Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“We’ve been over this. She isn’t getting involved,” Zosma growled.
“Says you, but what about her? She might want to help. She should have the choice,” Arche argued.
He had recently joined Zosma outside Tabitha’s Crystal Shop, waiting for Aela. It was natural for Zosma to want to protect her as her guard, but now he was just being a pain in his ass.
“What choice will she have, hmm?” Zosma asked. “She’s seen how he enslaves us, and she’ll feel obligated to help.”
“Good! She should help!” While Arche wasn’t the most powerful Aster, he wasn’t Third in command for nothing. He felt his power swell within him. Zosma’s eyes narrowed.
“Don’t make a scene,” the Leo warned.
“Me? Never.”
Onlookers across the street were lingering longer than considered casual, obviously curious to see the Third of Taurus and Aela’s personal guard outside a crystal shop. Arche sucked on his teeth, regretting his choice to discuss open rebellion.
“We get her out when the borders open. She has been forced into things enough times—she isn’t getting involved, Arche.”
“Forced?” Arche couldn’t mask his incredulity, his anger. “You want to talk about forced, Lion?”
The sound of crystalline metal cut through the air as Zosma twirled his spear behind his back. “You don’t know the half of it, Third.”
“You know, you’re awfully protective of someone you hardly know. Are you jealous?”
Flames danced in Zosma’s eyes. “Watch your mouth.”
“Oh, that’s it, isn’t it? Pining after someone who will never see you as anything—”
It was hard to tell who threw the first punch.
Shouts from outside broke the gravity of what Tabitha and Aela discussed as they darted out the front door of Tabitha's shop. Zosma and Arche were a blur of punches and snarls as the males brawled on the cobblestone street.
“What in all thirteen hells!” Tabitha shrieked.
Aela moved forward to break up the scuffle, but Tabitha drew her back by her shoulders. “I didn’t think you were an idiot; stay out of that!”
“One of them could get hurt!”
“And it’d be their own godsdamned fault! Where are you going?”
“Damn them,” Aela lurched back inside Tabitha's shop and raced for the small beads of hematite Tabitha had placed on the counter. She rushed back outside to find that the males had drawn a crowd. No sentinels had been called for, and no one tried to break up the fight.
The needless violence gnawed at her, and without further prodding, she reacted.
She ripped a handful of hematite beads off the strand and let them rain onto the street at her feet.
Though they were refined, the hematite should still disorient them long enough, grounding them.
A weak cloud exploded upon impact of her pointed shoe.
The celestial spectators cried out over the billowing black cloud, some shouting The Darkness had come again.
Aela ignored their cries and held her breath, her focus on the males still grappling with each other.
Once the cloud enveloped them, they coughed and withdrew from each other, desperately waving their arms to clear the air.
Aela waltzed up to them, the hematite cloud dissipating quicker than a raw variety would have. “Playtime is over. Get inside before you make more of a scene.”
Her tone brooked no nonsense, yet Zosma’s eyes were still trained on Arche.
When Aela glanced at the auburn-haired male, Zosma capitalized on her distraction and decked Arche’s jaw, landing him squarely on his ass.
Aela snapped her hand around Zosma’s wrist before she could stop herself, not feeling the telltale tug of her other magic humming in her gut.
The crystal band fractured in her grip and clattered to the cobblestone street.
“What are you thinking?” Zosma snarled at her. He snatched his broken band from the ground and pulled Aela into his chest, spinning to shield her from the bystanders across the street.
“Me? You’re the one fighting like a—”Aela muttered curses as she struggled against his hold. Her words died in her throat as Tabitha strode up to them calmly.
With a pointed glance to the ground where Zosma’s crystal band had been a moment before, Tabitha said, “Let’s take this inside, if you please.”
Aela should have run. There was no mistaking that Tabitha saw what Aela could do.
She should free herself and take her chances with the sentinels guarding the closest set of traveling rings and be done with it all.
She swiveled her head up and down the avenue.
With the fight broken up and the sport over, most of the celestials who had watched had already dispersed, only a handful still lingering.
As if he could feel an impending flight in Aela’s coiled muscles, Zosma sighed heavily. “She only wants to help. You can trust her.”
