Zodiac Academy: The Awakening

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-26

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 16 Summary: “Tory”

Tory receives a message from Falling Star, asking them to meet behind the bar in 10 minutes. When they do, they receive another message claiming that it’s unsafe and warning them to get to safety before the darkness claims them. Before they can leave the dark alley, a shadowed figure emitting a strange rattling sound appears. The sound blocks their magic and pulls at their limbs. The girls fight against the sound and its effect, running for the safety of the bright public street before the shadow figure can catch them.

When they emerge, they see the Celestial Heirs sitting at a table outside the bar with a group of admirers. Max notices them first and initiates physical contact to feed on their fear and strengthen his own power. The boys convince the girls to stay for one drink. Darius takes particular interest in hearing about their shadowy encounter after Darcy mentions the rattling sound they heard. Tory finishes her drink immediately, and the twins decide to find a club for dancing. The boys follow, and Darius and Seth join Tory and Darcy on the dance floor. Darius is soon pulled away by Orion, who claims that they need to speak about a missing assignment. In Darius’s absence, Tory dances with Caleb. They’re soon interrupted by an announcement instructing all Zodiac Academy students to return to campus via shuttlebus.

This is followed immediately by a message from Falling Star that claims that they should have warned “her,” too, and a classmate named Marguerite shouts that Geraldine Grus was found in critical condition outside the alley. Tory and Darcy exit the bar to witness the commotion. They find Orion at the scene, covered in blood, as Geraldine is loaded into an ambulance. He supposedly saved her life by fending off her attacker, but his power is completely drained. He feeds too hungrily on Darcy to replenish his power, and Tory is forced to use magic to break him away. He seems regretful but does not apologize, instead insisting on driving the girls back to campus. Caleb, who has followed the girls to the alley, rejects the offer and escorts Tory and Darcy to the shuttle, where Max and Seth wait. Tory notices that Darius is missing.

Chapter 17 Summary: “Darcy”

The following morning, Darcy wakes up with a hangover. When she leaves her room, she’s greeted by Seth, who is suspiciously nice. He admits that their intimacy last night led him to believe that something has changed between them. When she admits that she can’t trust him after his bullying, he apologizes and asks if she can learn to trust him over time. She agrees to remain open to the possibility, and he is open to being friends. Darcy and Tory are assaulted by Seth’s supposed girlfriend, Kylie, and Darius’s partner in a “situationship,” Marguerite. They are angry after seeing multiple videos on Faebook of Darcy and Tory dancing with their partners.

Darcy and Tory visit Geraldine in Uranus Infirmary. She reveals that she heard a rattling noise just before she was attacked. The attack felt like a knife or pitchfork stabbing between her shoulder blades. Everything went dark, and then someone who smelled of cinnamon was kneeling over her as her magic was being drained. After leaving, Darcy tells Tory that Orion smells like cinnamon. While it’s still possible that he could have been helping Geraldine, they don’t rule out the possibility that he’s her attacker. Darius’s absence despite leaving the bar with Orion is also suspicious.

On Sunday, Darcy has her Liaison meeting with Orion. When she confronts him about her suspicions, he provides a news article on his Atlas that reveals that the Fae Investigation Bureau determined that Geraldine was attacked by a Nymph. Orion asks if Darcy has discovered her Order yet. She reveals that she hasn’t, but she knows she’s not a Werewolf. Orion asks if she learned this through dancing provocatively with Seth, perhaps even sleeping with him. Darcy doesn’t dignify his prying with an answer. When he approaches her, she commands him not to feed on her because her powers have only just returned. When Orion asks how, she doesn’t have an answer. He urges her to pay attention next time because the answer is linked to her Order. Darcy asks if he wants Tory and Darcy dead, and Orion says that he does not.

Chapter 18 Summary: “Tory”

The Zodiac Academy prepares for a dance that weekend. Tory travels to the Fire Arena for a lesson with Darius. He skipped their previous lesson, and only Tory got in trouble with Professor Pyro. When he does not show up to their lesson once again, Tory stalks to House Ignis.

