Unable to sleep, Caleb can’t stop thinking about Darcy’s twin sister, Tory. Finally, he texts her and she immediately invites him to her room, warning him not to ask questions. When he arrives, Tory pulls him into her room and kisses him fiercely, but Caleb can tell that something’s wrong. He sees two black rings around her irises and realizes she is Star-Crossed—her punishment for refusing to accept the stars’ offer to become Darius’s fated mate. Horrified, Caleb threatens to hurt the person who rejected the bond, but Tory confirms she was the one who said no. She asks Caleb to help her forget. They have sex, during which she asks him to bite her to feed on her power.

Afterward, Caleb receives a frantic call from Seth to come to the Heirs’ hideout, King’s Hollow. Seth suggests there’s something wrong with Darius. Tory grows emotional, apologizing for using Caleb and acknowledging she should have thought about the fact that Darius is his friend. At the Hollow, Max’s punches Caleb for sleeping with Darius’s fated mate, and Caleb realizes he’s made a mistake. Max explains that since Tory rejected the bond, the stars are already working to enforce the curse by pushing Caleb toward Tory to keep her and Darius apart.

Caleb goes to Darius, who has identical black rings in his eyes. He is despondent, admitting that his past cruelty to Tory and Darcy gave Tory every reason to reject him. His focus shifts to Orion’s recovery. Seth offers Caleb and Max a brief account, saying Orion was found half dead in a cave and that it took everything he, Darius, and Darcy had to keep him alive.

Orion awakens with Darcy, his memory returning in fragments: Clara stabbing him, Darcy confessing her love, and feeding on both Seth and Darius. He and Darcy shower to wash off the blood. Afterward, Darius is waiting in the bedroom. He sends Darcy to check on Tory.

Alone with Orion, Darius reveals the black rings in his eyes and tells Orion that he and Tory are Star-Crossed. Orion comforts him and their Guardian bond—a magical link forcing one Fae to protect another—flares with shared pain. Darius asks Orion where he thinks Clara has gone. He considers that since Clara was Guardian bonded to Darius’s father, Lionel, the way Orion and Darius are, she might have gone to find him. In his depleted state, Orion starts to unravel emotionally, and Darius offers his own blood to stabilize him. Orion confesses that he is in love with Darcy. Darius accepts their relationship, telling Orion to fight for her. Orion reveals that Seth knows about them and has been blackmailing Darcy. Darius vows to handle Seth, and Orion vows to find a way to defy the stars and change Darius’s fate.

At the Acrux estate, Darius’s younger brother, Xavier, sees a cloaked figure on the manor grounds. Clara Orion appears at his window, wreathed in living shadows and covered in blood. She easily overpowers Xavier and claims that Orion is dead. She demands to see Lionel.

In Lionel’s office, he initially attacks Clara, but she uses shadow magic to repel him, revealing a Guardian bond mark on her arm that matches his. She declares herself his Guardian. When she claims she killed Orion, Lionel is furious, but Clara shrugs, saying, “I needed blood” (67), and asserting her power as the Shadow Princess. Lionel becomes immediately deferential.

Xavier calls Darius, who clarifies that Orion is alive, but that Clara nearly killed him after they brought her back from the Shadow Realm. Darius then tells Xavier that he and Tory are now Star Crossed, leaving Xavier devastated for his brother.

Grief-stricken, Darius returns to his room at Ignis House, embracing his shadow magic to numb his emotional pain. He resolves to remove Clara from his father’s clutches, retrieving his draining dagger and using stardust to travel to Acrux Manor. There, his mother, Catalina, and Xavier are heartbroken to see the black rings in his eyes, confirming his Star Crossed fate. In contrast, Lionel is pleased, claiming he told Tory they were not a good match. Darius demands to know if Lionel used Coercion on her, but Lionel denies it. Clara appears and kisses Darius. When he tries to stab her with his dagger, she fights been with her impossibly strong shadow magic. Darius holds his own in the fight, but she ultimately overpowers him. Lionel stops Clara from killing Darius, stating he now has only “one Heir,” an implicit dig at Xavier for manifesting as a Pegasus instead of a Dragon. Clara’s physical affection with Lionel has sexual overtones, which Lionel waves off as a normal part of the Guardian bond, insisting that Catalina understands.

Lionel outlines his plan to use Clara’s power to seize the throne. He places Darius under a Dark Coercion spell, binding him to silence. He announces that in light of Tory’s rejection of the Mate bond, he’s moving up Darius’s arranged marriage to his cousin, Mildred.

Darcy confronts Tory about her absence during Orion’s attack. Tory explains that the stars summoned her to her Divine Moment with Darius. She reveals she rejected him as her Elysian Mate because she refused to be tied forever to someone who had treated her with so much cruelty. The choice has made them Star Crossed, a fate marked by black rings in their eyes. Tory also confesses she slept with Caleb to numb her pain, but it only reinforced the misery she feels knowing she’ll spend her life pining for Darius.

Later, at the start-of-term dinner in The Orb, Tory decides to face the inevitable gossip head on. Her black rimmed irises in her eyes cause gossip to ripple through the room. When Darius arrives with the same eyes, Marguerite shrieks in shock and disgust, announcing to the entire hall that Tory and Darius are the Star Crossed pair. Overwhelmed, Tory flees to the shadows beside the Lunar Leisure building outside. Orion tracks her there with his Vampire speed, offers comfort, and apologizes for misjudging her and Darcy when they first arrived at the academy. He assures her that Darius is not like his father, and that he too is beginning to see her and Darcy’s true potential as rulers of the Fae Realm. He carries her back to Ignis House to avoid the other students. At her door, Tory makes him a bracelet from vines as a gesture of friendship.