If there wasn’t so much going on, Aela would question the resignation in his tone.
Only after she nodded did Zosma release her.
By the time Aela followed Tabitha into her shop, Zosma at her heels, Arche picked himself up and had the stars who lingered after the initial scuffle laughing on the other side of the street.
“I really should get back,” Aela started as she passed through the doorway. She didn’t get the chance to say anything else as Tabitha grasped Aela’s hand, placing it over her right wrist.
“No, please—”
Zosma sucked in a harsh breath.
Tabitha’s crystal band fell away from her wrist under the slightest contact from Aela’s skin. The verdant star let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a ragged exhale as she caught her crystal band that broke away.
Aela stumbled back, trying to reel in the tug at her navel, but Zosma was an unmovable force behind her.
She felt like trapped sunlight lived beneath her skin.
She was already shaking her head, the denial of knowing how and why she could do this on the tip of her tongue.
Zosma’s warm hands steadied her from where he placed them on her shoulders.
Not to contain her but to direct her to see.
Tears poured down Tabitha’s face as she glowed, the delicate green hue of her skin brightening as yellow blossoms breathed into life and intertwined through her coarse hair.
“I haven’t…” The shopkeeper couldn’t form coherent words as she cried.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how it happened.”
A strangled laugh rattled through Tabitha. “Sorry? You’re sorry? Lina, you just set me free from thousands upon thousands of years of bondage, and you’re sorry?”
Zosma squeezed Aela’s shoulders.
“We were right,” Tabitha aired, looking at the male behind Aela.
“No one else can know,” Zosma threatened.
“Of course not,” Tabitha snapped.
The rate at which Tabitha’s demeanor changed was a marvel, though lost on Aela as her head became foggy.
Not now, not now!
Aela wailed internally as her power stretched and began its ascent from where it slumbered, sensing her unease.
“Crowds gone… uh, what did I miss?” Arche asked into the tense silence as he came into the shop. The four stars stood crowded at the entrance, yet none of them moved. “Tabs?”
“We need to bring her in,” Tabitha said.
Aela’s heart threatened to fall through her body. No, no, no.
“Fates spare me,” Zosma muttered. “Not this again.”
Arche raised his voice and gestured animatedly.
Aela drowned them out. She needed to get a hold of herself before more uncontrollable power surged.
Her blood heated as she tried and failed to cool it with calming thoughts.
She wasn’t grounded. Suddenly Zosma’s touch on her shoulders felt all wrong, too hot and too heavy.
She shrugged away from him as her breath turned shallow.
She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she was running out of time.
Her power coiled tighter and tighter as it made its steady climb through her core.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Her gaze bounced between the stars around her, their mouths forming words and arguments she couldn’t hear.
It’s too much. Need to get out. Need to get out. Can’t let them take me. Can’t let them hear me.
Aela shucked off her crystal bands and all at once, the sound from the shop imploded before its contents crashed out as she detonated.
With one arm around her waist and another over her head, Zosma threw himself around her and took them to the ground before shards of crystal and glass from the display cases and shelves shot through the air.
Once the initial explosion passed, Aela pushed against Zosma and rose to her feet.
Floating bits of crystal, glass, and obliterated jewelry hung in the air like silenced stars. Arche’s gaze was fixed on her bare wrists with a look of utter desperation.
The glimmering debris fell in a tinkling mist as Tabitha’s hands drifted back to her sides. The shopkeeper twisted her unadorned hand in a swiveling motion and gathered the shimmering sand into a corner of the shop. “I’m making him pay for that too.”
After Aela had effectively destroyed the main showroom of Tabitha's shop, repairs began swiftly afterward. Tabitha didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, as she raked in credits and prized unrefined crystals from Tarek’s personal reserves.
Arche had somehow managed to replace many of the priceless crystals—how and where he had gotten them, he neglected to say.
It had been about a week since the incident, and after what felt like another fateful moment and meeting over tea, Aela had come back to the shop nearly every day since.
Perched on a stool in the back room of Tabitha’s Crystal Shop, Aela heard muffled voices drifting through the thick curtain that sectioned off the workspace from the main showroom. She tilted her ear up as she ground black hematite beads with a mortar and pestle.