Page 28 of Frozen Star (Star Touched: Fae Bound #7)

“The gods didn’t give you Zoey,” I say, wind howling around me, frost crawling up my legs and freezing in my hair. “You took her. You stole her. Just like how you’ve been stealing winter fae from my court’s borders for over a year.”

“Did I?” Aerix glances at where Sapphire’s restraining Zoey with bands of magic. “Look at her, Brother. Really look at her.”

Despite myself, I follow his gaze.

Zoey’s eyes are fixed on Aerix, filled with naked desperation—not to escape, but to reach him. To comfort him. To love him.

I know that look, because it’s the same way I’ve found myself staring at Sapphire since she fused our souls in the Tides. Like she’s the last breath of air in my lungs, the anchor that keeps me from losing myself in the cold, dark ocean.

But my love for Sapphire is real. Zoey’s fixation with Aerix, on the other hand, is there because he’s been manipulating her.

He made her believe he loves her, just like how the queen made Matt believe she loved him.

Except Aerix’s reasons for capturing Zoey are far more twisted than I ever could have imagined.

Water trembles around Sapphire’s hands as she struggles to maintain Zoey’s restraints. I’m vaguely aware of her attempts to reach me through the bond—pleading with me to breathe, to focus—but she feels distant, like a fading echo calling to me through layers of unbreakable ice.

Aerix turns back to me, and his eyes search mine, something almost vulnerable in their depths. “I expected you to come alone—you and your summer fae. Two fugitives from the Winter Court, desperate and untethered. I had no idea you’d bring the entire winter army and wage war on us.”

“Then consider this a valuable lesson—I love surprising people who make the mistake of underestimating me.” I scoff, finding a twisted amusement in his words. “Although if it’s any consolation, disappointing delusional relatives is turning out to be my specialty.”

His wings twitch at the word delusional, although he maintains that unnerving calmness that makes me wonder how much of his sanity remains intact.

“I know what our father did to you. How he treated you,” he continues, something like genuine anger darkening his features. “Which is why I thought that out of anyone, you’d appreciate what I’m offering.”

I blink, caught off-guard by the sudden shift in the conversation.

“And what, exactly, are you offering? ” I ask, venom dripping in my tone when I speak the final word.

“A family. A dynasty forged in darkness.” His eyes gleam with a fervor that sends ice crawling up my spine, and I realize that if I thought I was drowning in the chaos of my mind, it’s nothing compared to the madness I sense in Aerix and saw in my father.

Maybe this is my destiny, too. Maybe in a few centuries, I’ll be twisted and broken, reveling in the darkness that threatens to consume me. Maybe I’m already too far gone to escape it.

At that moment, Sapphire’s warmth filters through the bond. It’s not much—just a thread—but it’s enough to remind me what I’m fighting for.

“I don’t need your dynasty of darkness.” I sneer at Aerix. “I have enough dynasties to deal with already.”

“You amuse me, little brother.” He circles me again, sizing me up, and I rotate with him, my sword pointed at his heart.

“And you’re misunderstanding what I’m offering.

You see, I always intended to leave the Night Court with Zoey.

She and I were going to join those who wield more power than those in the Night Court could ever dream of having. ”

I tense, the ice coating my sword cracking and crashing to the floor, shattering at my feet. “You were going to bring her to the Blood Coven.”

“Yes.” Aerix grins. “Zythara told me you knew. You did an excellent job getting truths from her, Brother. I suppose ruthlessness runs deep in the family bloodline, does it not?”

“I told you to stop calling me that.” All my magic—ice, water, and air—thrums beneath my skin and pounds in my skull, threatening to release in a sudden burst of power if I can’t get back in control.

Aerix’s eyes harden. “You’re ashamed of me.”

“You wanted to use me.” I advance on him, the frost patterns on my skin moving now, glowing veins of power with lives of their own.

“You wanted to write me into your twisted vision of what a brother should be and join you in serving the cult that wants to kill my soulmate and plunge the world into darkness.”

“It’s not darkness.” His wings flare, an unsettling resolve shaping the lines of his face that undeniably resembles my own. “It’s evolution. We’ll be the rulers of a new world where we’ll finally have everything we deserve—power, love, and family.”

His expression borders on zealous, his gaze unwavering. And that’s when I realize—there’s no talking any sense into him. He’s far too gone, his heart and mind lost to the same chaotic cruelty that claimed my father.

But unlike in the Frost Arena, I have no potion on me that will save him from the darkness. I can’t be his salvation—I can’t even be my own salvation. Not when I’m teetering on the edge of the same cliff he’s already fallen off of.

“It’s an interesting offer.” I pause, as if considering it, surprised by how quickly hope flashes in his eyes.

“However, I never wanted to rule. There are only two things I want right now. The first is to free Zoey from the Night Court and get her back to Presque Isle, because that’s what Sapphire wants.

Then, I want to run far away with Sapphire, so we can escape war, politics, and diabolical siblings.

I’m going to bring her to a place where we can finally be happy.

A place where no one will ever find us, where we’ll be free to live the life she deserves instead of this mess I’ve gotten her into. ”

Just like we were in that vision she told me about.

“Such a waste,” Aerix murmurs, his voice softening as he studies me. “You could have had power beyond anything the Winter Court could offer you. Family. Freedom.”

