The twelve Zodiacs all live together at a boarding school, but all that changes when Gemini claims she saw a magical airship hovering over the academy. The other eleven protested that there was nothing but despair and clouds in its place, but when t...
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Aries POV
The moon shown bright in the clear night sky. I gripped the balcony railing, my eyes squeezed shut as a iron-hot scalpel carved itself into the inside of my wrist.
Well, not really.
The ball was the night after tomorrow. The night after tomorrow, and Selaine would be forced to talk to us instead of widening her eyes and scurrying away any time she saw us.
How could the Crown Princess not even be the king's daughter?
I opened my eyes with a gasp and turned my wrist over, biting my lip at the sight. Little by little, the Aries sign was being carved into the inside of my wrist with fiery-red lines, and the sign was about halfway through.
I'd been suffering for ten minutes.
I let out a whimper and pressed it against my stomach in hopes to stop the little stabs of pain -- but it didn't work. Letting out a small sigh, I planted my elbows on the railing and put my head in my hands.
In one, two, three, four . . . hold one, two . . . out one, two, three, four.
From what I knew, it was beyond midnight. I'd been going to sleep later and later each day -- me and Capricorn used to stay up late, cuddling and talking, but we eventually became too busy to do so. That wasn't the reason my sleep schedule was messed up, though.
I pressed my palm against my forehead.
His eyes.
Why did they seem so familiar?
An image of Archer's gray eyes flashed through my mind, and I shuddered -- they seemed eerily familiar, like I'd seen him before when I was a child.
They gave me nightmares.
I distinctly remembered words -- a memory that I associated with those irises. That precise shade, and I remembered hearing "Not now. Later."
I shivered. What did that mean?
The cold night air whisked over me and I gasped as another bolt of white-hot pain ran through my arm, clutching it to my chest. I let out another whimper and squeezed my eyes shut as they started to water from the pain.
"God," I muttered, wrapping my arms around my middle to get more warmth. There was no way I was going back inside until the Aries sign was done carving. Out here, I was compelled to be quiet by the peace of it all, but in there . . .
I took a deep breath and tried to imagine being in the cavern again. I remembered emerging at the top of the crevice, my breath being taken away as how magnificent it was, at all the gold and red and orange. I'd barely registered the heat. And then I'd jumped without thinking, and then I landed and almost toppled in, and then I jabbed the ruby in even though I knew I was supposed to fit it in a certain way, and somehow it worked.
