She offered a small, self-deprecating smile. “I know that feeling.”
We stood in comfortable silence for a moment. I watched her kneel, studying a large, jagged piece of obsidian that represented the First Crossing point. She reached out, her fingertips hovering just inches from the dark glass.
“I went to the village yesterday,” she said softly, not looking at me. “With some people from my tower.”
“I know.”
She finally turned her head, meeting my eyes. “There was a man in the antique shop who sold me a pendant. He knew myname, but I never told him what it was. And... he looked like you. Alotlike you.”
I couldn’t help the slow, helpless smile that spread across my face. The tension that had been gripping my shoulders since the moment she walked into the greenhouse finally began to bleed away into the damp earth beneath my boots.
“That was my father. My family owns that shop. We have for generations.”
Jupiter’s delicate brow furrowed. “But how did he know my name? I didn’t tell him who I was. I just bought the pendant and left.”
I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly as I looked down at the toes of my boots for a fraction of a second before meeting her gaze again. “I, ah... I may have spoken to my father about you. Perhaps one too many times, and in far too much detail.”
She straightened, and just stared at me, and then, a sound escaped her that I felt all the way down to the soles of my fucking feet. As she laughed, a beautiful, rosy blush spread across the bridge of her nose and dusted her cheeks. My cock hardened instantly, pressing against the zipper of my work pants. My gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips. They were soft and plump, parted slightly as her laughter faded into a breathless smile.
I wanted nothing more than to close the distance between us, to press my mouth to hers and taste how sweet she might be. I wanted to map the shape of her lower lip with my tongue, to swallow her sighs, to feel the current of her cosmic magic humming against my skin. The urge was so utterly overwhelming that my hands actually twitched at my sides.
Don’t push her,my father’s voice echoed in the back of my mind.Build a foundation of trust.
I cleared my throat, desperately trying to regain the iron-clad control I usually possessed. “Would you—would you like to know more about the rock garden?”
Jupiter’s eyes brightened, the blush still lingering on her cheeks. She nodded eagerly, stepping a fraction closer to the perimeter of the stones. “You said it was a map of sorts?”
“It is,” I said, grateful for the distraction as I moved to stand beside her. I made sure to keep a respectful few inches between us, even though every instinct in me was screaming at me to pull her against my chest. I gestured to the sprawling, intricate arrangement of stones, crystals, and dark soil. “They represent the thirteen home planets that the Aelari came from.”
Noodle, perhaps sensing that we were going to be standing here for a while, uncoiled himself from her neck. He slithered down her arm, dropping silently into a patch of vibrant, broad-leafed ferns nearby.
“He’ll be fine,” I assured her when she glanced down. “There’s nothing in here that can hurt him, and the ambient heat is perfect for cold-blooded creatures.”
She nodded, turning her attention back to the stones. “So, thirteen planets. One for each designation.”
“Exactly,” I said, pointing to a dense, heavy sphere of raw lodestone resting in a bed of soil. “That represents the Taurus world. A planet with crushing gravity and immense tectonic activity. It’s why our magic is tied to physical endurance, magnetization and earth manipulation. The environment required it.”
I moved on toward a cluster of smooth, pale aquamarine stones set in a small, trickling water feature. “Pisces. A world entirely covered by deep oceans. Their civilization is—was—made up of thousands of small island nations rather than continents. And over there, the jagged iron-ore for Aries, a volatile planet of fire and ash, but also incredibly beautiful mountain ranges.”
Jupiter took a step forward, her eyes wide. “And what about Ophis? Which one is mine?”
I pointed to the very center of the garden, where a piece of meteorite rested atop a pedestal of fused glass. “The Drakon—what the Assembly now calls Ophiuchus—sat at the exact center of the Aelari system. It was the celestial anchor that kept the other twelve planets connected across the galaxy. Without it, portal travel would never have been possible, and the civilizations likely would have developed in total isolation from one another. Your ancestors lived on a rocky planet the size of a gas giant. Which, by every known law of planetary physics, shouldn’t exist. But they terraformed it. Harnessed its enormous energy output to power their entire civilization, rather than allowing it to collapse inward and ignite into a star. It already orbited a binary star system anyways. Had it been left to develop unchecked, it would have completed a three-body system and thrown the entire solar neighborhood into gravitational chaos.”
She sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “Ancient Alienssure left that part out of the documentary…”
I snorted and faced her, in full nerd mode suddenly. “It’s said that there was a time millions of years ago where all of the Aelari lived on just one planet together, but when that planet was nearing its death, they were forced out into the stars, forced to adapt to their own new home worlds.”
It was just a theory, of course. I didn’t think there was any verifiable way to know the real origins of our species, but I liked the thought of it. One people, spreading out across the stars and still managing to work together in harmony. Hell, the humans couldn’t even manage to agree on skin color and human rights let alone juggling a multi-planetary society.
“That’s why my power is based on starlight then, just like the planet my people came from?” she asked, but then answered herself a moment later. “From what I know, stars run on fusion energy, not actual fire. Kind of like what I feel every time I conjure a starlight weapon, or throw my magic at the bane. Myfingers get all tingly, and I swear it’s like my bones are buzzing.” She met my eyes. “Am I creating nuclear fusion inside my body?”
I shrugged. “I mean, essentially yes. Your ancestors were the only ones who could harness star power and navigate portals between the worlds. You were the literal bridges of our species.”
She laughed nervously. “No pressure or anything.” A single bead of sweat dripped down her pretty neck and into her collarbone.
“It’s quite warm in here,” I said as I watched that stray bead of sweat dip beneath the top of her sweater. “Would you like a drink?”
Jupiter blinked, as if pulling herself out of a deep trance. “Oh. Actually, yeah. Water would be amazing, if you have it.”
