Chapter 22

We stood around a table in King's Hollow, eleven of the Guild Stones laid out in a circle before us, and I swear the tree itself was humming with the power that lay within it. I held the final stone between my fingers, glancing at Darcy, then to Tory and the Heirs, Xavier, and Geraldine. Sofia and Tyler had left to finish up some press work with Portia, and Washer had gone to let the Councillors know about our progress.

Everyone held their breath as I placed the last stone into the circle, all of them touching, united after who knew how many years.

The power of them crackled against my fingertips and charged the air with electricity, but then it all fell away, nothing but a void of silence filling the space.

Seth reached out to prod the Aquarius amethyst stone. "Why is nothing happening? Isn't something meant to be happening?" He looked to me then around the room as if he expected some wondrous magic to appear before him.

"I thought their use would become clear once they were united," I said, turning my arm over and bringing it close to the stones so that the Guild mark ignited along my skin, the sword glittering brightly like it knew it was in the presence of the twelve stones. But nothing further happened.

"Maybe they're not all touching." Darcy frowned, leaning close to check the circle.

"Or we got one wrong?" Tory said anxiously.

"I've checked them all," Darius growled. "They're real. Every last one of them. Lance's Guild mark has proved it for each of them too."

"Oh, what grave gallcakes indeed," Geraldine said woefully. "Such hope was riding on the back of their tidings."

"We just need to figure out how they work, that's all," Max said firmly, and Geraldine lifted her chin.

"You're right of course, dear salmon. I must not let my heart become a whelk at the very first sign of a shark fin."

A sense of failure closed in on me. I'd convinced everyone in this room to seek out these stones. We'd risked our lives for them. If they didn't offer us some advantage in the war, then what the fuck was the point of them?

Darcy took my arm, and I looked down at her, her silver-ringed eyes glinting at me. I couldn't let her down. These stones were meant to offer her and Tory a chance at ascending to the throne once and for all. A new fate would dawn, Merissa had foreseen it and my father had said it himself in my diary. It was why he was dead. Why he'd sacrificed everything to give us this chance.

A steely determination took root in my soul. I couldn't give up hope at the first sign of failure. I'd felt the power when the Guild Stones had been reunited. There was an answer here, a way to activate them. We just weren't seeing it yet.

My father's diary lay on the table, its secrets locked for now, but it was a full moon tonight. Maybe it would be worth checking through the passages again. But my doubts gnawed deeper, because I already knew my father's intention had been for us to find the Imperial Star and wield it. What if we'd needed it to make the Guild Stones useful to us now? What if there was no longer a way for us to weave a new fate? I decided not to voice that fear; the idea that I'd had everyone running around chasing these stones and risking their lives for nothing was too awful to consider.

"Darius," I said suddenly, my gaze snapping to him. "What did my father say to you beyond The Veil? He must have spoken of these stones. He must have had some clue of their use."

Darius shook his head, looking dejected. "We only spoke of you finding them, I never thought to ask what to do when you did. It wasn't like I thought I'd be back here when you found them."

"Well, that's just perfect," Seth huffed, walking away from the table and kicking a chair over so it went crashing onto the floor.

"We'll figure it out," Caleb called to him.

"And what if we don't?" Seth snarled. "What if this has all been for nothing, and they're just a bunch of pointless rocks?"

"Stay calm." Max sent a wave of relaxing energy through the room, and I let it wash over me before my frustration kept climbing.

"There's got to be an answer in your dad's book." Tory picked up the diary, rifling through it even though it couldn't be read without the light of the full moon gilding its pages.

"Yeah, we're just missing something. We can read through your father's words again tonight and maybe we'll find something we didn't see before," Darcy said encouragingly, though I could see the tension in her body.

Too much was riding on this. And I couldn't fucking fail her.

I snatched the diary out of Tory's hands. "I've read it front to back. If there was an answer, I'd know it already."

"What about that whole initiating people into the Guild thing?" Darcy said. "You had that potion brewed for new members to drink, right? And didn't it say in your dad's diary that all the stones needed to be united to restore balance to the kingdom and reform the Zodiac Guild."

"Lolloping leafbugs, my lady is as correct as a claffencheese!" Geraldine exclaimed. "Perhaps all we need to do is drink the potion, and all shall be revealed like a daisy upon the first day of spring."

