Heartless Sky

Honestly, the two of them were bad influences on each other, but I couldn’t help but like their little friendship all the same.

“Woah, sorry. Didn’t realise things were getting Fifty Shades of Blue in here,” Seth laughed obnoxiously.

“Is it totally conceited of me to hope you might be waiting for me?” Darius’s voice called out from the dark and my eyes fluttered open.

“I’m yours, Roxy,” he growled against my lips. “For every single second I have in this world, I’m all yours. And after that I’ll still be yours, wherever I end up after I’m gone, I’ll belong right here with you.”

“Oh. And just in case it wasn’t clear, baby, I’m not going to be anyone’s but yours. So maybe you and me should get hitched and I can show you what a real wedding night looks like?”

“Yeah, Roxy, a hundred times. I might as well aim for the stars, seeing as those bastards kept us apart all this time.”

“I need snuggles. Without snuggles, I get cold and lonely

“I don’t snuggle,” I snapped. “Liar,” he scoffed. “You snuggle with Darcy and Darius all the time. But where’s my snuggles, Lance? Where’s. My. Snuggles?”

“I prayed to the stars and they answered,” he said with a smile brighter than I’d seen on his face in years.

I was miserable before you showed up in my life, and now you’ve awoken a man in me who I actually fucking like, and I don’t wanna lose him almost as much as I don’t wanna lose you.

Totally normal to savage your super hot Vampire ex-boyfriend, right? Right.

Omagod.

“Are we…back together, Blue?” Orion asked after a while, making my heart squeeze with a thousand good feelings. “I don’t think we were ever really apart, Lance,”

“Why is there only butter on it?” I asked. “And why isn’t the butter all the way to the edges?” Seth added. “Do I smell burning?” Max asked, picking up a slice and turning it over to reveal the black underside.

“I’m gonna play gay chicken with him.”

“Oh for the love of fuck,” Orion said under his breath

I use a gentle foamy white soap that I make myself, I’ll give you a sample sometime. I call it Washer’s essence.” He winked.

“The hat kid’s name was Diego? I swear it was Darnell,” Darius murmured to Tory and she punched him in the arm with a muttered curse about him being an asshole.

But if she thought she could play games with me and win, she was about to find out what it was like to go up against a man whose name was defined by the constellation of the Hunter.

“I love the moon and the moon loves me,” Seth sang somewhere behind us and I could have put my fist through the wall there and then.

Seth pushed a hand into his long dark hair, smirking like an asshole. “I can’t confirm or deny my secret mastermind plans.”

“Why?” I asked in a measured tone, deciding how I was going to approach this. I could be a reasonable kind of guy. If the definition of reasonable was stringing this Heir up in a tree and beating him like a pinata until his guts bled out.

“See?” Seth said innocently, giving Darcy the big eyes. “He’s so easily riled up. He’s like a gorilla-sized chihuahua.”

“You’re so dramatic, Lance.”
“Oh I’m dramatic?” I scoffed.

“Which is why we’ll make such good friends when you stop holding onto these silly grudges. You know what people say about grudges? It’s like taking killblaze and expecting your enemy to get high and kill themselves. But I’m never going to get high and kill myself, Lance. I’m going to be here always, as your friend. Just give into it, bro. It’s inevitable. Like you and Darcy were inevitable.”

“Did we just become true moon friends?” he asked with hope shining in his eyes. “Absolutely not.”

She was my destiny, and there was no two ways about that. I would follow her so far into the light that I’d go blind, or so deep into the dark that I’d be lost forever.

"Yeah. Remind me why we’re with them again,” Lance teased but as the two of us continued to jog along behind them like a pair of whipped little guard dogs while blatantly checking them out, the answer to that question seemed kind of pointless.

“Fine, but don’t go putting ‘here lies a saint’ on my tombstone. Make sure it’s honest. Like, ‘here lies an absolute legend’.”

Dude would definitely kill in revenge for those books.

“I wish we could just stay here like this forever,” he murmured, his voice low and rough like he was trying not to tarnish the silence with his words. “Make time stand still beyond that door and live in this moment eternally.”

“I’m not totally unreasonable,” I pointed out and he arched a brow like that wasn’t true. “And I’m not a hot headed asshole,” he replied, making me laugh.

“I still don’t deserve you,” he said. “But I love you with all my wretched heart has to offer and I’m going to keep proving that to you with every moment gifted to me on this earth until my dying breath. So no, Roxy, I don’t want to sleep. Because I refuse to waste a single second that I’ve been gifted with you. I want to claim each and every one and work to make them good enough for you.”

Darius Acrux had taken full ownership of my heart. And I was claiming his right back in return.

“What kind of wedding would it be if the bridesmaid didn’t end up with an eel in her secret Cecil by the end of the night?”

This dastardly dogfish would be the death of me one of these days.

“Chin up, chest out and don’t let them see you blubber,”

“Can I tell you a secret?” I whispered, leaning forward to rest my chin on his shoulder. “No,” he said bluntly, sipping more of the bourbon as he tried to jolt me off of him, but my chin was staying right there on that meaty muscle bit.

“You see, Lance, I’m trying to find an angle where I don’t have to tell him, but I still get to have him. And especially a solution where I don’t have to take any responsibility for it all going wrong if he rejects me.”

I chuckled darkly, liking this psycho side of him. It reminded me of me. And me was awesome.

It was just our group of friends here, which was my favourite place in the world because they were my real pack.

And I realised how hopelessly fucked I was. Because I’d fallen too deep, too fast, and now there was no going back. I was on a collision course with Caleb Altair, and I feared what was going to happen if I ever let a word of this slip out. Because I was sure it would equal our absolute ruin.

“Shit dude, you look like you’ve been cheating on my sister with that hardback,” I teased and he looked up at us with a grin as he laid the book down in front of him. “Do I need to break her spine?” Darcy teased as he shoved his messed up hair out of his eyes with a deep laugh.

Darcy and I glanced at each other, nearly cracking up further before Orion’s gaze slid onto us, and his demon professor eyes had the eerie effect of making our laughs die in our throats. Dude was gifted at the bossy teaching shit even if he never had liked his old job.

“Hell yeah we can,” Seth agreed. “We’re the Phoen Dream, Bitchy Flame Eyes, Wolfman, Bitey C, Fish Fury, Dragzilla, Professor Shame and Batty Betty.”

“You should just own it, make a shame club with shamed friends who go on shameful adventures.”

She was my ruin and my making at once.

“I’m too pretty to die in some ugly shadow cave.”

“Hi Lavinia.” I smirked at the dark portal, raising my hands as I prepared to start the spell which would cut her off from this pool of power. “I just came here to say fuck you.”

The sound of a Tarzan yodel drew my attention to my left and I glanced that way just in time to spot Geraldine swinging between the trees on a thick vine, her flaming flail aimed with brutal precision as she bore down on a Nymph with a yell of, “Not today you nilly nodger!”