On the first day of the semester, Seth confronts Darcy, demanding to know what happened to Orion in the cave. She refuses to tell him. Torn between hatred and gratitude, Darcy impulsively hugs Seth, thanking him for saving Orion but insisting she will never trust him.

In Cardinal Magic class, Orion teaches a concealment spell, showing favoritism toward Darcy and Tory while being harsh with other students. He privately offers the twins extra assignments to help them develop their powers and catch up to the Heirs. After class, Diego asks to speak with Orion and Darcy. He reveals that his family is working with the Acruxes and that his grandmother’s enchanted hat is connected to the souls of the family, forming a shared network through which members can show each other memories, accessible to all connected. He tells them about a shared memory in which he saw Clara at the Acrux manor. Offering to act as a spy for Orion and Darius, Diego undergoes a “star promise”—a magically binding oath—to prove his loyalty. He then shares the memory, showing them a vision of Lionel’s followers offering blood to Clara and hailing her as their “Shadow Princess.”

Darius summons Seth to Aer Tower and confronts him about blackmailing Orion and Darcy. They fight, and Darius overpowers him. He explains that the couple’s relationship is the only happiness Orion has left after all he’s been through. Seth relents, admitting he disliked seeing Darcy with Orion and lamenting that he can never find a mate powerful enough to match him, leaving him feeling lonely and jealous of the love Orion and Darcy share.

Later, Darius arrives early for the shadow lesson and finds Tory practicing alone. As they stand near each other, the stars retaliate with a violent storm and earthquake, forcing them apart. The others soon arrive. During the lesson, Orion pairs Tory against Darius, who refuses to attack her. He only defends himself against her increasingly aggressive magical assaults. Afterward, Orion berates Darius for his passivity, urging him to fight for Tory and prove he is a better man than his father.

Tory reads a magazine article claiming Darius rejected her, citing Tory’s character flaws and promiscuity as his reasons for refusing the bond. Darius sees her reading it and insists that he never said any of the things the article reported, but confirms his father has moved up his wedding to Mildred Canopus. 

Later, at Elemental Combat class, the Vega twins are moved into the top group with the Heirs. Tory is paired against Darius, who again refuses to fight her, only defending himself. He tells her he doesn’t want to hurt her. After the lesson, he gives her a small box containing a key to a new Yamaharpie motorcycle—the prize for a race she’d previously won against him. A note inside concedes his defeat, a gesture that touches Tory.

Darcy and Orion are now inseparable, though he remains deeply worried about his sister, Clara. One night, Orion’s ex-girlfriend, Francesca, calls with an urgent mission. Orion reveals that he and Darius secretly and illegally hunt Nymphs for her. Darcy insists on joining them.

They meet Darius and Francesca at an abandoned manor belonging to Kraveen Dire, a deceased black-market dealer who knew Orion’s father. While searching the house, Darcy finds the skeleton of Kraveen hunched over a desk, a piece of paper under one hand and a Tarot card clutched in the other—she pockets both without telling the others. In the cellar, Darcy and Darius kill a Nymph, which causes the floor above to collapse. Darcy protects them with an air shield, and they emerge to find more Nymphs fighting Orion. Darius transforms into a Dragon and pursues several Nymphs who are escaping with bags of stolen goods.

Darcy reads Kraveen’s note, which speaks of a powerful, dangerous artifact he sent away to be kept safe. She and Orion deduce that this artifact is what the Nymphs were after and that Kraveen likely sent it to Orion’s father.

Xavier grows more and more fearful that Lionel will kill him to hide the secret of his Pegasus Order. He continues his secret friendship with Sofia via text. As he sends her a message, he overhears Clara methodically testing objects from a table and discarding each one, searching for a specific magical artifact that Lionel’s allies, the Polaris family, have failed to locate.

Xavier goes downstairs to find something to eat, but his mother tells him Lionel wants them to have lunch together as a family. As Xavier and Catalina sit in the dining room, they hear Lionel and Clara having sex loudly in the room above them, which Lionel views as an intentional attempt to remind them of his dominance. Lionel appears in the dining room with Clara, who’s dressed in Catalina’s clothes, and Xavier confronts Lionel about his flagrant affair with Clara and his disrespect toward Catalina. In a first act of defiance, Xavier punches Lionel, who responds by beating him brutally. Afterward, a seemingly lucid Clara heals Xavier before reverting to her Shadow Princess persona. Lionel forces Xavier to meet with Mr. Gravebone, an “Order Conversion Therapist” (223), hired to provide treatment and change Xavier’s the Order with which Xavier identifies. Using hypnosis, Gravebone begins forcing Xavier to deny his Pegasus identity.

Tory establishes a new routine of running early each morning. One day, Darius joins her, keeping a silent, respectful distance. Afterward, Caleb speaks with Tory, encouraging her to fight against her Star Crossed fate rather than accept a lifetime of loneliness and misery.

Later, during a flying lesson, Tory wonders if Gabriel is her “Nebula Ally,” a fated friend, and, using his psychic power, he confirms it without her having to ask. He confronts Tory about the Star Crossed situation, arguing that both she and Darius contributed to the miscommunication between them. He points out that they both struggle to be vulnerable at critical moments. Furious, Tory flies off campus.

She finds herself face to face with Catalina, who has tracked her to ask why she rejected Darius. When Catalina grabs her arm, Tory’s Phoenix fire instinctively activates, inadvertently purging Lionel’s Dark Coercion spells from Catalina’s mind, freeing her from his mental control. Catalina tells Tory that she fears Lionel intends to kill Xavier and that the protection she placed over him is being undone. The two seal a star promise: Tory will tell no one that Lionel’s control over Catalina is broken, and in return Catalina will pass on everything she learns about Lionel and Clara’s plans.