.

We made a pact to be subtle. To use the magic to better our grades and fend off anyone who targeted us, but we had to be careful not to draw attention to our newfound power, or the wand which we kept tucked up our sleeves. I felt invincible on the days it was in my possession, and I soon found myself counting the days until the wand would be mine again.

Ren was reluctant to try it at first, but he planned on using it to try and gain some respect back in society. I hated that the world had turned their back on him, especially when it wasn’t even him who had been Power Shamed. The stars only knew what abuse his father was facing by comparison. I shuddered to think of it. There was nothing worse in our world than losing your position as a Fae. It was a star-given right to claim power, to rise through the ranks and prove yourself worthy in our world. Ren’s father had been stripped of that right, and by association Ren had lost his footing too. It simply wasn’t fair.

Birdie was my biggest concern of late. Every turn she took, she went a little further than before, wielding her magic secretly to lay traps for Isla and Cyrus so as not to draw suspicion on herself. I’d heard Cyrus’s screams when he’d fallen into a pool of quicksand that had not only sucked him down, but had seared the skin from his legs. Birdie had been so damn proud of how she had grown malum weed into the sand, the toxic leaves having poisoned Cyrus’s skin so badly that he had been in the Uranus Infirmary for a week. The same day she had poisoned him, Isla had gone missing on campus, and no one had seen her since. It was unsettling, and no matter what I thought of Isla and Cyrus, this wasn’t sitting right with me.

Today was Birdie’s day once more, and I hurried to catch her at The Orb before lessons started. She had denied any knowledge of Isla’s whereabouts, but she had also been avoiding me like Fae flu, so I knew she was lying to me.

“Birdie.” I hurried over to her by the breakfast buffet and cast a silencing bubble around us. “We need to talk.”

“About what?” she asked lightly, filling a bowl with oatmeal.

“Isla Draconis,” I hissed seriously. “Where is she?”

She shrugged innocently.

“Don’t lie to me,” I growled, a warning coating those words. “This is going too far.”

“Was it going too far when Isla made me eat grugga worms out the back of the Pitball stadium? Or was it too far when Cyrus and his pride tied me onto the roof of Jupiter Halls covered in seeds so the crows came to peck me for four hours? When did it get too far, Felisia? Tell me, because I am so interested to hear your answer.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Birdie, I know what they did to us. I was there. I’ve faced it too. But we’re better than them.”

Birdie scoffed. “Maybe you are, Felisia. But me? I don’t plan on being better than them. I plan on being worse. And if you’re not with me on that, then you’re against me. So which is it?”

The power brimming in her eyes told me she was in possession of the wand, hidden away up her sleeve, and my heart stammered at the threat she suddenly posed to me.

“I’m just trying to protect you,” I changed tact.

“No, you’re not,” she said. “You’re trying to protect yourself. You don’t want the wand getting found.”

“Obviously not.”

“And it won’t be,” she said. “So just play with it how you like on your days, and don’t interfere with my days. Got it?” She walked away and I was left with a pit in my stomach, wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake by stealing those stones.

Things took a nasty turn when Isla was found. For three weeks she had been locked in an underground chamber built of metal, and she had gone through some unknown hell in there that had left her shaken, half-starved and just a shadow of her former self. She didn’t know the name of her captor or anything about the way they looked, their identity concealed with powerful spells the entire time she had been held and tortured in their company. But I knew. I knew and it haunted me every time I closed my eyes.

I’d seen the emergency unit arrive from the hospital, seen the healers surround Isla’s withered body, seen the principal drop all the wards so she could be stardusted to the nearest hospital immediately. Isla had been covered in blood from wounds long healed, her clothes shredded, her right eye swollen and bulging from a more recent attack. And the worst part of it all, was that Birdie had stood there watching with an evil fucking smile lifting the corner of her lips, satisfaction sparking in her eyes.

I sat on our usual hilltop in Earth Territory just before midnight, waiting for Birdie to appear and make the swap. But the moment I had that wand in my hand, I was going to ensure it was never passed back to her. Wilbur and Marigold had accompanied me here and Ren was on his way. It was an intervention of sorts. If she resisted, we had all made the agreement to subdue her together, even if it was sort of unFae. But the risk she posed with that wand could see us all ruined for the rest of our lives.

Anxiety buzzed through me as I waited for Birdie to appear, but the only figure who emerged from the dark was Ren, wearing a frown that deepened with every stride.

He said nothing as he joined us, but silently took my hand, his fingers curling around mine in the dark. And then we waited. And waited. And waited.

But Birdie never showed.

The FIB ran a full investigation into Isla’s capture and torture, but no trace of Birdie’s involvement was found. Birdie avoided us day after day, casting strong repellent spells to keep us at bay whenever we got close, and I was at a loss for what to do. We couldn’t report her to the FIB or she would bring us down with her, and trying to capture her ourselves was a risk none of us were sure we wanted to take.

Marigold warned us of the wand’s dark power, how if Birdie had been feeding it blood regularly, then it could twist the magic of the Guild Stones into something fierce. Not only that, but if Birdie had been offering it the blood of another, a victim laid out as a sacrifice such as Isla, then the wand could turn malignant, even leave a dark mark on Birdie’s soul that she would never be rid of.

Couldn’t have mentioned that sooner, Marigold??

The fact was, we were in the situation we were in now, and we had to figure out a way to stop Birdie before she got caught and took us all down with her. So we had a plan. A crazy, reckless kind of plan, but those tended to be my forte. And being a fully-fledged thief now, I was at the heart of it.

I met Ren outside the Pitball stadium, the evening light tinting everything in amber. Ren’s eyes were dark, hollow and the set of his shoulders told me something was deeply wrong.

“What’s happened?” I rushed to him, hand outstretched, but he retreated from me with a single step that told me to stay back.

“Forget it. We need to deal with Birdie.” He turned to walk into the stadium, but I caught his elbow, making him look back at me.

“Ren,” I growled. “What’s going on?”

He warred with answering, jaw ticking before he finally relented. “Someone broke into my apartment.”

“What?” I gasped.

“Yeah,” he muttered, eyes slipping from mine. “They ransacked the place. Broke most of my stuff then…”

“Then?” I pushed, my heart racing with fury.

“They wrote ‘get out’ on the wall.”

“Who would do that?” I demanded.

“One of the neighbours. Or all of them maybe. They hate me staying there, they say it…affects the place.”

“Affects it how?” I snarled, pacing now as the urge to shift ran through me. I wanted to hunt, to find who had done this and make them pay for it.

“My societal standing makes them uncomfortable, I suppose. I know at least one of them has mentioned to the landlord that no one will wish to rent out her apartment when she leaves.”

“But it isn’t even you who’s power shamed, it’s your father. How can you be punished like this?” My hands curled into fists and Ren caught my shoulders, forcing me to stop moving and look up at him.

“It’s a ripple effect, Fee. And the stars only know what Father’s facing if this is what I endure.” A frown drew his brows together. He rarely spoke about his father or what he’d done, how he felt about him since.

“Have you spoken to him?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“He cut me off. Said it was for my own good, to give me a chance at finding a place in society. He thinks people will forget who I am after a while. Especially if I move away from here…change my name perhaps, though I hate the idea of that.”

It was the first time I could really see why he had to go. Tucana was never going to accept him, but that didn’t mean he had to run to the other side of the world. “How about Sunshine Bay? We loved it there. And I could move there too once I graduate. Maybe Wilbur and Mar-”

“No,” he cut me off so sharply that I felt that word like a thump to my heart.

“Why not?” I snarled.

“Because I will never be able to truly rise in society. My family are well known in Solaria, and I might outrun my name for a while, but honestly, I don’t want to outrun it. I’m an Imai, and I’m damn proud of that Fee. What my father did shouldn’t mean our name has to fall with him. What I truly want is to redeem it. To make everyone respect it again. But I can’t do that here. Not in Solaria.”

I gritted my teeth, his words so painful they tore my heart in two. “So you’re really leaving?”

“How many times do I have to confirm that to you?”

“At least once more. But this time, tell me if there’s anything you’ll regret when you go.”

His eyes raked over my face, falling to my lips then rising to my eyes once again, and all the while I held my breath, feeling like I was being weighed and measured.

“I will have no regrets by the time I leave,” he said, and ice coated my veins.

I nodded, looking him up and down before turning my back on him in an insult, pushing through the door to the stadium.

“Fee,” he called after me, but I didn’t look back, done with him and done with the wild beatings of my heart whenever I got near him. He wanted to go? Fine. Fuck him. Let him sail off to The Waning Lands and become one of the barbarians who lived there. Let him follow his dream of becoming someone in another world, while I made myself into a queen right here in my homeland.

I made it to the large oval field of grass that sat at the heart of the stadium, spotting Wilbur and Marigold standing by the circular pit in the middle. Wilbur waved and I strode over to meet them with my mind setting firmly on this evening’s task.

“Are you ready for the Battle of the Banded Cocks?” Wilbur asked excitedly.

“Is that really the name we’re going with?” I sighed.

“Oh yes indeed!” he whooped. “The Banded Cocks were four fine warriors who wore a gleaming crest upon their chests featuring a proud cock with a shining red crown that held a white pearl at its very tip – and we shall be Banded Cocks this day!”

“When you say cock, you mean rooster right?” I frowned and Wilbur threw his head back and laughed, but didn’t give me any more of an answer than that.