"I don't think we should use that until we're certain it would work," I growled. "And the initiation can't be taken lightly because I don't yet know the consequences of drinking that potion. Besides, who knows if we'll get another chance to brew it? It takes six weeks. And we don't have another six weeks."

"We have days at best before my father tries to strike at us again," Darius agreed grimly, and Seth let out a mournful howl.

"Perhaps it is worth risking a twirl beyond The Veil then?" Geraldine said. "I shall sup upon the Guild elixir's merry waters, and we shall see what we see."

"No," Max snapped. "You're not drinking that potion, Gerry. For all we know, it could put some bond on you and Orion that makes you crave his cock."

"It's not going to mimic the Guardian Bond, you silly salmon," Geraldine waved him off.

"No, Max is right. We need more information first," I said firmly, the mere suggestion of facing another kind of bond like the one I'd been subjected to in the past setting my pulse hammering. Though I doubted my father would have subjected me to anything like that. Still… until we were certain of the consequences for all those initiated, perhaps it was best to err on the side of caution.

"So what do we do now?" Xavier spoke at last, looking to me like he needed me to offer a solution. But I had nothing to give.

"I'll try every combination I can of putting the stones together," I said. "Perhaps they need to be in a different formation to unlock their secrets…"

"We'll give you some space then," Max said, sliding his arm around Geraldine's shoulders and heading for the door as she cried encouragements back to me.

"Do you need anything?" Tory asked. "Books?"

"I don't think we'll find the answer to this in any book I possess," I said heavily.

"Well shit, if you don't have a book on it then we really are fucked," Tory said with a dark kind of humour to her voice, but I couldn't muster a smile. She headed off out of the Hollow with Darius and Xavier, leaving Caleb and Seth behind.

"I'm gonna go train," Seth grumbled. "I need an outlet."

"I'll join you," Caleb said.

"Wait, Caleb," I said, taking a step toward him. "I think we should discuss what happened back before we entered the city."

"Was it the coven bond?" Darcy asked, glancing between us in concern.

"Yeah. Our minds sort of…connected," Caleb replied. "And when we bit Seth, we weren't ourselves. We were caught up in the hunt, we got too rough."

"It was all good." Seth shrugged it off like it was nothing.

"It wasn't," I said sharply. "The urge to hunt was impossible to resist. It's dangerous."

"Caleb nearly killed Tory because of the hunt once," Darcy said, her eyes flashing with the painful memory.

"I know," Caleb said, bowing his head with the shame of that. "We'll control this. We'll figure it out."

"Stay well fed at all times," I said. "I'll do the same, and hopefully that'll be the end of it."

Caleb nodded stiffly then he exited with Seth, and I was left alone with my mate.

"I'm sorry," I sighed, taking her hand, her soft fingers sliding between mine.

"Why?" She reached up to brush her thumb over my cheek.

"The Guild Stones… I should have been prepared for this. I assumed the answer would be clear once they were united, but I honestly have no fucking clue what to do next, Blue. And we're running out of time."

"We'll figure it out," she said fiercely. "Don't go losing faith on me now."

My mouth hooked up at the corner. "Is that an order, beautiful?"

"It will be if you don't put that smart little professor brain of yours to work," she teased.

"I'll get to it then." I smirked, moving away and dropping into a seat to take a closer look at the stones.

Darcy walked around the table, leaning over it to examine them, her little pleated black skirt riding up to revealing her deep bronze thighs and the curve of her ass.

My cock stirred to attention and I leaned back in my seat, my legs spreading as I watched her contemplate the stones. She slowly moved in front of me, seemingly aimlessly, but with her skirt riding up every time she bent forward, I had the feeling she knew exactly what she was doing.

I slipped my hand between her thighs, my fingers gliding along her skin right to the edge of her panties. She glanced over her shoulder at me, a spill of blue hair tumbling down her back and her lips parting like I'd caught her off guard. But it was all an act.

I circled my fingers against her inner thigh, not giving her what she wanted, instead waiting to see what she'd do next.

She pushed my hand away, standing upright and brushing her skirt down, giving me a stern look. "You should be concentrating."

"Then why are you working so hard to distract me?"

"I don't know what you mean," she said lightly, but a smile played around the corners of her mouth.

