Page 43 of The Bound Zodiac

Then the screaming started.

Not aloud, but in my head. Millions of voices, layered over each other, tangled together, terrified, pouring out of that beautiful, impossible planet and straight into the center of my skull.

I dropped to my knees on the cracked lunar rock as my hands went to my temples. It was too much. Too many voices, too much fear, too much agony. Children crying. Adults screaming. Something enormous and ancient wailing from deep beneath the surface, a sound like the planet itself was in pain.

Help us⁠—

—the dark, the dark is coming⁠—

—please, please, someone⁠—

I couldn’t breathe. The screams were filling my lungs, my chest, my throat. I opened my mouth to scream back, to tell them I was here, I could hear them, but no sound came out.

It started at the edges of the continents, creeping in from the violet oceans like oil. Darkness moved across the surface in tendrils, swallowing the emerald forests whole, turning the silver light to ash. Where it touched, the screaming doubled. Tripled. It became something so loud and so terrible that my vision started to white-out.

The darkness was eating the planet. Devouring it. And the screams were the sound of a world being consumed alive. My world.

I reached for it, my hand stretched out toward that impossible horizon, fingers spread, starlight pouring from my skin the way it had in the Nexus chamber. But the light didn’t reach far or fast enough. It died in the void between the moon and the planet, snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane. The darkness kept spreading. Faster now. The silver light dimmed. The violet oceans turned black.

Jupiter…

A voice. Close. Familiar. Jamie’s voice, but not in my ears—in the dream itself, behind me, somewhere on the surface of this moon.

Jupiter, turn around. Look at me…

I couldn’t turn. My body wouldn’t obey. My eyes were locked on the dying planet, on the darkness swallowing it whole, on the screams that were now so loud they had become a single, continuous shriek that was peeling the layers of my mind apart one by one.

JUPITER! Turn around. Please. You have to turn around.

I tried. God, I tried. My feet were rooted to the lunar rock, my hand still reaching for a world that was being unmade in front of me, and the screaming⁠—

I came back into my body so fast it was nearly the blink of an eye. My own scream was still ripping out of my throat, and I was sitting bolt upright in bed, sheets tangled around my legs, my hands clawing at my own face. Tears were pouring down my cheeks in stinging arcs. My chest was heaving, every breath a sob, and my skin was cold and slick with sweat.

Two figures were at my bedside. My vision was still swimming, the afterimage of that silvery world burned into the backs of my eyelids.

“Jupiter.” Draco’s voice. His violet eyes were wide as he came closer, and I could feel him through the bond. I felt his terror that mirrored mine, because he’d felt every second of it, every scream, every tendril of darkness, and it had ripped him out of a dead sleep. “Jupiter, look at me. You’re here. You’re in your room. You’re safe.”

I couldn’t stop shaking. My teeth were chattering. The screams were still echoing in my skull, layered and overlapping, millions of voices crying out from a world that needed help.

“Jamie.” Draco’s voice, directed past me. “Talk to her. She’s not hearing me.”

I flicked my eyes to the side and found him crouched beside the bed, one hand braced on the mattress, the other hovering near my arm like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch. His green eyes were bright, too bright, and his jaw was clenched so tight a muscle was jumping in his cheek.

“I was with you, love, and I’m with you now.”

My mouth opened, but nothing came out except a broken, wet sound.

“I called your name,” Jamie said. “I called it over and over. You wouldn’t turn around. You couldn’t hear me.” Something cracked in his voice then, just for a second, before he wrestled it back under control. “I’ve never—I’ve never been locked out of a dream like that. Not even close. It was like the dream didn’t want me there. I wouldn’t come to you…”

Noodle was coiled tight around my wrist, his tongue flicking rapidly against my pulse, and through the bond I could feel him. Not words, just a low, steady hum of alarm and protectiveness that anchored me to the room, to the bed, to the present.

“A whole world,” I managed. My voice was wrecked. Barely a scratchy whisper. “Did you see it?”

“I saw.” Jamie whispered.

Draco’s hand tightened on my shoulder, his thumb rubbing comforting circles into the muscle as I fought to get my breathing under control.

Tears were still streaming down my face. I couldn’t make them stop. My whole body was trembling so hard the bed was shaking, and I could feel the bond wide open and screaming, nine separate threads of alarm and confusion and fear pouring into me from every direction.