Ren appeared and I pointedly didn’t look at him as he joined the group.

“The bait is set, now we await the prey,” Marigold stated.

“Come on then,” Ren muttered, moving towards the pit and forging a set of steps from the mud with his magic. I made a point of not using them, climbing down into the pit using a vine of my own creation, feeling Ren’s eyes on me as my boots hit the dirt at the bottom.

I drew in the shadows around us with a concealment spell as we all fell quiet and waited for Birdie to appear. Marigold had forged an impressive letter to her from the principal, stating that she was to be given an award for excelling in her classes, rising from the bottom and proving herself worthy as Fae. And a small ceremony was to be held at the Pitball Stadium this evening to offer her an award.

Birdie had always been chasing accolades, so it was the best kind of bait we could come up with. I just hoped she’d fallen for it.

We worked together to form the illusion, melding our magic and casting an image of Principal Snowfleur standing in front of a table holding a glittering golden trophy. We created illusions of other teachers and students gathered around it; Ren even added some chatter between them that was so realistic I almost commended him for it. But then I remembered he was a friend-abandoning asshole with no regrets about leaving us forever and I bit my tongue.

We had plotted out every part of this plan, practised it a hundred times and I knew every step of it like it was etched into my skin. Nothing could go wrong so long as we stuck to the strategy.

“Principal Snowfleur?” Birdie’s voice set my pulse thundering and magic crackling at my fingertips.

Wilbur touched his fingers to his throat, calling out to her in reply, his voice changed to sound just like the principal’s while Marigold worked to puppeteer the illusion of the principal’s mouth moving in time with the words.

“Good evening, Birdie Cain!” he called. “Come collect your award!”

The soft padding of Birdie’s footfalls drew nearer, and I moved into position while Ren stepped up behind me. We’d practised this so many times yet as he placed his hands on my hips, it felt far more intimate than when we’d done it before in his apartment. His fingers lifted the edge of my shirt, the tips of them grazing my skin and sending a wave of heat rippling down my spine.

I gritted my teeth to focus, but as his magic flooded into my body, a gasp hitched in my throat. The heady rush of his power joining with mine was like no other, and as I drew it to the edges of my hands, a smile curled my lips. This was where I thrived, on the brink of war, ready to dive into the fray.

“Ready?” Ren breathed against my ear, the heat of him close. Too close.

I nodded, sensing Marigold and Wilbur moving into position on my right, Marigold’s hands pressed to Wilbur’s back beneath his shirt feeding him magic, yet their stance seemed far less intimate compared to Ren and I.

I wielded a disguise from the deep, rumbling magic in my veins, weaving grass over my body and his, covering every inch of ourselves.

“We have a surprise for you, Birdie,” Wilbur spoke in the principal’s voice once more. “You won’t believe who we found.”

This part of the plan was cruel yet necessary. There was only one thing we could think of that would get Birdie to drop her guard long enough for us to make our move. And as twisted as it was, this might give us the best chance of getting that wand from her.

Marigold made the ground rise beneath Wilbur’s feet and his form changed, morphing into that of a young girl who was just five years old. The illusion was perfect, Wilbur’s skill with such magic a magnificent thing to behold. Most Fae cast protections over their identity so they could never be impersonated, but unless family members decided to protect the dead from being mimicked, there was nothing to stop Wilbur casting himself as Birdie’s sister now.

As he stepped into the illusion of the crowd and moved through it, a tug of remorse in my gut made me hurt for Birdie. I never wanted it to come to this, but we had no choice.

The moment Birdie saw her little sister emerging from the crowd, a noise left her that was half pain, half disbelief.

“No, it can’t be,” she gasped.

“It is,” Marigold took over forging the principal’s voice, puppeteering the crowd too as Ren and I focused on the next task.

I placed my hand against the mud wall in front of me and wielded it with my gifts, the mud drawing me into it, parting and moulding around the two of us, pulling us into its depths. We held our breath the moment the earth enveloped us and drew us skywards, the grass against my skin growing thicker as I willed the ground to push us out the top of it.

We were one with the field, laying prone upon it, Ren pressed close to my left as we moved within the grass and the earth, circling around Birdie to position ourselves behind her. At a glance we looked nothing more than the wind shifting the grass at her feet, the cast so perfect it had me brimming with pride. But I had to keep my head, couldn’t get carried away thinking about how amazing I was right now.

Birdie dropped to her knees, opening her arms for her little sister and embracing her tight, a sob racking through her throat. “Impossible. It can’t be real,” Birdie croaked.

Wilbur held her and magic slid subtly from him, vines creeping up from the grass, preparing to tether Birdie in place. I lunged from the depths of the earth at the exact same moment Ren did, and while his power exploded from him, forging bars of iron that grew from the ground like bamboo, I dove towards Birdie.

My hand was up her sleeve before she even knew what was happening, finding no barrier of magic to stop me while her guard was down. She cried out as Wilbur’s vines latched around her and in the next moment, I had the wand in my grasp and was turning, running as fast as I possibly could in the opposite direction, leaving the others to cage her.

The moment I reached the edge of the field, I turned back, finding Wilbur, Marigold and Ren surrounding Birdie in the cage. Birdie threw herself at the bars with a shriek of purest hate, snapping some of the vines binding her arms to her sides and spitting curses at Wilbur for appearing as her sister.

“It was the most simple way to ensure you let your guard down,” Marigold said.

Birdie shook her head. “I thought I was being overly cautious making the forgery, but of course you couldn’t let me have my moment of glory. You were always happy to let me be the bottom of our pile of dirt, and now you’ve proved it.”

The vines snapped off of her body one by one and a chill ran down my spine as I looked at the fake wand in my hand, realising what she meant. It crumbled into a white powder and I gasped, trying to shake it off of my palm but it clung there like wet sand. It crawled over my hand like a living creature and suddenly it was burning, sizzling against my skin and making me scream bloody murder.

Ren ran my way just as the cage around Birdie exploded and deadly shrapnel from the shattered metal shot in every direction.

Ren slammed into me, knocking me to the ground and sending us deep into the earth, letting it swallow us up as metal collided with the mud. His body went rigid and his arms tightened on me even further, then he went slack, the weight of him crushing me and the press of mud to my face making my lungs roar in a demand for air.

The earth trembled violently and I knew whatever awaited us above was danger embodied, but we couldn’t stay down here to suffocate in the dirt.

I held tight to Ren and forced the earth to shove us up and out onto the field once more, launching us into a calamitous battle above. Marigold was feeding Wilbur magic while he held off Birdie’s ferocious attacks with walls of earth and shields of metal, desperately trying to keep safe.

Ren was unmoving as he tumbled off of me, a huge spike of metal stuck in his side and blood soaking out across his white shirt. I screamed in horror, lunging at him and pulling the metal free from his side. I covered the wound with shaking hands, my magic latching onto his as I worked to heal him with everything I had to give.

Birdie’s attention swung our way and our eyes locked over Ren’s body. I refused to remove my hands from the wound, healing him more important than anything else in this world.

“Stay back!” I roared, my Lioness aching to come out and make her hurt for this. The wand had to be concealed somewhere on her body, pressing skin to skin to allow her to draw on its power. But where?

There was no obvious bulge beneath her clothes as she raised her hands at me, her upper lip curling back, and a demon in her eyes that spoke of the wand’s corruption. “With you all gone, no one else will know I have it. This power. This gift the stars offered me.”

“You will never get away with it, you crumpus crumpet!” Wilbur cried, diving out from behind one of his earth walls and raising his hands defensively. A boulder burst from his hands, growing in size and gaining momentum before it collided with Birdie, knocking her to the ground with a crack that said her leg had broken.

She scrambled to get up and Ren sucked in a breath beneath me, his eyes finding mine, full of fear, like it was me who was the one laying in a pool of blood on the ground. I leapt to my feet before any words could pass between us, springing over him and running for Birdie on the ground, her gaze still fixed on Wilbur.

Birdie dragged herself along, her hand reaching for her mangled leg to heal it, a snarl leaving her that revealed her fangs.

“You nincompoop! I shall cast you into the never more!” Wilbur bellowed, casting a swirling storm of vines at Birdie just as I collided with her on the ground. The vines bound my body to hers and she snarled, twisting around to try and ger her fangs in me. But my head swung forward, slamming into hers and dazing her as stars sparked before my eyes.

Her hand reached feebly for her twisted leg again and I spotted a glint of white peeking out from her trouser leg. I cast a small blade in my hand and sliced through the vines, scrabbling over her and snatching the wand from where it was bound to her calf. Magic poured from her, a blast of rubble slamming into me and sending me flying backwards.

She screamed for the wand, but it was tight in my grip, buzzing with power and I wasn’t letting go.

I tumbled over the grass, then found Ren there righting me, pulling me along. “Go!” he urged, and we ran, sprinting away across the field, deep into the stadium then out the other side with the footsteps of Marigold and Wilbur on our heels.

Ren tore his bloodied shirt off as we made it through the doors, wiping the red from his side and keeping it balled in his fist as we moved.

Birdie was no match for us now I had the wand, but that didn’t mean I would slow my pace. We were going to get it as far away from her as possible and hide it somewhere she could never reach it. I kept throwing glances over my shoulder, expecting to find Birdie taking chase with her Vampire speed, but perhaps she had given up, because she didn’t appear.

