I shouldn’t care. I should hate her for what she did to us. But watching her shuffle down the corridor, shoulders hunched as if carrying an impossible weight, something broke inside me.
Aiden had left with that Capricorn girl—Vanessa or Vivian, I couldn’t remember her name. She’d whispered promises in his ear about what her mouth could do, and he’d gone along with it, his eyes dead and expression hollow. We all knew it wouldn’t work. It never did. Every fucking time any of us tried to be with someone else, our bodies betrayed us. And there was that shameful, secret relief afterward, the relief that we couldn’t replace her.
Jupiter reached her door, fumbling with the key before practically falling inside. I hesitated, then slid down the wallopposite her room, sitting on the cold floor. I shouldn’t be here. I should be anywhere but here. Yet I couldn’t make myself leave.
Through our bond, I could feel her blocking us—a thick wall she’d maintained since that day. But during training, when Melissa had touched Percy, I’d felt something slip through Jupiter’s defenses. A flash of such intense pain it had stolen my breath for a moment.
I closed my eyes, hating myself for what I was about to do. It felt wrong and invasive, but I needed to know. I needed to understand.
I pressed against the barrier in my mind, forcing my way through. It was like pushing through thick ice, and I felt dirty doing it, knowing she’d put these walls up for privacy. But something wasn’t adding up, and I needed answers.
When the barrier finally broke, I wasn’t prepared for what hit me.
Pain. Overwhelming, staggering pain that knocked the air from my lungs. It wasn’t just emotional, it was physical agony radiating from her body. I gasped, doubling over as the full force of it crashed into me.
Then came images, not from Jupiter’s perspective, but from Noodle’s. The little snake was watching from the corner of the room as Jupiter collapsed onto the floor. She was curled into a tight ball, her entire body shaking with violent sobs. In her hands was a crumpled t-shirt—Percy’s, I recognized it instantly—and she was screaming into it, the fabric muffling sounds that would have alerted the entire floor to her distress.
Through Noodle’s eyes, I watched tears stream down her face, her eyes swollen and red-rimmed. Her arms were exposed, sleeves pushed up, and I could see fresh scratch marks—dozens of them—where she’d clawed at her own skin.
“Please make it stop,” she sobbed into Percy’s shirt. “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t...”
The pure anguish in her voice gutted me. This wasn’t the calculated performance of a manipulator. This was someone being torn from within.
Before I could think better of it, I grabbed the images and pain I was experiencing and shoved them down the bond to the others. To Percy, who was stubbornly reviewing combat reports in the library. To Eris, who was halfway through a bottle of whiskey in our common room. And to Aiden, who I knew was in some empty classroom with that Capricorn girl on her knees in front of him.
I felt the exact moment Aiden received the vision. His shock rippled back through the bond, followed by confusion, then a wave of such intense guilt it nearly made me retch. Through our shield connection, I caught flashes of his situation—the girl looking up at him with confusion as he remained completely soft despite her best efforts.
Percy’s response came next. Disbelief, then anger, then doubt cracking through his certainty for the first time in weeks. Eris’s emotions hit like a battering ram, raw fury quickly giving way to devastating guilt.
Inside the room, Jupiter had curled tighter around Percy’s shirt, her body shaking with each sob. “I didn’t do it,” she whispered, though there was no one to hear but Noodle. “I swear I didn’t do it.” Her voice was raspy and she hiccuped so many times I barely understood her. This was no lie. This was no performance.
‘Someone lie,’Noodle hissed. Through his connection with Jupiter, I could feel his anger. Noodle was seconds away from hunting through Dominion for whoever hurt his Jupiter.
I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to process what I was seeing, what I was feeling. Her pain was too real, too visceral to be manufactured. And something about those emails had always bothered me, the clinical tone so at odds with Jupiter’sblunt honesty, the calculated manipulation so contrary to her straightforward nature.
What if we’d been wrong? What if someone else had created those emails?
TWENTY-FIVE
Aiden
I pushedthe Capricorn girl away so abruptly she stumbled backward, her eyes wide with confusion. “What the hell, Aiden?” she complained, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Get out,” I said, my voice barely audible as I zipped up my pants with trembling hands. I was soft anyway and seconds from vomiting all over her. I’d already gagged at least five times since closing the classroom door.
“Excuse me?” Her expression morphed from confusion to indignation. “You can’t just?—“
“I said get the fuck out!” I roared, my magic flaring gold around my clenched fists.
She flinched, gathering her things and backing toward the door. “Whatever. You’re all fucking insane.”
The door slammed behind her, and I collapsed against the desk, struggling to breathe through the aftershocks of what Draco had just shared through our bond. Jupiter curled around Percy’s shirt, sobbing until she retched, clawing at her own skin like she was trying to tear the pain out.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, but I couldn’t unsee it. Couldn’t unfeel the agony that had poured through our bond.
My phone buzzed. Percy.
P: Library. Now.