After getting the location to his bedroom from other House members, she goes to the top floor and knocks. Darius invites her in, assuming that she’s one of his friends. His room is decorated nearly entirely with real gold, and she finds him lying in a bed of gold coins. Tory confronts him about his absence. Darius claims that if she wants him to tutor her, she’ll have to force him to. Tory eggs him on by gloating about her four Elemental abilities in comparison to his two. She admits that she doesn’t know what her Order is, but she could be higher on the food chain than him. Darius claims that no one is above him on the food chain, strips down, and jumps out of a window, transforming to show her his Order—Dragon. Tory is enamored with his Dragon form and briefly hopes that her Order will give her wings to fly among the clouds. His challenge sparks a competitiveness in her, and she realizes that she wants to gain his respect.

Chapter 19 Summary: “Darcy”

Darcy and Tory attend Siren Order Enhancement class with Professor Undine. She suggests that Darcy and Tory think of a happy memory from the past two weeks for the Sirens to practice feeding on. A friend of Max’s pries for more information about the night, instead eliciting lustful memories from Darcy about Orion, which she admits aloud. The exercise annoys the girls, and they determine that they are not Sirens.

Max draws the twins aside and asks for their deepest fears. His Siren abilities lull them into complacency. Tory shares that she’s afraid of deep water. She recounts fighting with her ex-boyfriend while he was driving. He got distracted and went off a bridge. They crashed into the river, where he escaped from the car and left her struggling to unlatch her seatbelt as the car went under. A farmer who saw the accident swam out, cut the belt, and brought her to safety.

Darcy shares her deep-seated fear of abandonment, especially after deciding to trust someone. They’ve been repeatedly cast aside by various foster families, and she’s always felt unlovable. This worsened last year when she began dating a guy. After three months, she had sex with him, only for him to end the relationship immediately after. She lost her balance on the way home and fell, bruising her knee. She dyed the ends of her hair the color of that bruise as a reminder to never trust easily again.

At lunch, Seth attempts to sit with Darcy, Tory, Diego, and Sofia. Darcy isn’t in the headspace to entertain his attention, and her sister and friends regard him coldly. Seth leaves after slipping something into Darcy’s pocket that he urges her to read later. Lunch is interrupted by Marguerite’s hysterics when Darius publicly ends their relationship. Kylie also accuses Seth of cheating on her with Darcy. After the Heirs depart The Orb, Kylie and Marguerite set their sights on the Vega twins, whom they blame for their misfortune. Kylie uses air magic to flip their table and grabs Seth’s message from Darcy’s pocket. She bursts into tears and runs away after reading the note, which invites Darcy to be his date to the dance.

Chapter 20 Summary: “Tory”

After finishing class the following day, Tory intends to retreat to her room for a nap. However, she overhears Marguerite and Kylie scheming to teach her a lesson further down the stairwell. Rather than run away, Tory uses her magic to flood the stairwell with water and races to hide in a nearby room while the shrieking girls flee. Caleb happens to be in the room and desires to feed on Tory.

Tory is not yet strong enough to fight back and bitterly offers her neck. Instead, Caleb hints that he’s after something else and kisses her. Desire floods Tory, and she reciprocates. Caleb brings Tory to a euphoric release without expecting anything in return and feeds on her after. He offers to sneak to her room for sex if she decides to skip the weekend school dance.

Chapters 16-20 Analysis

In this section, Darcy and Tory’s night out in Tucana with Diego and Sofia serves as the rising action before the primary conflict and eventual climax of the novel. Sofia becomes suspiciously drunk off of very little alcohol, suggesting that she was drugged by shots meant for Darcy and Tory. Darcy overhears Orion plotting murder with a woman at the bar, but when she confronts him, he seems unconcerned that she believes that herself and Tory are the victims, which suggests that he is not plotting to hurt them. After Diego leaves to take Sofia home, Darcy and Tory share a free, fun-filled, and intimate night of clubbing and dancing with the Celestial Heirs that shifts their distrustful mindsets to a more vulnerable space. Not only are the girls pursued by a shadowy, murderous figure with terrifying magic-nullifying, limb-paralyzing powers that might be a Nymph, but a fellow student is also attacked by the same figure. As the tension ramps up and the conflicts begin to reach their boiling point, Darcy and Tory lose sight of some dangers while becoming hyper-fixated on others.