A growl rumbled in my chest as she went back to leaning over the stones, examining all twelve of them one by one while I enjoyed the glimpses up her skirt. Definitely should have been paying attention to the task at hand, but she was so fucking tempting and with everything going on lately, we'd barely had a moment alone together.

I rose from my seat abruptly, pressing up behind her and leaning right over her so my mouth was by her ear, her inhale of surprise only getting me harder. I took her hand, studying the stone in her palm as my hips pressed her flatter to the table.

"Moonstone for Gemini," I murmured. "Intelligent, curious…impulsive."

"Are you talking about me?" she mused, trying to push me back, but I pressed my free hand to the table, caging her there.

"Traits of Gemini," I said. "So I suppose I'm talking about all Geminis."

"Aren't all Libras meant to be social and cooperative?"

I laughed darkly. "I am those things with Fae I like. Which just so happens to be a very select few people."

"Mm." Darcy focused on the stones again, picking up the Virgo sapphire, and I swore in surprise.

"That was in the wrong place." I plucked the stone from her grip, standing upright and she shifted aside so I could rearrange the circle.

The moment the circle connected properly, an explosion of energy blasted straight at us. My heart lurched as I lost sight of everything, reaching for Darcy in the pitch black. Her fingers found mine, but as she called my name, it sounded like a faraway echo, and fear took hold of me.

Her hand started slipping from mine and I held on with all my might, but she disappeared like dust between my fingers.

"Blue!" I bellowed into the darkness, my voice resounding back to me like it was bouncing off of invisible walls, reverberating around my skull.

The familiarity of this experience brought me back to my Reckoning, when the stars had weighed and measured my soul, announcing me worthy of my place at Zodiac Academy.

I felt the presence of the stars, the sound of them whispering growing around me, conversing in a language I couldn't even fathom how to decipher.

"Son of the hunter, master of the stones,"they spoke to me at last. "The rising twelve will soon be united."

"The rising twelve?" I frowned. "You mean the Guild Stones? We have them, we brought them together. It's done."

"Once lost like rocks in a roiling river,"the stars hissed, but one voice stood out louder than the others. I was certain I had never heard a single voice among the stars speak more prominently than the others. Their tone was deeper, not masculine or feminine, but ringing with power right down to its depths. "The tide turns, and so the twelve return, laying a new fate upon the shore. But can the daughters of the flames seize what has been offered? Or will they let it pass them by?"

"How can they claim this new fate?" I demanded. "Tell us what needs to be done and we will do it."

I felt amusement ripple through the stars, but others became wrathful at my tone. I sensed more of them as individuals, like separate pulsing energies around me, and the experience had my heart thundering.

That powerful voice resounded out above them all once more. "It is time you understood the makings of fate, hunter's son. Demands cannot be made of us; it thwarts the laws of old. But it is time you knew why. I shall show it to you in a form you can understand."

The darkness twisted, giving way to the vast, towering hall of a golden palace. I stood at the top of a sweeping staircase, another set of stairs standing opposite me across the space, and there at the top of it stood Darcy in a dress that appeared to be made of starlight itself. Every tiny movement made the dress glimmer and shine, the bodice stitched of silver thread and the skirt sweeping out around her in a waterfall of light.

I glanced down at the clothes I was wearing, a suit of darkest blue thread, like it was woven from the night sky, the buttons of my shirt pearlescent, touched with light. Even my skin had a shimmer here, like I wasn't really in this place at all.

A booming voice made me look up fast, and I found a man standing at the base of the stairs in robes of purest white, his dark skin so perfect there wasn't a single flaw upon his face. His eyes were a sea of swirling green, then blue, then white, ever-changing until they settled on palest blue. He didn't blink, no part of his face moving in any natural way, his chest not rising with breath. He just existed, like a statue gifted life.

"I am Arcturus of the Sixth House, they call me The Light One,"he spoke, but not with his mouth, the powerful voice echoing around the chamber for both Darcy and I to hear, and I was sure this was the star who had spoken above the rest. "I have no fleshly form, and the Grawl, the Halls of Fate, home to the Court of Caelestina, is no earthly structure such as that which you perceive around you now, but your minds will be able to comprehend it better this way. Follow."