Either way, none of us stopped running as we ran through The Wailing Wood, only slowing our pace to a walk as we passed other students, stitching on smiles and trying to act casual. My breaths came heavily as Marigold took the lead, guiding us off the path into the trees with the last stage of our plan in mind. I kept the wand out of sight, and I could have sworn the dark power of it was seeping into my skin, tempting me to use it. With a jolt, I realised some of Ren’s blood must have gotten on it from my hands.

The wand’s pull was undeniable, a call in the centre of my chest that begged to be answered. It had to be wielded. It wanted to be. And it could make me so very, very powerful if only I gave in. It would be so simple to do so, to let that intoxicating magic take over and find a home in the crevices of my soul. I had stolen the Guild Stones after all. If anyone owned this wand, it was me. My friends would understand that. They would want that for me if they were true friends. And if they didn’t. Well…they could be silenced.

I shuddered, rejecting the thought as it crossed my mind and gritting my teeth against the power. But it was so, so hard to resist. Like it was in my blood now, a part of me that would never let go. This was how Birdie must have felt in its grasp, and she would surely crave it now she was parted from it. Hunting for it to the ends of the earth until she possessed it again. But I couldn’t let her have it. It was mine. I was owed it. I had earned it.

“Just here should do,” Marigold said, slowing to a stop in a clearing in the woodland.

My feet came to a halt alongside my friends, and they looked to me expectantly. Waiting for me to do what we had decided. But who were they to decide what was right for this wand? Wasn’t it mine to make decisions for?

They were jealous, that’s what it was. They wanted to take the stones, steal them from me. But I was the greatest thief this land would ever know. I had stolen priceless jewels from the belly of The Palace of Souls. I was as much a queen as the Vega who ruled the kingdom.

No…why should I give it up when I had proved I was worthy of it? They had thought I was insane to attempt it, but here I was with the evidence of all I was capable of, and now they wanted to take it from me.

I grazed my thumb over the handle of the wand, the runes there buzzing with untold power, feasting on Ren’s blood. Ren. The one who was leaving, abandoning us. Abandoning me. He held no regrets either, he had said so himself. He would walk away from me and never spare a glance over his shoulder for the Lioness he had thought so incapable of claiming this prize. And perhaps he planned to take my wand with him…

I glanced between my so-called friends, suspicion clouding my thoughts. Marigold with her emotionless gaze and Wilbur with his too-friendly demeanour. But I could see the devils in their eyes now, the truth they were trying to disguise.

I raised the wand, aiming it at the one who had hurt me most, who made my heart rip and tear like claws were slicing right through it. “No regrets. That’s what you said, wasn’t it Ren? You’ll leave on the next boat to anywhere the moment you get your chance. But what are you waiting for? You could have left but here you stand. Now I know why.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, confounded. Another lie painted on his face.

“You could have left if you wanted to leave. But you realised there was something to stay for, didn’t you? You saw this wand and knew it had to be yours. So you bided your time and now-”

“The wand is corrupting her,” Marigold cut me off. “It has been fed too much blood that was won in violence.”

“Holy bluetit hole,” Wilbur gasped. “We have to help her.”

“Fee,” Ren said in a low voice, drawing my attention back to him. “I didn’t stay because of the wand.”

“Liar,” I snarled, raising my free hand as the power of the stones rushed into my blood and set my skin prickling with a wild energy.

“I said I will have no regrets, but I didn’t say I would have no heartbreak,” he growled and something in his tone made me hesitate on blasting him away from me. He took another step closer, his eyes unblinking, boring into mine. So familiar, dark, and blazing. “I will not regret walking away from you because your path is climbing to the stars, and mine is descending into the dirt at my feet. Until I can change that and find my own way towards the sky, I will never be a good enough Fae. Maybe in your eyes, but not mine. I would grow bitter, hateful, and I would never inflict that upon you, Fee. But I will suffer in every moment we are apart for the rest of time. I know that. Yet I still choose to leave because once shame is cast, it cannot be undone. Not here anyway. Though perhaps it can be in another land, a place where I can become worthy again, a Fae I am proud to be. So yes, I stayed for you, for a while longer, because I’m weak. And walking away from you will destroy me more certainly than the moon falling from the sky and crashing into the earth. I will miss you in every breath I take when I go. But I will go, Fee. Just not…yet.”

My hand lowered and my love for him crackled under my skin, searing away the dark until I was me again. And I remembered that the wand was the true enemy.

I shook my head to clear it, his words still ringing in my ears and leaving me speechless. Then I raised the wand in the air and my three friends flinched as I drove it down into the ground at my feet with a cry of effort, wielding its power. My magic poured from me and a giant oak tree grew from the ground, higher and higher towards the sky, the bough thickening until it was wider than the four of us put together. Branches spread out above us, shading the sun as bright green leaves sprouted from them and fluttered in the breeze. The branches continued to grow and spread and thicken while a new shape took form within them. A large treehouse that was built of beautiful wood, with walkways and balconies and a roof that glinted silver.

I pulled the wand from the ground and moved toward the tree trunk, then pressed my hand to it, a door forming at my touch. I set magic into the very bark that would allow only the worthy to find refuge in this place, willing everything I had into that cast, using the power of the Guild Stones to compound and make it impossible to deny. The power of the stones themselves would allow only Fae whose hearts and souls were uncorruptible to enter here, those they chose to guard them.

I stepped through the door, finding myself in a wide room before a perfectly carved stairway that glinted with Faeflies, as if the creatures themselves had been born here, or perhaps they had been lured by the magic in the wood.

I turned to find my friends stepping through the door behind me, looking around in awe. I led the way up into the treehouse, standing in a room filled with carved wooden furniture, a stone fireplace dominating the wall to my left.

“Well toss me in a side salad,” Wilbur breathed. “This place is the cream in our whiskers.”

“Only Fae that the Guild Stones deem worthy to protect them can access this place,” I told them. “Birdie won’t get in.”

I looked down at the wand in my hand, then clenched my teeth. “We shouldn’t use it anymore, agreed?”

I looked to the others who all nodded.

“How do we destroy it?” I asked Marigold.

“It can be burned in the lava fields of Nestrula,” she said.

“Then that’s where we’ll go,” I said. “And the stones can remain here.”

“Wait,” Ren stepped forward. “We should use it one last time.”

“Gestating Jack Russells,” Wilbur gasped. “For what purpose?”

“We’re not considering the bigger picture here,” Ren said. “Think of these stones getting into the wrong hands. Birdie is a small threat in comparison to a powerful Fae getting hold of them.”

“No one even knows we have them,” I said.

“Not yet. But any day now, someone could notice the fakes left in the palace. And once the theft is announced, and a hunt ensues, the lawmen will not be the only Fae who come looking for them. The power of the Guild Stones is legendary, and if we could figure out how to wield them then I’ll bet any number of powerful psychos could figure it out too.”

A lump built in my throat. “So what more can we do?”

“It is obvious, is it not?” Marigold said with little expression.

“I am as lost as a dinky bat in a bubble bath,” Wilbur said in dismay, and he had a point there.

“We lay a trap, or multiple traps. One for each stone. Yes, that would be best.” Marigold nodded once. “Four containers, and a clever contraption within that is triggered whenever someone tries to take the stone out of it.”

“You should make them,” Ren said to me, and Wilbur nodded quickly. “You know how to wield it now.”

“Alright,” I said, taking the wand into my grip once more and feeling the lick of its power, like a dark beast welcoming me home. I directed my magic towards the table, focusing on forging four containers from metal and urging the power to form a trap inside each of them.

A shiver tracked down my spine and I took in a ragged breath as I felt the stars whispering in my ears and the wand in my hand began to vibrate. The power was unimaginable, building and building while fate seemed to touch my hand and guide its movements. The wand zig-zagged this way and that, and I wasn’t sure if I was directing it, or perhaps the stones were, or even the stars. But it moved all the same, weaving from left to right, the magic in the air electrifying, like static sparking against my skin.

The others gasped, Wilbur and Marigold withdrawing, but Ren moved closer, looking ready to dive in and wrestle the wand from my grip if necessary.

Words slipped from my tongue that I had never spoken in my life, the power of them zapping through the air and slamming into the table, scorching a mark across it. As the containers began to form, my mind slipped back to that music box Father had denied me at Christmas and melted before my eyes because I hadn’t earned it. Well here I was, wasn’t I? Earning it once and for all, branding my name onto the slate of destiny and ensuring it was never forgotten. I was Felisia Night, and one day, everyone would know what I had done, one day they would speak my name with reverence. A legend. A queen.

The containers shimmered with glittering light then my arm dropped, and exhaustion swept over me, making my knees hit the floor.

Ren was there in an instant, pulling me upright and steadying me, checking me over. I let the wand slip from my fingers as my eyes found his, needing nothing more in that moment than him.

“By the light of the bare moon’s behind,” Wilbur breathed. “Behold, the wonders of your creation.”

I turned to look, finding four beautiful music boxes sitting on the table along the line of the scorch mark, each one engraved with a star sign linked to a Guild Stone.

Marigold picked up the wand, plucking the stones from it and moving to the boxes. “I suppose we simply place them in, and that will be that.”

“Be careful,” I warned, and she nodded, casting a vine instead to carefully move the opal stone into the Libra music box. It snapped shut, vibrating for a moment before falling still once more, and Marigold repeated the process with the final stones. “There,” she announced. “Whatever traps lie within, I suspect we will be better off avoiding them.”

