“Dad!” I screamed, rushing to his side.
My mum was still fighting, becoming desperate as more bane poured through the breach. “James, run!”
I couldn’t. Iwouldn’tleave them.
The bane that killed her a second later moved so fast I barely saw it. It was a shadow that seemed to phase through solid wall. One moment she was standing, the next she was on the ground, her eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
Something broke inside me then. A dam burst, and power flooded through my veins—too late, too bloody late. My Pisces magic manifested a year too early, but seconds too late in a surge of raw energy, my mind reaching out to touch the consciousness of the bane. I could feel their alien thoughts, their hunger, their mindless desire to consume.
I lashed out with my newfound power, tearing through their mental defenses, forcing them to experience every ounce of my pain and rage. They screamed—a sound no human throat could make—as I ripped their minds apart.
But one remained. The largest, most intelligent of them all. It regarded me with something close to amusement before lunging forward. I raised my hands, channeling everything I had left into a mental assault.
Too slow. Its claws raked down the left side of my face, setting my world on fire with pain. I fell backward, blood pouring from the wounds that would become my scars. Fire raked down my arms, my back, my abdomen as it tore at me. As consciousness faded, I saw the creature standing over me, raising its claws for a final strike.
The dream shifted, as it always did, showing me the aftermath. Assembly agents arrived too late for my parents but just in time to kill the bane that was about to end my life, the funeral I watched from a wheelchair, too weak to stand and the scars that would never fully heal, a permanent, ugly and monstrous reminder of my complete failure. Sometimes I wished I’d died with them that night if only so I didn’t have to live with the shame.
“Enough,” I told myself, as I did every night. “Enough now.”
The dream shattered around me, fragments of memory dissolving into mist. I floated in the void between dreams for a moment, Gretchen materializing beside me, her feathers gleaming with that distinctive blue-purple sheen that reminded me of a nebula. My familiar could always reach my dreams, and had pulled me out of enough of them when I couldn’t do it myself.
She preened her wing feathers, a gesture I’d come to recognize as her way of giving me space to collect myself. “There are ways to avoid dreaming, silly boy.”
“And miss all our quality time together? Never.”
Gretchen’s mental laugh rippled through our connection. “Poor Jam Jam.”
She was the only one who could call me that, and only because I’d never live it down if any of the guys heard. I’d taken sleeping pills before just to keep the dreams at bay, but I didn’t want to overdo it. When I took them I woke up even more exhausted than when I went to sleep.
I felt a tug. It was gentle at first. Someone else’s dream was calling to me. This wasn’t unusual; my Pisces magic often drew me to dreams filled with intense emotion. I’d learned to resist most of them, to stay within my own dream unless specifically seeking another’s. But within seconds the pull grew strong enough that I had to actively resist following it.
“Do you feel that?”
Gretchen cocked her head, her amber eyes gleaming with interest. “Someone’s having a nightmare. A powerful someone.”
I hesitated only briefly before allowing myself to be drawn toward the foreign dream. Gretchen fluttered to my shoulder, her talons gentle against my skin as the new dream materialized around us.
It was a dormitory room I didn’t recognize. The dark stone walls were old, but not as old as Imperium, and the room was utilitarian. The walls were bare except for a single taped up photograph of the Milky Way galaxy.
And there, curled on the floor, was Jupiter Black.
She was sobbing uncontrollably, her face buried in what appeared to be a man’s black t-shirt. Her shoulders shook, and occasionally a raw, guttural scream would tear from her throat, muffled by the fabric clutched in her white-knuckled hands.
“Fuck…” Even for a dream, her pain was overwhelming.
Gretchen’s talons tightened slightly on my shoulder. “This is a memory. The girl hurts.”
She was right. The dream had the clarity ofrecenttrauma, not the hazy quality of a typical nightmare. And this room, it was clearly Dominion. I was witnessing something that had actually happened.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I was literally witnessing the direct aftermath of the Nightfall Shield’s betrayal. Did she relive this every bloody night? The way I relived the death of my parents?
I stood frozen, unsure whether to retreat or make my presence known. This felt invasive, too intimate. But before I could decide, Jupiter’s head snapped up, her bloodshot eyes locking directly onto mine.
“Who’s there?” She scrambled to her feet, hastily wiping at her tear-stained face. “How the fuck did you get in here?”
I stepped forward, hands raised in a placating gesture. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
Recognition dawned in her eyes. “Jamie? What—how are you?—“
