Page 26 of The Bound Zodiac

“But I do want you to understand something.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, arching a brow.

His eyes met mine, and I realized this was as close as I’d allowed myself to get to him since everything went down. I’d almost forgotten how deep they were.

“Our shield has been together for a long time. We’re brothers in every way that counts. And because our bond is so strong, I know first hand what it’s like to have a prestigious family breathing down your neck. Percy and Aiden’s fathers are some of the meanest, most sinister sons of bitches you’ll ever meet. We spent literal years dodging their attempts to match us with blue-blooded axis candidates via shady deals with their business partners. There’s always some reason behind it. Some arrangement. They’re not good men, Jupiter. They can’t be trusted. So when we saw those messages, it didn’t take much to convince us that the Assembly had something to do with it. What are the odds that the 13th zodiac herself joins the academy and just happens to accidentally bond with our shield? It has sabotage written all over it.”

“But it was an accident⁠—”

“I know that now. Of course, we all do now. But we barely knew you. You were this beautiful anomaly that waltzed into our lives and changed everything all at once. You were like fucking crack to us and the Assembly knew that.” I tried to look away, but his hand on my arm made me pause. He ducked his head, meeting my eyes again. “Can you honestly tell me they didn’t try to match you with us?”

I hated that he was right with every fiber of my being. Because before I’d even set foot on Dominion’s campus, Director Waverly had slid a manila folder across her desk and said, ”These are the top-performing shield teams currently enrolled. Nightfall is the one to watch. We think you’d be an excellent fit for them. Consider it.”

She hadn’t ordered me. Hadn’t coerced me. But the suggestion had been there, planted like a seed, and I’d carried it with me onto that campus without even realizing it was taking root. I’d walked into that first day with Nightfall’s names already memorized, their combat records already filed away in my head, and I’d told myself it was research. Preparation. Good sense.

Had it occurred to me, even once, that the Assembly might have done the same thing to them? Fed them a file on the incoming Ophis? Suggested, in that same not-so-commanding way, that she might be worth watching?

I stared at the water, and the truth tasted bitter.

“No,” I said finally. “I can’t tell you that.”

Draco didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

The Assembly had their hands in it. Not enough to force anything for real. They were smarter than that, always had been. But enough to nudge us in the right direction. Enough to tilt the board in their favor. We thought we were making our own choices, when really we’d been playing a game whose rules we hadn’t been told.

Was it really so far-fetched for them to believe I’d been coached? That the Assembly had sent me in with instructions to seduce their shield into a bond?

I thought about my parents. My dad, who’d taught me to read star charts before I could read English. My mom, who’d sat up with me through every nightmare, every fever, every time my magic had surged too hard after manifestation, and I’d screamed because I didn’t understand what was happening to my own body. I’d trusted them with my life since the day I was born, and they’d never given me a single reason not to.

Percy and Aiden couldn’t say that. Their fathers were corrupt to the bone. Men who saw their sons as assets and their shield bonds as political leverage. Charles Callahan had spent twenty-six years molding Percy into a weapon and calling it love. Aiden’s father had done the same, maybe worse, because at least Charles was honest about being a bastard. The Reeces wore their cruelty behind handsome golden smiles and handshakes.

Was it fair for me to hold this against them? To judge them by a standard I’d never had to meet because my parents had been decent people who loved me?

I would never, ever condone what they’d tried to do. That part I would carry for a long time, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. But the suspicion? The fear that the bond wasn’t real? That I was just another Assembly plant sent to manipulate them?

I closed my eyes and let out a breath that shook on the way out.

“Draco.”

“Mm.”

“I need you to hear something, and I need you to not interrupt me, because if you do I’m going to lose my nerve and that’ll be really fucking embarrassing.”

He went still beside me, but nodded, lips fighting against a smirk.

“I think the accidental bond heightened everything,” I said. “I think it tricked our brains. We barely knew each other. Weeks, Draco. That’s nothing. That’s a blink. And then suddenly we were bonded, and the magic was flooding through us, and it felt like—” I pressed my palms flat against my knees. “It felt like love. It felt so much like love that I didn’t question it. I fell so hard and so fast that I didn’t even realize I was falling until I hit the ground.”

I turned my head and looked at him. “It wasn’t really love though. Not yet. It might have become love eventually, but we had a lot of work to do to get to that point, and we never got to do any of it, because everything went to shit before we had the chance. The bond amplified everything. The attraction, the intensity, the need especially. Our brains couldn’t tell the difference between magic and the real thing. So we all just believed it. Without questioning it. Something was bound to come along and expose the truth.”

The waterfall rushed. The birds sang. Noodle shifted against my ankle, his tail tightening. Draco was quiet for a long time. Long enough that I started to wonder if he was going to answer at all. I hoped he wasn’t pissed, and that I hadn’t just made everything ten times worse.

Then he said, very quietly, “I know.”

“You know?”

“I’ve thought about it. A lot.” His mouth curved, but it wasn’t really a smile. “I came to the same conclusion right after you left. The bond accelerated everything. It compressed months of feeling into days. We didn’t earn what we felt, and it made it all the easier to shatter when the slightest crack appeared.”

He shifted on the bank, and I felt the grass rustle under him as he turned to face me fully. His knee brushed mine, and neither of us moved away.