“Let us keep them as hidden as dandelions in a teacup,” Wilbur said, moving to one of the smooth bark walls and pressing his hand to it. He created a hidden hatch in the wall, revealing a carved out space beyond it.

Marigold picked up the boxes, placing them inside and Wilbur sealed it with an intricate concealment spell.

“We are bound now, dear friends.” Wilbur looked between us ominously. “This here hollow is ours to protect. A fortress built of courage and gallantry.” He raised his hands, wielding the wood in the wall opposite and marking down four letters. “K for Kipling, I for Imai, N for Night, and G for Grus.” Wilbur jutted up his chin. “King’s Hollow this shall be, now and forevermore.”

“That’s…actually pretty good,” I said in surprise.

“Of course it is, dear Felisia,” Wilbur said, puffing out his chest. “My family are renowned for their wondrous acronyms, and this is no exception!”

“We should destroy the wand,” Marigold said. “And I suppose apologies are in order. I believed it to be an ideal tool, I have now been corrected.” She didn’t look particularly guilty or anything, but that was Marigold. And from her, this meant a lot.

“Do not bother your badger about it, Mari, my dear.” Wilbur rested a hand on her shoulder. “Mistakes are found along paths with dead ends. The good thing about having feet is that we can always use them to turn back.”

“Indeed,” Marigold said. “So, I shall go with Wilbur to the lava fields, while you two guard the stones. There could be more trouble afoot otherwise.” She picked up the wand, took Wilbur’s arm and guided him towards the stairway.

I was left with Ren and far too much silence passing between us.

“This place, Fee…” Ren stared around in disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, and he turned to me in surprise. “Earlier when I had the wand. I…lost myself for a moment. I think I might have done something terrible if you hadn’t talked me down.” I didn’t mention what he’d said to call me back to him, those words still buzzing through my mind and leaving me at a loss.

“It was the wand,” he growled.

“Was it the wand for Birdie too?”

He contemplated that. “You didn’t give in to it, she did.”

“I don’t know…” I sighed, moving to the window and gazing down into the trees for any sign of Birdie. I pictured Ren laying on the ground covered in blood and a growl rolled up my throat. Ren was right. She had used it to hurt us, I hadn’t. That set us apart. It had to.

A week passed and Birdie didn’t show up to classes, though a rumour had spread that she’d told Principal Snowfleur she had to go home for a family emergency. It was the least of the principal’s concerns as she was still hunting for whoever had wrecked the Pitball pitch.

I didn’t know if Birdie would come back or if perhaps she would drop out of Zodiac Academy and we would never have to face her again. But my gut told me I would be fooling myself to think she was out of our lives for good.

We all slept at King’s Hollow every night, though we were probably being overly cautious in guarding the stones in a place I was sure no one could enter but us. There was something about the Hollow that I loved though. It was a space just for us, and we added more and more furniture to it, home comforts too. It had fast become my favourite place on campus.

With the wand destroyed and the Guild Stones locked away safely in a magic tree, in a secret compartment, inside music boxes that held untold dangers, I guessed we didn’t really need to stay there too, but something about the power of that place just felt safe and welcoming.

Even the safety of King’s Hollow couldn’t protect us from the announcement that stared back at me from a newspaper in a girl’s hand as I walked into The Orb though.

Four priceless gemstones stolen from The Palace of Souls.

I snatched the newspaper right from her hands with a gasp, and when she tried to take it back, I growled so fiercely that she staggered away again. My gaze dropped to the article as my pulse drummed in my ears and the air felt like glue in my lungs.

In a theft set to rock the kingdom, four priceless gemstones have been stolen from under Queen Leondra Vega’s nose. The FIB have stated that an anonymous tip off came in late last night stating that they might want to check on the Crown of Starfall. A ruckus was caused at the palace when the FIB requested entry just after midnight and the royal treasury was opened to retrieve the crown.

A shock to the Queen herself, the four gemstones pictured in the crown below, were confirmed missing with four exquisite forgeries in their place. And she has since made this statement.

“These four gemstones are heirlooms with great importance to my family, and I am devastated to learn of their loss.”

Anyone who has encountered the crown in recent months is now going through rigorous Cyclops Interrogation, starting with the palace staff, but it is likely this will extend to ticket-holders who attended the Queen’s Jubilee-

I stopped reading, dread making my blood run cold.

I clawed a hand into my hair and searched The Orb for my friends. Wilbur sat alone at a table, his face as white as a sheet and his mouth moving as he muttered something to himself, gently rocking back and forth.

I hurried over to him, tossing the newspaper down between us and he met my gaze with terror fogging his eyes.

“Felisia,” he rasped, casting a silencing bubble around us. “Whatever shall we do?”

“I don’t know. Fuck. I don’t know.”

“This is the doing of a dastardly traitor. Birdie Cain walks a path of vengeance, and she shall not rest until we sit deep in the belly of Darkmore.” He started trembling like a leaf, a noise of sorrow leaving him, and I leaned forward to rest my hand on his shoulder.

“We’re not going to Darkmore. No one knows it was us.”

“They will when a Cyclops rifles through our minds like a finger scrolling through a binder – woe! Woe is me!” He leapt to his feet, looking in a panic, like he might run or do something even more crazy.

“Wilbur,” I snapped. “Keep it together.”

He nodded, murmuring apologies as he sank back into his seat and stared at the newspaper in desolation.

“We’ll think of something,” I said, though as I rested my palms on the table, nothing came to mind but the thought of being dragged away to Darkmore. Made a disgrace. Felisia Night, a taint on the Night family. Spoken of only with shame and embarrassment.

I shuddered at the thought.

Marigold came rushing over to us, looking more flustered than I’d ever seen her as she joined our table. “We are in a lot of trouble.”

“Do you have any ideas?” I demanded.

“We could return them to the palace, perhaps,” she said.

“They’re inside music boxes with traps in them that could be deadly for all we know. What if the queen tries to retrieve them and ends up killed? Even if she was injured, we’d be responsible for that,” I said in despair. “They can’t go back.” There was a note of possession to my voice, because it wasn’t just the issue of the music boxes. Those stones were my claim to glory. I wasn’t giving them up. Not for anything.

“Oh, of course,” Marigold whispered, her face a little ashen. “Perhaps we could retrieve them ourselves?”

“And risk our own necks?” I scoffed. “I don’t want to be killed by a music box.”

“No, indeed,” she agreed, frowning as she thought on it.

“Wilbur,” I rounded on him. “Your family work at the palace, you could get more information. Maybe work out how long we have until the interrogation falls on the ticket holders. They won’t suspect why you’re checking up on them after hearing this news.”

“Y-yes,” he stammered. “I shall go to them the moment classes are done. I won’t dilly or dally.”

“I have an idea,” Marigold said. “I shall take the stones, hide them well in places across the kingdom then drink a memory potion so I cannot recall their locations.”

“King’s Hollow was designed to protect them. That’s the safest place they can be,” I said sharply, not to mention the fact that I wasn’t going to become clueless to where those Guild Stones were. They were my legacy.

“And what about when we graduate?” Marigold said a little sternly. “We cannot leave them in the Hollow forever.”

I saw her point, but we didn’t even have the wand now, how were we supposed to create anywhere as secure as King’s Hollow?

“We should never have taken the stones of old,” Wilbur said forlornly. “What use are they to us now anyway? Locked up in trip-traps and hidden in hidey holes?”

“There must be other ways to wield them,” Marigold said. “If we can keep them safe, and ensure the FIB do not interrogate you both, eventually we will be able to use them again.”

“If we hadn’t locked them up in lethal music boxes that is,” I said.

“How lethal can they be?” she mused.

I shrugged, because to be fair I had no idea the extent of the traps inside the boxes. But I had felt the power pouring into them, the dark and potent magic the wand had conjured alongside those stones to create something truly frightening within.

“I think Marigold may have the pinprick of a plan,” Wilbur said thoughtfully. “We could each take a box, hide it, then drink a memory potion to forget not only its location, but the entire heist. Everything between then and now.”

“I don’t want to forget it,” I blurted.

“Would you rather be sent to Darkmore?” Marigold asked coolly.

I pursed my lips, feeling cornered.

“It is our only choice, dear Felisia,” Wilbur said sadly.

My shoulders dropped and sadness weighed on me. “Alright,” I gave in. “Find out how long we have to do this, Wilbur.”

“You can count on me!”

Ren was more than pleased to get rid of the stones and wipe away all the memories that incriminated me, but when the two of us walked into King’s Hollow the very same night the robbery had been splashed across the news, all I felt was anger. Wilbur had said the interrogations could start as soon as tomorrow, so there was no time to spare, but I hated that there were no other options than this.

“This is for the best,” Ren said. “We can have a clean slate. These stones aren’t worth a lifetime in Darkmore.”

“I guess,” I muttered. “It just seems extreme.”

He came at me, boxing me in against the wall of the narrow stairway inside the hollow of the tree bough, and my breath hitched. “What’s extreme is that the queen herself has sent units of FIB out hunting for you, Fee. You are who they’re looking for, do you understand that?”

“Of course I do,” I growled, trying to get past him, but his hands slammed down either side of my head to pen me there.

“Then protect yourself, dammit. And protect us too. If one of us goes down, we all go down. We’re your accomplices. The four of us locked up in Darkmore, is that what you want?”

For a moment, I pictured it, locked away with my four friends. Ren never able to leave me. It was a selfish, wicked thought, but it would mean he had to stay. That we would always be together.

