“Pay attention,” he said sternly, his professor tone coming out to play and I liked that a lot.
In ways, being back at Zodiac sneaking around the school grounds to steal moments in his arms had actually been a simpler time. Now I had him to myself, and yet he still wouldn’t declare me as his to the world because of his fall from grace, and that was something which pained me every day. At least back then, we’d had dreams of declaring our love to the world, now every time I tried to bring it up, Orion wouldn’t indulge in those dreams with me. He said it was to protect me, and I knew he meant that, but having to keep hiding our relationship after all we’d been through was opening a wound in me that I didn’t know how to heal.
His finger skimmed down the contents page like he was caressing the arch of my spine and I swear I could feel it, him touching me as he was touching that book. I pushed all thoughts of his Power Shaming from my mind, just enjoying his company as I remembered the agony of going so long without it.
“Should I be worried that you’re going to leave me for a book?” I asked, a grin pulling at my lips.
Orion turned to me, still looking deadly serious. “I’ll never leave you, Blue. Now stop misbehaving or I’ll have to punish you.”
“Is that a threat or a promise?” I whispered and his hand clapped down on my thigh under the table, the sting sending a flash of excitement through me.
“What’s gotten into you?” he growled, not playing my game. “You find out you’re cursed and you sit here smiling.”
“I’m beside the love of my life in a magical library underground in a world I didn’t even know existed a couple of years ago. I’ve always been an optimist, but now I have a real reason to believe in miracles.”
“So you’re certain we’ll find an answer?” he asked like he wanted to feed on my positivity.
“No,” I admitted. “I’m still terrified that we won’t, but I’m equally hopeful that we will.” He stared at me with the weight of the world in his eyes and I pushed my fingers into his hair, stroking gently as I hoped to dissolve some of his worries. “Why do you look so scared, Lance?” I whispered.
He raised a hand, his fingers locking around the Imperial Star at my throat and his knuckles turning white as his grip hardened on it. “Because the stars have taken everything from me. My dream, my free will, my status, my family,” his voice thickened on that last word and pain sliced into my heart for him and all he’d lost. “And when there was almost nothing left to take, they gave me you.”
I lowered my hand from his hair, wrapping my fingers around his fist that held the star like he was trying to hurt it.
“I thought perhaps the tide was turning in my favour, but now I fear that they’ve given me you only to have something more to strip away from me. I don’t know what I did to offend them, but they have taken their pound of flesh from me regardless.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I swore and he nodded, his expression settling into something demonic.
“I know,” he said, his voice rough with grit. “Because I’m not going to let them take you from me, Blue, even if they come down from the heavens themselves to try and rip you from my arms. I am not named after the hunter constellation for no reason. I will make the stars my prey if they set you in their sights, and so help me, I will carve every one of them out of their seats in the sky and watch them fall.”
He released the Imperial Star, his head snapping back around as he looked down at the book again and I was left breathless and staring at him, heat blazing up my spine and burning between my thighs.
He flicked firmly through the pages as he searched for something that could help us and I tried to get myself in check as I watched his jaw tick. But then a line from Gabriel’s prophecy echoed in my mind and fear spilled into my soul.
“The hunter will pay the price,” I whispered, fearing what that line of the prophecy could mean as I gazed at Orion. “What if it’s you?”
His eyes flashed and he reached out to carve his thumb along my jaw. “That could mean so many things.”
“But it could mean you,” I pressed, fear making my breaths quicken.
“You’ll drive yourself mad assuming the will of the stars,” he said gently. “We can’t say anything for sure.”
“What’s the point of prophecies if their meaning is unclear until they’ve happened?” I said in frustration.
“To drive us mad?” he offered playfully, but I couldn’t summon a smile, too caught up in the idea that we were walking along a dark path toward a bitter fate we couldn’t escape.