Arcturus turned, seeming to glide instead of walk and I hurried down the steps, meeting Darcy at the bottom of the other staircase.

"You look…unreal," she whispered, and I frowned, taking in the ethereal perfection of her face. The way her skin glittered and her beauty was enhanced to the point of perfection. But she was far more beautiful to me in her true form, this image of her like an artist's rendition, unnaturally flawless.

"We're not really here," I said in a low voice as we followed Arcturus through the magnificent hall. "It's some sort of vision."

"Vision or not, it has to hold answers," she said keenly, no part of this seeming to strike fear in her, and a smile tugged at my lips.

"You're right," I said, my pulse quickening a little at the gift of being offered some knowledge from the stars.

I took in the towering walls, noticing ancient writing etched into every inch of it, enraptured by the enchantment of this celestial palace.

"Fates lost. Fates told,"Arcturus's voice filled the hall again. "Every word upon these walls speak of a possibility in time. The halls grow bigger every day, out and out toward infinity. It all connects. Time is stitched into a great and glorious canvas of all that is, was, and ever can be." The star lifted an arm above his head, pointing at the very pinnacle of the ceiling where a cavernous dome stood far above us. Lines were drawn across it, interconnected in a web so thick, there were barely gaps between each thread. They were moving before our very eyes, new lines forming, new paths interlinking.

"What's it all for?" Darcy asked. "Every fate, and path, what's it all leading to?"

"The question that sires all questions,"Arcturus said. "Pondered by all, answered by none."

"But you can answer surely?" Darcy pressed.

"When the first of your kind came into being, you were born of the magic of long dead stars and wandering grains of the universe. You were life embodied, forged from a force so powerful it became the heart of nature itself. The force to exist. To be. But you are not the only ones. For there are many realms and many life forms, some abandoned by the stars, others ruled by them completely, and all the grey in between."

"The mirror realms?" I guessed, this knowledge giving me a fucking head rush. We were being told by Arcturus himself about the secrets of the damn universe.

"Yes,"he confirmed. "All living one on top of the other, layer upon layer, so close to one another you would not believe it possible."

We stepped through a towering set of silver doors and arrived in a hall that appeared to be made of a shimmering, iridescent liquid. The walls were just as high as the previous room, but the translucent substance was constantly moving, flowing in rivers up winding pillars and across the floor in swirling spirals. Beyond it, lay the night sky, glittering far away, yet those stars shone through the liquid like beams of brightest silver.

"A glimpse of what lies beyond your world,"Arcturus announced, his power-laced voice resounding through to my bones.

The liquid changed, showing realms outside of ours as though peering through a crack in a wall. Worlds where stars walked as gods among Fae and human alike, toying with their lives or offering fortunes and magical gifts untold. There was a winged girl trapped in a golden coin, controlled by any who found her and forced to grant their wishes, then a realm where vampires ruled – though they were nothing like me, no magic in their veins, just a vicious hunger for blood and immortality keeping them ever young. They rounded up humans like cattle, forcing them to donate the blood from their veins, caging them, all under the rule of a powerful family who declared themselves royal.

Then I saw families playing in the mortal realm upon a golden beach, the stars holding little sway in this world, though the odd glint of power was offered here and there. A woman with rainbow hair sat on the edge of a pier as the sun slowly set and four men closed in around her, the amusement park lights coming to life along the pier the moment the sun dipped below the horizon.

Another realm loomed with broken kingdoms, lost souls and wielders of death. Their magic was so unlike ours, with power captured and summoned instead of innate.

But then there were darker worlds where life had been caged, cursed or destroyed. The Shadow Realm was among them, that desolate place a land where only monsters and echoes of lost souls prowled its plains.

"What happened there? Why is it like that?" Darcy asked, stepping closer to the view.

"Tainted shadow consumes all,"Arcturus answered, a darkness to his voice telling of his hatred for it.

"Tainted?" I echoed in confusion.

"Long ago, in a time before the Fae as you know them now, there was a race known as the Faeries. Built of nature itself, pure and unselfish, they rode the tides of fate, becoming one with the land and all its bountiful offerings. But nature is not as pure as it might seem. There is a more turbulent side, its volatility causing permanent instability. The Faeries warred over which part of their nature was to be embraced and which should be discarded. Lines were drawn, lands divided, and over time, bit by bit, they diverged. One race evolving into the Fae you are now, and the other…"

"The Nymphs," Darcy breathed, and I recalled what she had told me of Queen Elvia claiming the Fae were a sister race to Nymphs, born of the same root.