Then I dropped my head with a sigh, letting that wild thought die. I wasn’t going to do that to the people I loved. And I wasn’t going to set my name on fire either.

“Surely there’s another way?” I pleaded and Ren sighed too, lowering his head so his forehead pressed to mine.

“If there was, I promise I would do it. But there’s no simple way we can keep those stones now that the world is looking for them.”

“You’re going to forget I’m a legendary thief. You won’t be in awe of me anymore,” I said with a pout, and he lowered his mouth to mine, lips grazing and pressing, the heat of his powerful body flush to mine.

“I was in awe of you long before you pocketed some pretty stones, Felisia Night.”

The rumble of his voice sent a quake through the core of me, heat burning between my thighs and demanding his attention. The way he said my name was the way I wanted the world to say it, and I drowned in the feeling of being revered, tipping my head back and allowing his mouth to sail lower, my hand fisting in his hair and guiding his head that way.

Queens didn’t serve, they were served.

Ren nipped at my throat, his fingers fisting in the black dress I wore and a growl of want leaving him. Then he was gone, walking away as if he had never touched me at all, heading on up into the treehouse and leaving me there unfulfilled once again.

I stalked after him, lips pressed together as I watched him take the four music boxes from the compartment in the wall.

He held them out to me. “Take your pick.”

I moved closer, pretending I was completely unaffected by our moment in the stairway as I selected my favoured box.

I weighed it in my hand, eyeing the intricate Scorpio star sign symbol on the top of the gleaming silver metal. It had been my grandfather’s sign, and though he had been a strict asshole, he had always said he saw greatness in me. Something the rest of my family hadn’t been so keen to agree on.

I was a Capricorn, obviously. And if there had been a Cappy box to claim, I would have fallen on it. Alas, it was not to be.

I slid the Scorpio music box into the purse that was hanging across my body and Ren pocketed the others. Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FɪndNøvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Without another word passing between us, we headed across campus to meet Wilbur and Marigold, each of them selecting a box for themselves. Marigold took the Libra one, while Wilbur took the Cancer, leaving Ren with the Sagittarius.

We headed out the campus gate and Wilbur produced a little bag of stardust. “My aunt is given quite the stipend since working at the palace,” he said smugly. “We can travel away into the wind or the water. Wherever we go, it shall likely be deep into the yonder.”

The wind stirred at my back and a roar cut through the air that made me look to the sky in surprise. There, descending from the dark clouds was a figure so huge for a moment I thought a star was falling. But instead, an enormous silver Dragon emerged, slamming to the ground behind Marigold and making the earth quake beneath my feet.

I stumbled back in alarm, unsure what was happening as Marigold stepped up to its side with a smile that was so wholly unlike her usual emotionless expressions that it unnerved me. “I told you my cousin married an Acrux.”

That voice. It didn’t belong to Marigold at all, yet it was coming from her all the same. And there was only once conclusion to draw as her features changed before our eyes, and Birdie was revealed instead.

My hands came up in defence, magic blazing at my fingertips as fury and fear collided inside me. “Where’s Marigold?”

Birdie frowned, her fingers tracing lovingly over the box in her hands. “She had to go.”

“Go where, you gumpus goon!?” Wilbur wailed, hands raising too as Ren pressed a hand to my shoulder, ready to offer me power in a fight. But with that Dragon spewing smoke from its nostrils at her back, I didn’t feel so confident to take on this battle. And that wasn’t just any Dragon. It was a fucking Acrux.

“There’s only one way I could be wearing her face, Wilbur. The same reason you could wear the face of my sister,” Birdie spat, and horror rolled freely through me.

“No,” I begged the stars for it not to be true, but Birdie’s eyes were cold and so, so dark. The wand’s corruption still lay there in her gaze, and I knew she wouldn’t rest until she had reclaimed its power once more.

“Hand over the others,” Birdie demanded. “They belong to Luxie and I now.”

The Dragon rumbled her assent of that, stepping forward, her sharp claws scraping along the ground in a promise of violence.

I glanced back at Ren, then to Wilbur, seeing this fight failing before it had even begun. We couldn’t defeat an Acrux Dragon, so there was only one option left to us.

“Get to the Hollow!” I screamed, tearing the earth apart in front of us, throwing up an explosive spray of debris and rocking the ground beneath Luxie and Birdie’s feet with an almighty earthquake to buy us a modicum of time.

We turned and ran through the gate, sprinting together across campus and blasting up the path behind us with earth magic. Luxie took to the air, flying after us with a roar that made my heart judder in my chest.

Birdie raced after us too, using the speed of her Order to catch us quickly, but I sent a rock hurtling her way that knocked her onto her ass and dazed her long enough for us make it to The Wailing Wood.

Fire bloomed overhead and the treetops crackled as the leaves and branches were singed by the heat of the fire blossoming between them. I felt the heat, the burn against my back, but I never stopped moving even when I was sure I was about to be cooked alive.

Ren never left my side and Wilbur weaved through the trees left and right with light-footed nimbleness just ahead.

Everything was so dark between the trees as the fire sizzled out at our backs, and I was disorientated, unsure which path to take until Ren grabbed my hand and drew me to the left. Then I saw it, the huge oak that would offer us salvation in the clearing up ahead.

I put on a burst of speed, head down, while Ren dragged me along so fast I nearly lost my footing.

Wilbur made it to the tree first, but a spiral of hellfire tore down from the Dragon’s jaws above, cutting us off from him and the tree, forcing Ren and I to fall back. We hit the ground, scrambling away from the flames and the moment they flashed out, Ren cast a huge vine that wrapped around my waist and threw me across the clearing. I cried out, colliding hard with Wilbur, the two of us smashing into the tree trunk, and the door opening for us so we fell through into the hidden stairwell within.

I turned to look for Ren, finding him running across the clearing, arms pumping at his sides, the Sagittarius music box gripped tight in his fist. Luxie landed with the power of a building collapsing, crushing him beneath her talons and making him cry out in pain.

“No!” I screamed, leaping forward, but Wilbur caught my arm, dragging me back.

Ren punched Luxie’s scaly cheek with the music box and her head swung sideways, her jaws about to close over his arm and tear it clean off, when I opened my palm and made a wild decision. I sent a net of vines at her face, latching tight around her jaws and yanking them apart so her teeth couldn’t close. Then I snatched the music box from his grip with a vine and tossed it into the trees, sending a Faelight after it to distract Luxie from Ren.

Luxie immediately reared off of Ren, knocking down a maple tree in her haste to reach the music box. Ren got up and I ran to help him as he staggered my way, swinging his arm around my neck and shoving my hand under his shirt to heal him.

But we weren’t moving quickly enough.

One glance back showed Luxie claiming the music box in her claws and taking off into the sky, then Birdie appeared tearing through the trees at high speed.

I forced the earth to buck beneath us, sending us flying forward through the doorway in a heap. I spun around as Birdie came racing towards us, slamming into an invisible barrier that stopped her from entering King’s Hollow, sending her flying backwards with a bloodied nose, cursing our names.

I shoved to my feet, intending to go out there and claim the Libra music box from her, but her eyes widened as she saw me coming and she shot off into the trees.

Wilbur healed away the last of the gouges on Ren’s body, and I sagged forward, falling against them, and holding them tight. Their arms came around me, and we broke as one over the loss of Marigold, grief making me ache.

I was starting to think the stones were a curse I had brought down upon all of our heads, and with two of them now lost to dangerous hands, I had the feeling the carnage had only just begun.

The interrogations went on for days. Hundreds of Jubilee ticket holders were summoned to the FIB in alphabetical order, and with Wilbur being a Grus and me a Night, he was the first to be called. At breakfast, he solemnly poured the exact dosage needed to erase his memories from the past couple of months into his morning orange juice. It would rouse suspicion almost certainly, but without proof of his involvement, what could the FIB really do?

Maybe some terrible investigation that involved torture.

“Wait,” I gasped, slapping my hand over his juice and he looked up at me in surprise. “I can’t let you do it.”

“But this is the way of the nambleberry. Sometimes it does not crumble the way we wish it to crumble. But crumble it must,” he said sadly.

“There’s another way to crumble it, Wilbur,” I sighed, getting to my feet, glancing at the chair beside him which should have been occupied by Marigold. There was still no sign of her body, but her parents had come looking for her, and a new investigation was underway to help locate her. Rumours were circling around campus about the torturer striking again and Isla went on the defensive everywhere she went, ready to fight. She had recovered from her ordeal in a way that made her suspicious of the whole world, and though I had been on the end of her cruelty more times than I could count, I couldn’t help but feel awful for what she’d suffered through.

“Whatever are you thinking?” Wilbur asked.

“You’ll see. Just trust me.”

“I only have an hour before I have to answer my summons,” he said in despair.

“Then an hour will have to be enough,” I said thickly.

I walked away as he warbled out a sorrowful tune, and I quickened my pace out of The Orb, knowing I needed to act fast. I made a path for Terra House, casting magic at the symbol above the door to gain entry and heading into the deep tunnels which led under the hillside. Skylights sat in the peak of the domed roofs above, casting slanted shafts through the hallways.

I made my way to Birdie’s room, took hold of the handle and blasted the thing right off its hinges with a spray of metal shrapnel.

A curse came from inside as I kicked the door open, hands raised and teeth bared, but I wasn’t remotely prepared for what I found inside. Birdie’s hand was on the back of a girl’s neck as she forced her towards the Libra music box, the lid of it flicked open and a haunting tune carrying from the depths of it. The moment the girl’s hand touched it, she disappeared, tumbling away into the box without a trace.

