Director Orion had warned me about them specifically. ‘They’ll resist. They won’t understand what you are, and what they don’t understand they’ll push against. These are warriors, Jupiter. Don’t piss them off.”’
I’d smiled at her and said, “Of course not, Director.”
She hadn’t believed me. She was smart.
I didn’t even want to become an axis for some random shield team of zodiac warriors. They were likely all bullheaded assholes who had never seen a fight with the bane in their privileged lives.
But that’s how our society worked since we’d come to this world, and I knew my magic would require it.
Two and a half hours later, the car turned onto a long road that disappeared into the trees, and through the bare autumn branches I caught my first glimpse of Dominion’s towers rising against the morning sky, dark stone and iron and stained glass, and even from here I could feel the humming magic of twelve hundred zodiacs contained within those walls.
I reached down and unlatched Noodle’s case just enough to touch the top of his head with one finger, and he pushed up against it sleepily, acknowledging me.
“We’re almost there,” I told him.
‘Are there mice?’
“There will be mice.”
‘Then I am ready.’
TWO
Jupiter
The car rolledthrough onto a long cobblestone drive flanked by massive oaks that had been growing here long enough to arch over the road and touch in the middle, their bare branches knitted together. The academy rose at the end of it, five stories of dark stone dressed in iron and ivy, with towers at each corner and windows that glinted in the morning light. It was the most beautiful and most threatening building I’d ever seen, and I’d been to Assembly Headquarters in Geneva.
Fen stopped the car at the base of wide stone steps where a handful of other vehicles were already unloading. I sat for a moment looking up at those doors—iron and carved with the twelve zodiac symbols in a ring. It wasn’t lost on me that mine was absent.
I got out of the car and the cold hit me immediately. I pulled my jacket tighter and looked around at the other arrivals. There were maybe twenty people in view, all around my age, ranging from openly excited to visibly terrified. I’d been told that all new students were arriving today, but the formal orientation and designation declarations weren’t until tomorrow morning.Today was check-in, dormitory assignment, and administrative chaos.
The Assembly had made arrangements. Calla Orion had been very careful and very specific about those arrangements, which meant that when I declared my designation tomorrow, the fallout was going to be contained as much as it could be. Translation… not very contained at all, because the 13th Zodiac had been a myth for longer than the oldest zodiac alive and their ancestors could remember. Walking up to a declaration podium and announcing myself as an Ophis was going to throw the zodiac world into utter panic.
I pulled my bags out of the trunk, settled Noodle’s case in the crook of my arm, and climbed the steps. The entry hall was enormous, which I’d expected from the outside, with ceilings that disappeared up into shadow and a floor of dark stone worn smooth by what had to be centuries of feet and a central staircase wide enough to drive a car up.
The walls were hung with zodiac sigils, twelve of them in order around the room, each one rendered in silver against the dark stone. The registration desk, which was staffed by a tired-looking woman with red hair, was blessedly empty of students.
“Name and ID,” she said, without looking up.
“Jupiter Black.”
She looked up.
I watched the series of emotions that crossed her face, from recognition, to shock, then professional neutrality. She knew who I was. The Assembly would have told senior staff. She knew, and she was performing not-knowing for the benefit of the students around me, which I appreciated and which I would remember as an act of kindness.
“Room 412,” she said, handing me a key card. “East wing. Elevator’s through there.” She nodded toward a corridor. “Orientation packet is in your room. Declarations are tomorrowat nine in the Convocation Hall.” A beat of awkward silence. “Welcome to Dominion, Ms. Black.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying to sound as warm as possible.
I found the elevator, rode up to the fourth floor, and found room 412 at the end of a long hallway with dark wood floors and electric sconces that looked out of place in the old building.
The room was bigger than I’d expected, with a queen bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and tall windows overlooking the back grounds where I could see training fields and outbuildings through the bare trees. There was a private bathroom thank fuck. I’d been dreading the bathroom situation in silent horror.
I put my bags down, sat on the bed and opened Noodle’s case. He uncoiled slowly, raised his head, and looked around the room, his tongue flickering out to taste the air. His scales were the deep matte black of expensive ink, and in the filtered morning light coming through the windows he looked gorgeously lethal.
‘Smells like many people.’
I snorted. “It’s a school. Therearemany people.”