The theme of Navigating Power Dynamics and Interpersonal Complexities becomes particularly important as Darcy and Tory’s defenses begin to lower with the Celestial Heirs. As they reluctantly begin to trust the boys, seeing more humanity in their interactions, they are unwittingly giving the boys even more power to learn their weaknesses and exploit them in their betrayal at the end of the novel. Seth begins acting friendly with Darcy after the clubbing night where they dance closely. Darcy’s initial reaction is rational:

The most important thing I’d learned in life? You can’t trust people. And you especially can’t trust boys with wicked smiles and equally wicked intentions. He’d already gone too far. Ridiculed me, made my first week at Zodiac as difficult as possible. So what more evidence did I need to stay the hell away from him? (315).

However, she goes against her instincts and accepts his apology, beginning what could be a friendship between the two. Caleb, too, stops his vicious feeding on Tory and initiates intimacy instead, pleasuring her without asking for anything in return. However, he feeds off her afterward, foreshadowing his disingenuous nature. Darius, too, offers some measure of vulnerability to Tory even as they fight by stripping down and revealing his Dragon form to her. Tory can’t help but admire the form and begrudgingly respect Darius. Max takes advantage of Darcy and Tory in their Siren Order Enhancement class, feeding on their deepest fears as they recite them verbally to him. This confession from the twins will ultimately shape the betrayal of the Celestial Heirs, who use Darcy’s fear of abandonment and Tory’s fear of water in one final act of extreme aggression and bullying.

Tory’s self-sacrificing nature is explored in her immediate reaction when approached by the shadow figure in the alley in Tucana: Darcy “trie[s] to move to [her] side to get a better look but [Tory] wo[]n’t let her, keeping [her] body between her and whoever the hell [i]s blocking [their] exit” (290). Tory identifies as the stronger of the twins, and she is willing to stand between Darcy and the unknown shadow creature, which is foreshadowed as being a Nymph. As Seth draws closer to Darcy, Tory also takes it upon herself to stand up for her sister and warn him away. Though Darcy doesn’t listen to her sister’s rationale, it is clear by the end of the novel that the sisters will always look out for one another, even over themselves.

This section also delves into bullying among young women, as the girlfriends of Darius and Seth attack Tory and Darcy. Tory, however, uses her power to flood the stairwell where the two girls plot another attack, highlighting the twins’ path toward Self-Discovery as Empowerment and Confidence Building. Additionally, the twins’ willingness to explore romance and sexuality shows agency and strength of character: They do not sheepishly reciprocate the affections, whether real or not, of the Celestial Heirs. Darcy attempts to set clear boundaries with Seth, and Tory eagerly engages in sex with Caleb. The girls do this even when they know that their true affections, though unexplainable, lie with Orion (which Darcy is Coerced into admitting publicly while with the Sirens) and Darius, respectively. However, Darcy and Tory feel that the worst of the bullying is behind them, and they can have no idea that the Celestial Heirs are gearing up for their most horrific act of bullying, which nearly kills Tory.

This section also demonstrates the public nature of Tory and Darcy’s new roles as Heirs to the Solarian throne. The girls are fascinating even when they are hated: They are the most powerful Fae in years, and they are captivating, independent, and brave. Faebook allows others to keep up with their every move, which ultimately leads to a lack of privacy and even public humiliation and vilification. However, Faebook also provides them with their ally, Falling Star, or Professor Astrum, who helps save them from the shadow figure, demonstrating the dangers and benefits of public life.