All the air vanished from my lungs. I sat there, utterly paralyzed by the sheer cruelty of it. It was one thing to be forced into a political arrangement by a tyrannical father. It was one thing to break up with a shield to protect them. But to enthusiastically betray every ounce of trust you once had in them? That was cruel humiliation.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”
“She didn’t just leave us,” Jamie said, his green eyes lifting to meet mine, swimming with that betrayal. “She made sure we knew we meant absolutely nothing to her. She looked right at us from that bed. She didn’t even try to cover herself or tell them to stop. Kael realized we were there and came all over her back while he pulled her hair and forced her to look at us. She just smiled and moaned. She didn’t give a shit that just three days earlier she’d been with us—well,them.” He nodded to his shield brothers.
A wave of nausea rolled through me. I squeezed Jamie’s hand back under the table, my heart shattering for them. “I was wrong then. You don’t do that to people you love. You’re right. She’s a monster.”
Rowan blew out a long breath, some of the tension finally draining from his broad shoulders. “It’s in the past. We survived it. But it’s why we don’t buy the victim routine she tries to play. Eliza Reece looks out for exactly one person in this world, and that’s Eliza.”
“We shouldn’t have burdened you with this,” Phoenix said gently, his copper eyes softening as he looked at my bloodless face. “You have enough on your plate without carrying our old baggage.”
“It’s not a burden,” I insisted, waving him off. “You guys have been carrying this alone for two years. And after... After everything that happened to me at Dominion, I think I understand better than anyone what it feels like to be thrown away like trash by the people you trusted most.”
Lucas’s expression softened. “Nightfall were fools, Jupiter. And if they ever step foot in London again, I’ll happily remind them of that fact with my fists.”
A small, watery smile broke through my anger. “Get in line, Bennett.”
The archives were locateddeep beneath the main library, accessible only by a winding stone staircase that smelled of dust and cold winter nights. When we arrived, the heavy oak doors were already unlocked. We’d been given permission by Professor Winters to come down here for an hour of study, and Ithink the guys were a bit giddy about it. Or maybe just Jamie and Phoenix since their eyes literally lit up the second we arrived.
The room was huge, lined with towering shelves of old books, scrolls encased in stasis glass, and odd magical artifacts that I’d never seen before. Some things looked super old and alien, while other things were clearly technological, but probably didn’t work anymore after thousands of years on Earth.
“Over here,” Phoenix called out, waving us toward a large, circular oak table in the center of the room.
Resting in the center of the table was an object covered by a heavy velvet cloth. The moment I stepped closer to it, Noodle uncoiled from my neck, his tongue flicking rapidly.
“What is that?” I asked, my magic suddenly humming beneath my skin. It was like hearing a tuning fork struck at the exact frequency that made something in my soul vibrate, which was incredibly unsettling.
Lucas carefully pulled the velvet cloth away. Beneath it sat an intricate, multi-layered astrolabe forged from a dark, iridescent metal. It was covered in strange, flowing runes that I didn’t consciously know how to read, yet my brain instinctively recognized them as coordinates.
“This,” Theo said, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper, “is a genuine Aelari star-finder. It predates the First Crossing by at least two thousand years.”
I gasped, reaching out before I could stop myself. My fingers hovered an inch above the dark metal. “Where did they even get this? The Assembly claims most technology from the home worlds was destroyed during the bane incursions.”
“The Assembly lies about a great many things,” Rowan said dryly, leaning against the edge of the table. “Our families have preserved certain relics and donated them to the academy for study and safekeeping. To remind us of where we came from.”
“Touch it,” Phoenix urged softly, watching me with intense focus.
I swallowed hard and lowered my hand. The moment my fingertips made contact with the cold metal, the astrolabe flared to life. A pulse of pure, blinding starlight erupted from the device, expanding upward to project a large, three-dimensional holographic map. I stumbled back, my breath catching as thirteen planets materialized above us, glowing in vibrant, distinct colors, slowly orbiting several massive stars. The map was condensed, but I knew it spanned many, many lightyears between solar systems.
“Incredible,” Lucas breathed, looking up at the projection. “It hasn’t been activated like that since before the crossing. Tons of people have tried.”
I could see the Taurus world Phoenix had described in the greenhouse, the watery blue sphere of the Pisces world covered in tiny islands, the fiery Leo planet with three suns. Some solar systems were multi-planetary, but most of the Aelari stuck to one home world with bases on several of their orbiting moons. And in the very center, acting as the magical anchor for the entire Milky Way, was a planet the size of Jupiter, glowing silver in some places, and violet or emerald green in others. My planet. Ophiuchus, home of the Drakon.
“It’s so beautiful,” I said, a strange ache blooming in my chest. A homesickness for a place I’d never been, a world that’d been dead for millennia.
15
Theo
I watchedthe silver light from the astrolabe reflect in Jupiter’s wide, awe-struck eyes. We were walking a razor-thin wire here, balancing right on the edge of a precipice. Showing her this artifact was a calculated risk. It was just one of many we’d saved—things the Assembly Council swore had been eradicated or lost a millennia ago. They didn’t know we had them because the Order of Ophiuchus kept them buried in the deep archives.
This particular astrolabe belonged to my ancestral line. It was kept safe by the Hargrave family beneath Imperium for hundreds of years, passed down from father to son, mother and daughter, waiting for the day the thirteenth zodiac would finally return to use it.
“How is it doing this?” Jupiter whispered, stepping closer to the holographic projection. The miniature planets orbited in a slow, mesmerizing dance above our heads, casting a glow over the dusty shelves. “The energy feels like it’s pulling at me.”
“It responds to your magical signature,” I explained. “The metal in the core of the planet that would have turned it into a star one day is attuned to Ophis magic. When you touched it, your starlight magic acted as a catalyst. A battery, essentially.”
She looked at me, her dark brow furrowing slightly. “How does the academy manage to keep something like this a secret?”