“What the fuck?” I gasped, casting a shield of metal against my arm in case Birdie tried to attack me.

My old friend look crazed, her eyes bloodshot like she hadn’t slept in days and her face twitchy. “Can’t get it out, can I? And I’m not going in. But they never come back. One after the other, in they go, bye, bye, bye. But they never come out!” She pointed at me accusingly. “You. You can get it out, can’t you? Because you’re the one who made it.” She carefully picked up the music box by the base, holding it towards me and revealing a twirling ballerina within.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” I warned.

“Or what? You’ll tell on me?” she hissed. “And then what? The FIB will take us all away.”

“Where’s Marigold? What did you do with her?”

She said nothing, but her eyes darted to her closet and ice rolled down my spine. I side stepped that way, then again when Birdie made no move to stop me, opening the door and spotting a large wooden chest inside. My hand trembled as I opened it, finding Marigold’s broken body twisted up within it, the soil spilling from her lips telling me how she had died.

“Monster,” I rounded on Birdie with a crack in my voice and tears searing my eyes.

“She never thought anything of me,” Birdie said in anger. “So when I got into her room while she slept, I slipped her some Medusa venom, let the paralysis take over before I killed her good and slow. By the end, she knew who the greater Fae was, and she knew how deeply she had underestimated me.”

A snarl of rage left me and I sent a blast of rocks at her, forcing her to dive and take cover behind the bed. I leapt onto the mattress, glaring down at her with magic crackling at my fingertips, but she lunged at me with a syringe in her fist, trying to drive the needle into my leg.

I caught her wrist with a vine, latching it tight while my foot came out and booted her hard in the face. She shrieked in anger as she fell back and I wielded the vine, plucking the syringe from her grasp and bringing it to my hand.

“Medusa venom?” I guessed and her cold stare told me I was right.

Her eyes darted past me to the door, and she made a run for it with a burst of Vampire speed, causing a violent tremor to rock the ground and send me crashing to my knees. My hand raised and I gritted my teeth as I sent the syringe after her on another vine, jamming it into the side of her neck just as she made it to the doorway. The vine forced the plunger to depress, and she made it only a few more steps before she slumped to the floor with a groan of desperation, her body growing limper by the second.

I hurried out into the corridor, looking left and right but finding no witnesses there to see what I did next.

I fisted my hand in her hair, dragging her back into her room, and kicking the door shut, standing over her just as she might have stood over Marigold before she died. Her fingers twitched but no magic came to her aid as she fell fully still beneath me and I leaned down, pinching her chin between my finger and thumb. “My name will one day pass through the ages, descendant to descendant. It’ll be immortalised in history books and plays will be written to capture the glory of my life. But you? You will be forgotten. I will make sure of it.”

Felisia Night, of the reputable Nemean Lion family of the same name, has been officially sentenced to sixty-five years in Darkmore Penitentiary for the theft of the four treasured gemstones belonging to Queen Leondra Vega which were stolen during her twenty fifth Jubilee. The full extent of the shocking story was uncovered in court yesterday afternoon, corroborated by Cyclops Interrogation, painting the picture of a student at Zodiac Academy who found herself at the bottom of the pecking order. In a daring bid to prove herself, she set out a plot to steal the four stones from The Palace of Souls, training day and night for the momentous task. And, upon the day of the Queen’s Jubilee, she enacted her plan and walked away with four priceless artefacts in her pocket, which the kingdom have been hunting for since the anonymous tip off was received. A tip off, which has now been confirmed to have come from the source herself. Felisia Night held her chin high when she told her tale, and it was impossible to deny the sight of raised eyebrows in court, along with a few murmurs of astonishment.

Despite Miss Night’s clear misdemeanour, which she will now suffer the price of for many years, it is clear she made an impression in court that will be long lasting. The first, and no doubt last Fae to ever steal from The Palace of Souls, her name will likely go down in history for the act, especially considering the fact that she had not even finished her education. A full inquiry is still underway in the palace to seek out the gaps in surveillance, and the security will be tightened up accordingly, ensuring no such theft ever occurs again.

With Miss Night refusing to give up the location of the gemstones, and the memory of their location destroyed by what Dr Eyling, of the Cyclops Order, has concluded was either a memory potion or a complex memory removal spell, there is still no trace of the artefacts.

To read the full account of Miss Night’s story, turn to page 16.

I lowered the newspaper, heart thumping and a smile twisting my lips. My golden hair danced around me in a late fall breeze as I sat on the edge of the wooden pier, gazing across the open ocean towards the red gleam of the oncoming sunrise.

“How did you do it?” Ren’s voice sounded at my back, though I’d heard his approach long before he spoke, his heavy footsteps impossible to miss.

“Do what?” I asked innocently, my smile widening.

“Fee,” he pressed, and I glanced over my shoulder at him, eyes glittering. “How can you be here while the press are reporting that you are deep in Darkmore this morning? Do you know how terrified I was? I almost didn’t come when I got your letter. I thought it was a trick.”

My smile fell. “I had to let everyone believe it, to protect you. You did destroy it, right? Like I asked?”

“Of course,” he said, and I pushed to my feet, drawing my brown coat tighter around me as the cold wind tried to find its way inside it. Ren moved forward, gazing at my face like he was still unsure if he could trust it was me.

“Help me understand this,” he demanded.

“I caught Birdie,” I said. “Dosed her with Medusa venom – only because she tried to dose me with it first. But then I had her and…well, I took her to Isla Draconis.”

“Isla?” he breathed in surprise.

“Yes, I told her it was Birdie who tortured her. And considering everything Isla had been through, she was pretty keen to get payback on Birdie. Although, she wasn’t malicious like she usually is. She just seemed kind of…sad. She even apologised to me for everything.”

Ren’s eyebrows rose.

“I know, right?” I breathed. “So, anyway, I let Isla inside my head to see what I’d done. The whole palace heist. All of it.”

“What?” Ren barked.

“I know, I know. It was a risk. But my back was against the wall, Ren. And Wilbur was going to be interrogated by the FIB. They would have seen him helping me in the palace. He would have been arrested, and Wilbur’s too good for that life. His family were honoured by the Vegas, taken into the palace and their name raised in society. I couldn’t take that away from him.”

Ren nodded slowly. “Alright, and then?”

“Then…once she knew everything, I asked her to place it all in Birdie’s head. It was a big ask, and I didn’t even know if she could do it, but Basilisks can fuck with people’s minds really well, as we know, and she didn’t even have to think about it. She put it all right there in Birdie’s mind, but left all of you out of it. The memories were cropped, altered, I guess, but firm enough that no one would detect the change. Then things got fucked up.”

“They weren’t fucked up before that?” Ren asked with a smirk.

“No, not compared to this part.” I sucked on my bottom lip, wondering what he would think of me when this truth was out, but there were no secrets between us. “Isla had to convince Birdie she was me. She gave her my memories, childhood memories, ones of me at school, with my parents. Everything she needed to secure the identity. Then I just took the protections spells off of my body so I could be impersonated and Isla bent Birdie’s mind, willed her to cast the magic that would make her take my form. She forced her to forget she had ever been anyone else but me, and she sent her on her way to the FIB with one desire in mind: to confess to her crime.”

“By the stars,” Ren gasped.

I nodded, kicking my foot against the ground. “It’s not forever. Isla bought me a month, then it’ll all fade. Birdie will return to herself and the truth will come out. Plus, anyone who looks closely enough will see that her hair isn’t even half as shiny as mine, but some things just can’t be replicated with magic.”

“Why?” Ren said in horror, ignoring the hair comment which was odd because it was pretty important and my hair looked particularly good in this light so he should have complimented it really. “Why not leave her there to rot with it forever?”

“Because of Marigold,” I said tightly. “And not just her, there were others, Ren. Birdie forced them into the Libra music box to try and retrieve the Guild Stone. I’ve tracked down who they are, people who have gone missing from nearby towns. She preyed on the weak, Fae even weaker than her, I guess. But their families deserve to know what happened to them. I buried Marigold out on our favourite hill in Earth Territory and Isla planted that memory in Birdies head for the FIB to find. I hate to think of her family still looking for her, hoping they’ll find her, but I didn’t know what else to do. It won’t be too much longer until they know the truth.”

I slid the Libra music box from my pocket, holding it up to the crimson light of dawn which made the silver metal appear blood red. “I don’t know how to help the others.”

Ren closed his hands over mine around the box. “Whatever is in there, I suspect there is no coming back from it. Don’t go looking for death, Felisia Night.”

“When Birdie’s identity comes back to her, they’ll interrogate her. They’ll find out about the murders, about everything. Well…nearly everything. There were some memories I made Isla pluck right out of her head. Like about you, and Wilbur and Marigold’s involvement in the heist. Everything else is on me. I made sure of it, and Isla covered her tracks well. Any Cyclops or Basilisk could have been responsible. There’ll be no proof it was her.”

“You could have just made Birdie admit to it as herself. Why have her be you?” he said in distress. “Once her identity is revealed, the FIB will hunt the kingdom for you. They’ll never stop.”

I smiled, placing my hand on his arm and stepping into the arc of his body. “Oh Ren, you really don’t know me at all if you think I would let Birdie steal my glory. My parents have already commissioned a statue of me to be placed in the Night Manor gardens.” I grinned. “I’m famous. And imagine how much more talk of me there’ll be when they discover what I did – how I not only stole from the palace but escaped too. I’ll be the greatest anti-hero ever known.”

