Page 44 of The Bound Zodiac

Percy was already moving through the tower. I could feel him taking the stairs three at a time. Aiden and Eris were right behind him. Lucas and Rowan and Phoenix and Theo were waking up one by one, the nightmare’s aftershock rolling through the bond like a shockwave.

“I think—” I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to push the image out, but it was burned in there, seared into the back of my skull. “I think I saw the apocalypse.”

“I don’t understand how it’s possible, but I think what you saw was more than just a dream. I think it was a memory…or a vision.

“Memory,” Draco finished. His voice had gone quiet, almost reverent. “Or a vision. Or both.”

“The bane consumed everything. There were probably billions of people on that planet. People like me, and I couldn’t do anything but watch.”

Draco pulled me against his chest without a word, and I went, because I didn’t have the strength to do anything else. His arms locked around me, one hand cradling the back of my head, his chin resting on top of my hair. I could feel his heartbeat through his chest.

Jamie didn’t move from his crouch beside the bed. I could feel him watching us, feel the conflict in him, the urge to reach for me warring with whatever restraint was keeping him at arm’s length. Through the bond, his emotions were a mess. Fear, yes, but underneath it something more. Frustration.

The door banged open. Percy came through first, bare-chested, eyes already burning red, hair standing on end like he’d been electrocuted. Aiden was half a step behind him, golden eyes glowing in the dark of the room, and Eris filled the doorway after that, his copper hair wild, his face grim.

“What the fuck happened?” Percy’s voice was rough with sleep. “I felt… Jupiter, I felt you—” He stopped when he saw my face, saw the tears, saw Draco holding me. Something shifted in his eyes. The anger drained out of them. “Jesus Christ.”

“Dream,” Draco said, his voice muffled against my hair. “Bad one.”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Jamie said. He stood slowly, his knees cracking from the crouch. I realized his hands were shaking.

Percy scrubbed both hands through his hair, pushing it out of his face, and sat on the edge of the bed. “What did you see?”

I told them. I told all of them, even as the rest of the shield filtered in—Lucas, Rowan, Phoenix, Theo—each one drawn by the chaos in the bond, each one crowding into my bedroom.

I told them about the way the darkness ate at the planet and the screaming that never stopped, the words coming out in a rush while the memory of it clung to the back of my throat like smoke. It had felt less like a dream and more like something I had lived through, every detail crisp and clear enough that I could still hear it right now.

“Her dream didn’t want me there,” Jamie said, and the attention in the room swung toward him at once. Aiden’s brow lifted. “I’m a Pisces. Some of us can walk into dreams. I feel them pulling at me when I sleep, thin threads I can follow if I choose. I can bring people with me just as easily.”

Aiden’s expression tightened. “But not hers?”

Jamie shook his head once. “It pushed back somehow and wouldn’t let Jupiter hear me. It’s like it was meant just for her.”

Phoenix stood near the far wall, arms folded. “Or it was a warning.”

I looked across at him. “A warning about what? The bane already consumed the home worlds. What I saw happened thousands of years ago.”

Phoenix crossed to the window and leaned one shoulder against the frame, staring out at the academy grounds below. “Maybe it’s showing you what could happen here. Maybe something wants you to see the pattern before it repeats.”

“Humans have no magic,” Lucas said. “The bane only come to Earth because we draw them. They feed on human energy like appetizers, but it doesn’t sustain them like we do.”

My fingers dragged through my hair, catching at the knots. “Then why go back at all? If we leave, they’ll follow the same trail again. It doesn’t matter where we run if they’re chasing us.”

Draco shook his head, squeezing my fingers until I met his violet eyes. “Maybe, but we’re not defenseless. When the home worlds fell, we weren’t prepared. The bane came through the event horizon of a black hole, which technically shouldn’t be physically possible. It blindsided our people, and our worlds fell in a matter of days. There were no shield teams to fight them. The Aelari were a peaceful people, and never saw the end coming.”

I squeezed his fingers back, and allowed him to cover my hands with his. I tried to ignore the ripples of confusion I could feel coming from Aiden, Eris and Percy, probably wondering why the fuck I was allowing Draco to touch me.

“So you think we stand a chance? If we go back, we might be able to defend ourselves…”

He nodded. “We’re a warrior species now. We know how to fight them, and we’re very good at it. Besides, the bane can’t travel as fast as we can. If you create portals to the home worlds, we would beat them there by thousands of years. Our bones will be dust before the first bane makes it to Pisces.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

PERCY

Three weeks later

Three long fucking weeks of training, of drills, of Malakai barking orders at the ten of us in that underground chamber until my muscles screamed and my magic ran so thin I thought I ran out of it entirely. Three weeks of learning how to move as one unit, of figuring out which of Stardust’s techniques meshed with ours and which ones crashed and burned. Three weeks of eating meals in the dining hall with my new brothers, of living in close quarters with them, feeling them in my head at all times.