“Freedom?” I laugh bitterly, frost spiraling along my blade, wind biting at my cheeks. “The same sort of freedom you gave Zoey when you used her to get to me by hurting Sapphire?”

Discomfort flashes across Aerix’s face.

Good. I hope the truth cuts him deep.

I step closer, my blade raised and pointed at his chest, trembling with the force of everything I’m holding back.

“You knew what Sapphire meant to me,” I tell him, power raging inside me so strongly I feel like I might burst from it. “You knew what Zoey meant to her, and you still took her. You didn’t build a family, Aerix—you shattered one.”

He hesitates, his wings flaring. “That wasn’t?—”

“You want a family so badly?” I interrupt, seizing onto his flash of vulnerability. “You want connection? Then prove it. I made Mirena this same offer: ally the Night Court with the Winter and Summer Courts and stand with us against the Blood Coven.”

Aerix watches me carefully, a cold breeze blowing around him. I can practically see him wrestling with a lifetime of bitterness, with resentment etched deep into his bones.

Hope flickers in my chest. An agonizing possibility that he’ll yield and make the choice that will salvage us both.

But then, slowly, his expression hardens again.

“No.” He practically spits out the word. “I’d rather be dead than ally myself with the court that rejected me before I even had a chance to exist. A court that would never accept me, no matter what I did or who I became.”

“Then you’re choosing death,” I say quietly, my voice ringing with icy finality. “Because if you stand against us—if you choose the Blood Coven—there will be no family, Aerix. No dynasty. Just ashes, darkness, and the echo of your wasted choices.”

“Then there’s only one person in this world who’s my family now.

” He glances at Zoey with such raw devotion it makes my chest ache.

“She’s all I need. All I’ll ever need. She and I deserve power.

Security. Safety. And I refuse to accept anything less for us—especially since it’s only a matter of time before the Blood Coven and the Revenants have endless power and hold every realm in our grasp. ”

His words strike me like blades to the chest as his choice becomes clear. Because it’s a choice I won’t allow. The star touched were given their powers to stop Ambrogio and the Blood Coven, and if Aerix joins them, he will inevitably seek Sapphire’s death.

I will destroy every kingdom like I did here today before letting that happen.

Still, a sharp, aching regret twists in my heart as I imagine what it would have felt like to fight beside Aerix.

To have a sibling who could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me in battle, someone who understood the darkness that shaped us both.

A family that made sense, instead of the twisted mess I inherited.

But fate is rarely kind. And fantasy is just that—fantasy. Aerix chose this path, just how I’m choosing mine. And really, there’s only one true path for me—the one that leads to me being safe with Sapphire, no matter how much of myself I have to destroy to get there.

I lift my chin, hardening my resolve as frost coats my skin, ice reinforcing my blade.

“I spent decades wondering what it would be like to have a sibling,” I admit the truth I’ve never dared to speak out loud.

“Someone who’d stand with me, who would have been there for me when my father beat into me over and over again, when he made sure there was barely anything left in me to love.

Someone who understood what it was like to be a prince in a court that treated me with distance masked as respect. ”

“Don’t you mean our father?” Aerix corrects me, which makes the storm inside me rage harder, pressing against my skin like a blizzard ready to break through.

Jagged spikes of ice explode across the floor. Water surges from the air, swirling around me in violent torrents that lash against the walls. My control is slipping—no, it’s already gone, ripped away by two words that shatter the last remnants of who I thought I was.

Our father.

Aerix steps back, uncertainty flashing across his face as my control unravels. Good. Let him see the damage he’s done—the brother he claims he wanted splintering into deadly fragments when presented with a cruel, brutal choice. Let him see the wreckage left behind when everything finally snaps.

The bond with Sapphire is impossible to find now. It’s like someone reached inside me and severed that fragile lifeline, tearing away every last scrap of comfort and leaving me spiraling into an abyss. I’m too consumed by a storm of agony, despair, and rage so intense it’s slicing through my soul.

If I don’t stop Aerix, he’ll kill Sapphire.

If Sapphire dies, my soul will rip apart, shredding every piece of me, leaving nothing behind but a hollow, broken monster far worse than my father ever was.

I got a taste of what that felt like when the dryad left an empty space where my love for Sapphire existed.

And I know for certain that if Sapphire’s gone, nothing will be left of me anymore.

“So much power, so little control.” Aerix’s voice cuts through the howling storm that’s coming straight from me. “But this doesn’t have to end in blood. Join me, Brother. Join us.”

His gaze flicks to Zoey, still bound by Sapphire’s magic, although the restraints are weakening as Sapphire divides her attention between holding Zoey down and trying to reach me through our bond.

But maybe it’s not that she can’t reach me. Maybe I don’t want her to. Because if she does, she might stop me from going through with what has to happen next.

And so, I force myself to look away from her, to stare back into my brother’s eyes, at the silver flecks that are the only evidence of who he once was and who he could have been to me if things had been different.

“No,” I manage to say, although the word feels torn from my throat, from my soul. “I will never join them and stand with you. Not now, and not ever.”

Because I’m exactly what my father made me: a weapon sharpened and honed by pain, loneliness, and self-destruction. And if this is how it ends, with my soul splintered apart and my brother’s blood staining my blade, then maybe this final, horrifying act was always going to be my destiny.