Ren gave me a smirk, pushing his hand into my hair and making my spine straighten at the overfamiliar touch. It was a very intimate thing to touch a Lioness’s hair, but the way he did it made a purr rise in my chest.

“You are a raving lunatic,” he said, and I pursed my lips. “And the most incredible creature I have ever encountered.”

He leaned in for a kiss, but I stopped him by taking an envelope from my pocket and slapping it against his chest. “This is for you.”

He frowned, plucking it from my fingers and peeling it open. He slid out the ticket I’d secured him for the ship leaving one hour from now from this very dock. A ticket to The Waning Lands.

“I made a name for myself, and I plan to run rings around the FIB across Solaria, letting them chase my tail while I cause more chaos than they can imagine. I have never felt more alive than I do now. I’m actually looking forward to being on the run, my family will help keep me hidden, and they have ties with a Werewolf pack called the Oscuras who my father promises will help too. That’s my calling. But it’s not yours.” Emotion welled in my throat, and he stared at the ticket in confusion, his shoulders dropping heavily.

“Thank you,” he said. “For understanding.”

“I got so wrapped up in chasing my own glory, I forgot to respect you chasing yours. You’re right, Ren, you’ll never be who you want to be in Solaria. I know that now. But you can rise to greatness in The Waning Lands. In fact, I want you to promise me that you will. And when the day comes that your name is hailed by the stars, I want you to write me. And I’ll come.”

“Swear it,” he said gruffly, sliding his hand around the back of my neck and pulling me closer. “On the stars.” His hand caught mine, fingers curling tight.

“I swear it,” I vowed, and magic clapped between our palms.

My heart thundered with the loss of him, the inevitable parting that drew nearer by the second.

“An hour, you said?” he murmured.

I nodded, and his mouth claimed mine, marking it as his just like that.

“Then that will have to be long enough to ensure you remember me.” He captured my hand, towing me back down the dock and adrenaline spiked in my veins as he led me onto a little sail boat that was definitely not ours.

He kicked in the door to the cabin and swept me into his arms as he carried me over the threshold, hitting his head on the lower doorframe.

I laughed, hooking my arms around his neck as he walked me to a table that sat between a ring of cushioned seats by the window. He placed me down and I fisted my hand in his shirt, pulling him after me as my back pressed to the cool wood, my fingers thumbing the buttons open to reveal his bronzed skin beneath and the deep cut of his muscular abs.

He shrugged it off and knocked my hands away from him, gazing down at me with the darkest of intentions.

“Focus on every touch of my skin to yours, bind it to your memory, and don’t ever forget it,” he commanded.

“I could never forget you,” I said breathlessly as he reached down to pull my coat off, along with the yellow dress beneath. He made quick work of my underwear, exposing me to him and taking in my bare flesh with a carnal growl in his throat.

He raised his hand and cast a blindfold of woven leaves over my eyes. “Focus on how I feel. Do not forget me.”

“I won’t,” I insisted.

He leaned down, his mouth pressing to my throat, the heat of it more like a brand than a kiss. I gasped, my back arching as his mouth dragged down to my collar bone, his fingers raking along the curve of my hip in time with the passage of his mouth. Every kiss was mimicked by his rough hands carving over a new area of my body, awakening it all just for him and scoring lines of fire across my skin. I writhed and purred for him, my hands balling tightly at my sides in a refusal to touch him back, letting him serve me and bathing in the sense of power that gave me.

His mouth found my right nipple and his teeth raked across the sensitive flesh as his fingers grazed my inner thigh. I moaned, arching into the touch as his other hand cupped my left breast and his thumb matched the rhythm of his tongue on my other nipple. Before I could get used to the intense bliss of that feeling, his fingers trailed over my clit and a cry left me, a jolt of pure ecstasy making me buck beneath him. He did it again, rolling his fingers over my clit followed by his knuckles, kneading and grinding in time with his mouth and other hand on my breasts.

I started to shiver as the first wave of release found me, Ren’s steady rhythm bringing me to the edge of oblivion already, and just as I was about to fall, he slowed his pace, lightened his touch and left me suspended there, practically whimpering with need.

He stepped back, leaving my body bereft from his touch, but the sound of him removing his pants made my skin grow hot. I felt his legs pressing my thighs wide and his hand grasping my hip in a firm motion.

He slicked the tip of his cock in the wetness between my thighs and I gasped as a heady groan left him.

“Now you can come,” he decided, sliding into me, the thickness of his length making me cry out as he stretched me.

His thumb rubbed my clit in soft, demanding circles and as he eased himself deeper and deeper into me, his cock bigger than any I had taken before, I started to fall apart.

I panted, grasping my own breasts and squeezing, but he shoved my hands from my body, replacing them with one of his own and dragging his thumb over my nipple as his other thumb worked my clit.

He thrust into me hard and I moaned and writhed, my body feeling like it was falling apart, scattering to pieces and cast into a whole other realm. It was like travelling through stardust, my mind lost to nothing but sparks of light and too much beauty to perceive all at once.

Ren started fucking me slow and deep, grazing my clit softer now that my flesh was on fire, but he never stopped, keeping me in a state of euphoria that went beyond what I had ever thought was possible to experience with someone.

He drew me mercilessly towards another orgasm, his hips grinding down on mine as he upped his pace a little, feeling me closing in, my walls tightening around his thick length and making a curse fall from his lips.

When I came a second time, it was more prolonged, shuddering through every inch of me and making me tingle with utter rapture. He had me in a state of nirvana and I was his now and always, this moment bound by starlight itself.

He grasped my thighs, hooking his arms beneath them and forcing my hips to lift so he could fuck me even deeper, his pace increasing as he reared over me and let me feel the true power of him. I didn’t need to beg or ask for anything, he knew what I needed even before I did, the deep, hard drives of his hips making his cock strike a spot inside me that had me trembling.

He seized three more orgasms from me before he indulged in his own, his mouth coming down hard on mine and his fingers grasping my ass in tight fists, fucking me with the fury of a man who knew this might be the last time he had me in his hold. The hot spill of his seed filled me as he came with a roar, his body merged with mine and his hips still thrusting as he prolonged the bliss of his own release.

I was sore from the size of him, but it was the sweetest kind of ache as he fell over me, his weight crushing me to the table, our mouths coming together as he cast away my blindfold and let me see the blazing adoration in his eyes.

We eventually made it to the cushioned seats, me curled up on his body while the sunrise spilled in through the window and he painted pictures along my spine.

Then it was over. The hour drawing towards its inevitable conclusion, and we dressed in a haze of kisses and lingering touches that neither of us wanted to end.

Before I knew it, I was standing before the ship that Ren was ready to board, my hood drawn up so as not to draw the attention of any passers-by. And we shared one final kiss that heralded me as his from this day forth, and he as mine.

Before he could turn and board the ship that would steal him from me for who knew how long, I slipped the Scorpio music box into his pocket, a token to remind him of me.

I watched him board the ship with my heart cracking into shards and clattering down into the hollow space in my chest. And it felt like the most painful, perfect goodbye I would ever know.

“So that’s it?” I asked, coming out of the memory, and finding Felisia looking at the mirror with a longing in her eyes. “What happened to the music boxes?”

“What happened to Ren?” Azriel asked as if that was the more pressing issue.

I wasn’t sure I saw any value in having just witnessed Felisia fucking her best friend, but apparently, I’d had no choice in the matter. And I was still clueless as to where all the music boxes rested except the one the stars had shown me in the palace treasury. And if that was the only thing I had gleaned in all this time, then what use was her story at all?

“Dead king, you have such little patience for a love story, when I know well that you lived the most tragic one of all.”

I ground my teeth together. “So Ren took the Scorpio box to The Waning Lands? And where did he put it?”

“In his castle,” she said with a grin.

“Imai,” Azriel said with a frown. “Yes, I’ve heard of them.”

“A great and powerful family. Rulers in The Waning Lands,” Felisia said with pride in her gaze.

“Did you see him again?” Azriel pushed.

“What happened to the other boxes? How did the Libra music box end up in the treasury of The Palace of Souls?” I asked.

“I gifted it to Wilbur,” Felisia said. “And when he died after a long, good life, he laid out in his will that he wished for his prized possession to be passed to the Vegas and protected in the royal treasury. He asked that it was respected, left untouched and simply kept safe.” She laughed. “Such a Wilbur thing to do. To sneak it back into the palace after all those years. He became quite the royalist during his time serving the Vegas, but he told me he wished to die with that little secret going to the grave with him.”

“And what about the Sagittarius music box that the Acrux Dragon stole?” I asked.

She pouted. “That one was kept from me,” she growled. “I discovered that Luxie Acrux took it to her treasure trove. A cave in the Havarian region. I attempted to steal it back once, but it was well guarded in those days. Now, I believe it lays forgotten, yet the magic remains intact that protects it. In a way, it was just another hiding place for one of my stones. I never really lost it.”

Purrsy shot her a grin. “The Dragon was keeping it for you, right love?”

“Right,” Felisia said, raising her chin.

“And the Cancer box which held the ruby Guild Stone…you put it back in King’s Hollow,” Azriel said in realisation. “That’s where I found it.”

