Page 75 of The Bound Zodiac

Jamie was doing something I’d never seen before. He was projecting fear directly into the bane’s consciousness, making them hesitate, stumble, turn on each other. But there were too many. The black portals kept spawning them, and every time we cut one down, two more took its place. The ballroom was filled with shadow, the air thick with the stench of rot.

I fought at the center of the formation, my starlight swords cutting arcs of silver through the darkness. Every swing connected. Every strike killed. The bond fed me power, and I fed it back.

A bane broke through the outer ring. It was a Class Four, bigger than the others, its body a lattice of interlocking limbs and serrated edges. It moved like liquid, flowing around Eris’s duplicates and through Draco’s shadows, and it was headed straight for me.

Percy moved before I could react, stepping between me and the bane, and the red magic that erupted from his hands was not a beam this time. It was a wall. A solid, burning wall of Aries magic that hit the Class Four and stopped it dead. The bane slammed into the barrier and howled, its limbs smoking, and Percy didn’t flinch. He held the wall, teeth bared, veins standing out on his neck.

The bane dissolved against Percy’s wall in a spray of ash and shadow, but there were already three more climbing over its remains. I pivoted, starlight blades cutting a wide arc, and caught a glimpse of the ballroom beyond our formation.

It was chaos. Absolute, unmitigated chaos.

Lydia’s shield had formed a defensive ring near the east wall, and they were fighting like hell. Lydia herself was a whirlwind of Aquarius magic, ice shards flying from her hands like daggers, each one punching through bane flesh and freezing the dark matter solid.

Valeria was at her right, lightning crackling between her fingers, and Tye was at her left. But behind them, Kassie was screaming. She was pressed against the wall, hands over her ears, eyes wide and wild, and she couldn’t see what was killing people around her. To her, the ballroom was just utterly collapsing. People were dying for no reason. Tables were flipping. Her mind couldn’t wrap itself around it because humans couldn’t see the bane, couldn’t process the dark matter, couldn’t understand why the air itself seemed to be tearing people apart.

Assembly members who’d been sitting in the front row minutes ago were now scattered across the marble floor in pieces. A woman in a silver gown was on her knees, clutching the stump of her arm, her mouth open in a silent scream. A man near the stage had been ripped in half. I could see both pieces from where I stood.

The black portals kept spawning. Every second, more of them tore open.

‘We can’t hold them,’ I thought to the guys. ‘There are too many. They’ll overwhelm us. They’ll kill everyone in this room.’

The plan was already forming. I could feel it taking shape in the deep, instinctive part of my brain—the Ophis part, the part that remembered things deep in my blood. It was insane. It was suicidal. It required more power than I’d ever channeled, more than my body was built to hold, more than any axis in recorded history had attempted.

The bond lit up with understanding. They felt it the moment the plan crystallized in my head. I visualized the scope of it, the cost, the sheer, suicidal fucking audacity.

‘Do it!’ Percy sent, and his voice in my head was absolute. No hesitation. ‘Whatever it takes. We’re with you.’

‘Try, sweetheart’ Lucas echoed. ‘We don’t have a choice.’

‘It’s insane,’ Draco sent, and there was almost a laugh in it. ‘Absolutely fucking insane. Do it.’

‘Every ounce—’ Aiden’s voice was a growl, his Leo fire already building, feeding the bond. ‘Take everything, Jupiter!’

‘No holding back, lass!’ Eris shouted, and through the bond I could feel his duplicates fighting harder, buying every second they could.

‘We’re here, baby,’ Jamie sent through to me..

‘Brace yourselves—’ Rowan and Theo said almost simultaneously, their magic already flowing into the bond like rivers of energy.

“Now, Jupiter!’ Phoenix said, and his earth magic rumbled through the floor, reinforcing the stage beneath my feet.

Magic flooded into me from every direction. It hit me like a freight train, and I nearly buckled. Across the ballroom, Lydia’s head snapped toward me. She was mid-fight, ice shards still flying from her hands, but something in my expression, or maybe something in our souls, because she and I had always been connected in ways that went beyond magic, made her go still. She broke from her formation and ran.

She crossed the ballroom at a dead sprint, ice forming a path beneath her feet, bane lunging at her from every side. Valeria covered her flank, lightning arcing in wide, desperate sweeps. She hit the stage in a slide, ice cracking beneath her boots, and skidded to a stop in front of me, eyes wide, chest heaving, blood streaked across one cheek. “Jupe⁠—”

“Trust me,” I said.

She didn’t hesitate. Not for a second. She nodded and turned to her shield. “Rafe! Barrier! Around Jupiter and her shield, now! Hold the bane off as long as you fucking can!”

Rafe’s magic flared green at his fingertips, and he didn’t question his axis. His shield formed up around him, and together they threw their magic outward in a massive, shimmering dome of multicolored light. It slammed down around us like a bell jar, sealing me and my bonded inside with the bane locked out.

The barrier shuddered on impact. Bane slammed against it from every side, clawing, tearing, their dark matter bodies pressing against the light until it buckled and groaned. Rafe’s face was white with strain, veins standing out on his neck, but he held.

Inside the dome, my shield closed around me, shoulder to shoulder, their magic already pouring into me through the bond. The pressure was astronomical. I could feel my bones creaking, my blood burning, every nerve ending screaming. I closed my eyes and reached for the core of it.

It came from inside me. From the deepest part, the part that had never belonged to Earth, the part that remembered endless skies and violet oceans and emerald forests on a planet long since abandoned. Starlight tore through my skin like I was made of glass, and I screamed.

The sound was not human. It was something older, something that belonged to the void between stars, and it ripped through the ballroom with a shudder. The emergency lights shattered. The remaining chandeliers exploded. The marble cracked and split, and I rose.