I saw them all over again like I was watching a film. Lucas Bennett with his hand on the small of her back. Rowan Nightingale leaning down to put his mouth against her ear on the dance floor, close enough that I’d felt the heat of her blush through the bond. Phoenix, the big one, watching her from across the ballroom with an expression I hadn’t been able to read at the time but could read now, oh, I could read it now.
Any of them. All of them. One of them.
A member of a rival shield with his hands on my axis. Onouraxis. Touching her somewhere in the dark.
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Aiden.”
“Whoever he is. I don’t care which one. I’m going to pull his fucking spine out of his body.”
“You’re not going anywhere or doing anything.”
“The fuck I’m not.”
“Aiden, we aren’t allowed within five hundred miles of Imperium anymore. The Assembly pulled us home with a fucking leash. If you get on a plane tonight, you lose your designation, your rank, your family name, your funding, and what’s left of any chance we have of ever getting her to look at us again. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Do you?”
“I said I hear you.”
He exhaled, then picked up his beer and drank half of it in one go, and when he lowered the bottle his hand was trembling so badly the glass chattered against the stone.
“It was one of them,” I said. “I know it was.”
“I know.”
“We did this.” I pressed the back of my head against the stone and closed my eyes. The tower.
“I know.”
13
Phoenix
The stone wallsof the subterranean corridors deep beneath Imperium wept with centuries of dampness. I ran my fingertips along the rough-hewn granite as we walked, feeling the dormant earthen magic humming just beneath the surface.
To anyone else, these passages were just too cold, too dark and nothing more than a forgotten labyrinth winding below the academy’s glamorous gothic architecture. But to me, the earth spoke in low, vibrating frequencies that only a Taurus could feel. It remembered the hands that had carved it. It remembered the blood that had spilled on it. And most of all, it remembered the magic that had scarred it.
I adjusted the heavy wool of my dark robes, the fabric swallowing the tiny bits of light cast by the flickering torches mounted in iron sconces along the walls. Beside me, my shield brothers moved in silence. We were heading to the central chamber. The Order of Ophiuchus was convening tonight.
Usually, the Order met only once a month, synchronized with the darkest phase of the moon. But this was our second meeting in as many weeks. Entirely because of her.
Jupiter.
Just the thought of her name made the knot of guilt tighten in my chest. It ground against my ribs like tectonic plates shifting out of alignment. I reached up, my fingers finding the cool, smooth surface of the jade pendant resting against my sternum—a family heirloom. I needed its comfort tonight.
The Order of Ophiuchus wasn’t some nefarious cult or political faction vying for control of the Assembly. It was family. The elders waiting for us in the central chamber were our parents, our grandparents, our aunts, and our uncles. They were the remnants of the founding families. The oldest zodiac bloodlines left on Earth that remembered the old ways. We were the keepers of a truth the rest of our world had relegated to myth.
For thousands of years, every generation passed down the knowledge of the old worlds—the thirteen connected planets our ancestors had freely traveled before the First Crossing. And with that history came the prophecy, that one day, when the stars aligned just right, a new serpent bearer would be born. The Ophis. The only designation capable of creating portals, the one who would finally lead the Aelari back to their true home.
The Assembly treated the texts as allegorical legends. They were perfectly content to rule over the Aelari here on Earth, using us as highly trained military assets to fight the bane. They didn’t know the Order existed right under their noses, operating in the deepest shadows of Imperium.
And Jupiter didn’t know either.
Hence the guilt. Ever since she arrived at Imperium, I’d felt this undeniable, magnetic pull of her magic calling to mine. We all had. When I stood beside her in the woods, helpingher anchor her energy to open those portals, I felt a profound, staggering sense of what I could only describe at rightness. Her power was breathtaking, and so was she, in every bloody way imaginable. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to stand between her and the rest of the world and absorb every blow meant for her.