“Yes, of all the hiding places I sought, none beat the Hollow in the end. Not long before my death, I snuck back to Zodiac Academy to return it there. My legacy was kingdom-wide and had grown considerably after a long life of theft and trickery, and my enemies lurked around every corner. Many sought me and the gemstones I had taken from Queen Leondra. None found them.”

“Then we have locations,” Azriel said, hope brightening his expression. “Thank you, Felisia. Truly.”

“She could have summarised the story,” I muttered as Felisia’s mates grouped around us, preparing to escort us out. But as I moved towards the cabin door in the large ship, I glanced back at the Lioness. “So what did happen to Ren?”

“I thought you had no care for my love story, dead king?” she taunted.

“I do not like loose ends, that is all,” I said. “Loose ends are what torment the dead in this place.” I glanced between her pride, acutely aware that Ren was not one of them. “He never summoned you, did he?”

Felisia scowled at the guess and Azriel glanced at me in warning as if it might be a bad idea to incur the ire of the cat queen. But I was a long dead Fae with little to lose.

“He summoned me, yes,” she purred, stepping closer to me with delicate footsteps. “Ten years after that day. I had my pride by then, and he had a harem of his own. Yet our love still burned on as it once had. He was a great ruler in The Waning Lands, and I was overcome with joy at all he had achieved, and he felt the same in kind. Days we spent in each other’s company, catching up on all the years lost, and between us, we came up with a way to love the other without leaving behind the worlds each of us were from. I would stardust to him and him to me over the years.”

“All of us would sometimes,” Purssy said with a filthy smirk on his lips that told me quite plainly that he and the rest of Felisia’s pride had been more than happy to be a part of Felisia and Ren’s love.

“So where is he now?” I pressed.

“He resides next door in his own grand palace. He visits often and I him,” Felisia said. “We always needed separate worlds to rule, I think. Otherwise, we would have been in a tireless plight, trying to get the upper hand over the other. I loved him enough to let him go, to allow weeks or even months to slip between us at times, and he loved me just the same.”

I nodded to her, respecting the weight of her love, and how both of them had honoured each other’s need for power and position.

“Thank you,” I said, and she laughed lightly.

“Have I earned the respect of the great dead king?”

“I shall leave it up for interpretation,” I said, a smile quirking up the corner of my lips. “One last thing.”

“Yes?”

“Did you ever work out how to remove the Guild Stones from the music boxes?”

Her throat rose and fell. “Beware the traps within,” she rasped. “I lost a good friend to one, her determination to retrieve it for me a fool’s path, one I begged her not to follow. There is no way that I know of to retrieve them. All who go in, never come out. And I have never met their souls here beyond The Veil either.”

With that grim news, I let her pride guide me from the ship with Azriel at my side, glad of the information we had secured, yet how we would get it to our family, I did not know. Though I was certain Azriel had been working hard on finding a way to do so.

Merissa appeared from the stairway, running towards me with a thrill in her eyes.

“Fate is calling,” she gasped.

Her hand found mine and we were tugged away towards the realm of the living, Merissa pushing hard against the barrier of The Veil and drawing me with her.

I found myself in my old treasury beneath The Palace of Souls, the familiarity of the place taking me by surprise. Gwendalina stood entranced with a Heart of Memoriae crystal in her hand, Lance Orion beside her, and the Untouchable Egg dashed to pieces at her feet.

“Did she…smash the Untouchable Egg?” Merissa gasped.

“Of course she damn well did. It was protected by Phoenix flames,” I said in excitement.

Gwendalina’s eyes glazed with the memories that were playing out before her, and I crept closer, desperate to know what she was seeing.

She relayed the memories to Lance and my heart sank. She had discovered many truths, but not what was needed to break the curse.

“The Imperial Star cursed them,” Gwendalina said. “That’s why all the Phoenixes died. And it’s why Tory and I have failed time and again in this war. That old curse is still in place. We’re fucked, Lance. Unless we can figure out what the broken promise is, we’re never going to be free of the stars’ wrath.”

“Yes,” I whispered heavily.

“If only we could tell her,” Merissa said, moving to Gwendalina and pressing a hand to her arm.

“Azriel will find a way,” I said in despair, but then time shifted, the vision of my daughter and her mate fading in and out before I latched onto them once more. But my attention wasn’t on them, it was on Merissa as she moved to a shelf at Gwendalina’s back, pointing to the gleaming music box which sat there so unassumingly. Yet now I knew what it was, a knot of dread formed in my gut.

“This is what the stars showed us,” Merissa said.

“I have learned much about that box, and others of its kind from Felisia Night,” I said. “It holds a Guild Stone.”

Merissa’s eyes widened with hope. “Then they must take it.”

“No, we need to warn them,” I said fearfully. “Whatever is in that box, it is danger embodied. Felisia may have hidden one of the Guild Stones within it, but a trap was formed with the power of the stones to protect it too. Fae have gone in and not returned.”

Merissa’s features skewed in worry. “Then how can they retrieve it?”

I looked to my daughter, knowing all she had faced, all she had endured and prevailed through. And I knew without a flicker of doubt in my heart, a simple music box would not be the end of her.

“This may be their only chance to find it,” I said, and Merissa frowned as she realised what I was implying.

“We must trust her capabilities,” she agreed, nodding firmly and I returned it.

Merissa reached for the music box once more, pushing hard against The Veil and I joined her in the act, our hands pushing and pushing just enough to move the box a little.

Lance shot over to it in an instant like that very movement had caught his attention and he took it from the shelf.

“Careful now, Lance,” I warned. Not that he could hear me. In truth, I had not liked him very much at first. Alright, I had hated him intensely. From his goading of my daughter, to his complete disrespect of his position of authority over her at Zodiac Academy. Eventually, in the strongest sense of the word, he had won me around. Witnessing his self-sacrifice, the loss of his career, and his dignity to protect my daughter had won me around a little. Not to mention his stint in Darkmore Penitentiary. Merissa and I had watched their Elysian Mating with disbelief and undeniable joy, but perhaps it wasn’t until he had offered himself up to the Shadow Princess in payment for my daughter’s curse that I had truly accepted him as a son.

“Now who’s touching ancient artefacts?” Gwendalina taunted him.

His lips slanted up as he examined the circular box and the pair of weighing scales marked on its surface. “If you can’t beat ‘em…”

He popped the lid open and a miniscule, mechanical set of scales ascended on a little silver platform that resembled a miniature ballroom. A tiny girl made of wood stood on one side of the scales and she moved with delicate magic, leaping over to land in the other dish, then back and forth from one to the other, making the scales rock up and down as she danced. My fear for them grew.

“Prepare yourselves,” Merissa urged.

A song curled up from the depths of the box, the voice haunting and feminine, that very same song I had heard in Felisia’s memories.

“It’s time to dance, to dice with chance, the scales they rise, and they fall now. Come to me, play with me, here in my lonely ballroom…”

Gwendalina and Lance reached for the girl, enchanted by the little dancer and my terror for them sharpened.

“Merissa.” I looked to my wife in desperation.

“They can face this,” she said fiercely, and I held onto her trust, using it to bolster my own as my daughter and Lance were swept away into the box, and the metal contraption hit the floor with a ringing noise.

Time shifted at that very moment, and I cried my daughter’s name as we spun through the dark, clawing our way back to her. When we returned, I found the music box shuddering on the floor, a scream calling from within it that sent terror daggering through me.

But then Gwendalina and Lance were thrown out of the music box, landing in a heap on the floor of the treasury. My daughter held what seemed to be an arm bone in her grip and she tossed it away from her, looking to the music box in alarm. It began spinning on the floor, spitting out bones as they landed in the heaps of gold around them, and along with them, wailing souls poured into the air. The Veil snatched them away, their faces twisting into joy as they realised they were free at long last. Among them was the girl I had seen Birdie force into the music box at Zodiac Academy, tears of relief running down her cheeks as The Veil embraced her.

“By the stars,” Merissa cursed, staring after them.

Gwendalina and Lance scrambled upright, backing away from the box, the magic deteriorating by the second and sending it into a frenzy as the last of the bones were ejected. Finally, the thing fell apart, pieces of metal and cogs scattering across the floor and among it all was a beautiful opal. The Libra Guild Stone.

“They did it,” I laughed, running to Merissa and lifting her into the air.

She rested her hands on my shoulders, laughing too as we celebrated this victory, this fate we had had a hand in.

“So that’s what you were for. You were keeping this safe.” Lance moved forward, picking up the opal and admiring it in his palm.

“You’d best keep that away from Lionel,” I warned him, placing Merissa down.

“And the shadow bitch,” she muttered.

“Is it a Guild Stone?” Gwendalina asked hopefully.

“Feels like one,” Lance said, running his thumb across it and the Guild Master mark on his arm suddenly flared to life, the sword shining along his forearm as it responded to finding this new stone. “Opal for Libra.”

“Look at that,” Merissa breathed, moving forward to touch her finger to the mark on his arm and I swear it glittered a little brighter at her touch. “He can really make this happen, Hail. It’s his destiny.”

“If he ever gets a chance,” I sighed. “But this is a victory we cannot deny.”

“Who do you think hid it in that creepy music box?” Gwendalina asked.

“Some long dead Fae who didn’t want anyone stealing his treasure,” Lance guessed with a shrug, then The Veil pulled us back and we didn’t resist, our fingers intertwining while I smiled at Lance’s assessment. Yes, something like that. But not a man. A legendary Lioness.

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