"So great was their divergence, that it caused an unbreachable divide between them. Wars raged, hatred spewed, until one day, a Nymph of pure heart begged the stars for an answer, her race on the brink of eradication. So when they were driven to the ends of the earth by their foes, the stars provided balance in the form of a door. A path to a new land, one built of shadow, an anti-world to the realm of Fae. The Nymphs were offered the gift of wielding the shadows in a homeland they could call their own. And so, they passed out of the Fae Realm forever. Or so it was intended…"

"What happened?" I pressed, this ancient knowledge gripping me in awe.

"For a time, there was harmony. Each race thrived in their own land, but the Nymphs faced an unforeseen peril. A mighty evil grew when a dark prince among their kind sought to rule by any means. He was a sorcerer, the creator of many shadow curses, and the most terrible of them all was a curse that captured malevolent spirits in their passing from life to death, caging them in shadow form and making monsters of them which hunted the subjects of the prince's choosing. But the curse was so abominable, so defiant against nature, that the prince lost control of these tainted spirits. And demons they became. For thousands upon thousands of years, the Shadow Realm was ravaged by these malevolent spirits which sought to trap and claim the Nymphs' souls within the shadows,"Arcturus explained. "So they fled to your realm, abandoning their homeland, but without the shadows, they could no longer survive. They called upon them from the Shadow Realm, and for many centuries, all was well. Long before there was war between Nymph and Fae, there was peace. But it was not to last."

"Because of Lavinia?" Darcy guessed.

"Yes, daughter of the flames. When Queen Avalon Vega cast Lavinia Umbra into the Shadow Realm and bound her there, her soul was tethered to the malevolent spirits which were so hungry for sustenance, starved for so many years without a single Nymph soul to devour. They fed on her hatred, her jealousy, her quest for vengeance, and she became one with them, her body newly made and kept immortal by those very dark spirits. And in doing so, she became the ruler of the shadows, tainting them with her malice and trapping every Nymph soul in her grasp the moment they passed into death."

"Diego," Darcy gasped, looking to me in horror.

"Diego Polaris,"Arcturus whispered, and the scenes around us changed, showing us a hundred snippets of his life. Of Alejandro forcing Diego to kill an innocent, his grubby, too-large clothes on his skinny body as a kid, the fear he faced each day, then his smiles at Zodiac Academy, the newly claimed life he had tried to seize, only to be ripped away so harshly. They all faded to reveal his moment of death, Darcy leaning over him in the dirt and rasping words leaving his lips. "Was I a good friend?"

"It wasn't fair, he never got a chance to be truly free," Darcy breathed, staring up at Diego with tears in her eyes.

The visions evaporated, and I took her hand, squeezing tightly, thinking of the boy who had been offered so little goodness in his life.

"Death is rarely fair," Arcturus replied, casting away the visions so the hall returned to that strange translucent liquid once more. "But it is usually inevitable, unless the stars, or Fae, or some other force decides to play god."

The grit in his voice told of his feelings on that matter, the air chilling with the sense of his anger.

"Diego Polaris played a great hand in the changing of fate,"Arcturus went on. "That is his legacy."

"But he's trapped in the shadows?" Darcy pressed. "You said-"

"Yes, and you understood precisely, daughter of the flames. The shadows contain the souls of all Nymphs who have lost their lives. Tormented by the malevolent spirits of old and subjected to the torture of Lavinia's pollution. It thwarts the natural order of things, containing souls and keeping them from moving on into the after."

"That's awful," Darcy growled, her face paling.

"What can we do?" I asked for her sake.

"Do?"Arcturus mused. "What is it you think that can be done, son of the hunter?"

"I don't know," I sighed.

"There must be a way to free them," Darcy insisted, a ring of authority to her tone.

Even attempting to command a star to her will was not beyond her, and it was captivating to witness.

"You would need a power greater than any Fae could ever possess. I cannot fathom it upon the earth,"Arcturus said evasively. "Now, no more thoughts of shadows and spirits. It is time you learned the truth of the Guild Stones."