Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
PERCY
The doors of Heathrow spat us out into an English drizzle. That was something I’d have to get used to here. The constant cloud cover and bite in the air matched my fucked up mood, so I wasn’t too bitter about it.
It took an hour to reach the academy, winding through Epping Forest. Despite the cold, the wet and the fog that undulated through the trees, I had to admit the grounds were gorgeous, with gnarled old oaks, moss covered pathways and prickly brambles.
We’d been through here before, on our ill-advised trip to Imperium that ended with us flying back to Dominion with our tails between our legs, but I hadn’t taken the time to look around.
My focus had been entirely on what I was going to say to Jupiter when I finally had her in front of me.
Turns out, Draco and Eris had to nearly die to make that happen.
I was still sure my fucking dad had something to do with the assassination attempt.
He was the asshole king of the assholes.
Would he have actually let them die? Yeah, probably.
Technically, shield members could be replaced if one or two of them were to die, but it was incredibly painful for the rest of the shield.
Not that Charles Callahan gave a fuck about whether or not I felt pain.
In fact, that might have been the cherry on top for him.
He wanted me under his thumb, and I refused to be his punching bag.
The school was strange looking compared to the classic cathedral style of Dominion.
Here, it looked more like a castle-like structure stitched together in a hodgepodge of architectural styles.
Thirteen towers loomed in the distance, each in a slightly different shape and design, but all of them ancient.
Dominion was hundreds of years old, but Imperium was thousands.
It was a different kind of old, so much that you could physically feel the heaviness in the air as you passed the wards that kept the academy shielded from the humans.
“Anyone else feel like we’re being lured into Dracula’s domain?” Eris muttered, staring out the window.
Aiden snorted, but Draco and I rolled our eyes as the gates opened, and the car rolled around to the front of the academy before coming to a stop before a massive set of double doors at the top of a stone staircase. A plaque on the side of the door said ‘Administration Wing.’
The driver of the car was instructed to gather all of our bags. I wanted to tell him not to bother, that we could handle it ourselves, but we were already running late. Aiden knocked once on the Headmistress’s door before a voice from the other side beckoned us in.
A woman sat behind a large oak desk, and a fire blazed in the hearth on the far wall, warming the whole room.
It felt like fucking heaven after freezing our asses off on the drive up here.
The office was cozy and professorly, with the usual shelves of books, maps and star charts, and odd little trinkets on various shelves and tables.
“The Nightfall Shield,” she said, looking at us over the top of a document I strongly suspected was about us.
“Dominion’s finest. A commendation record as long as my arm, and the single most catastrophic axis bonding the Assembly has on file.
You’ll forgive me for saying your reputation precedes you. ”
“We’re aware, Headmistress,” I said with a respectful bow of my head.
“Good. Then this conversation can be short.” She set the document down.
“Imperium accepted your transfer for three reasons. Your combat record is genuinely exceptional, and we are living in a time when that is in fact the most important thing. Your fathers’ influence, and Jupiter Black’s approval.
With conditions, of course.” Winters slid a single page across the desk.
“You’ll want to read those carefully. She wrote them herself, and I’ve rarely seen terms less ambiguous. ”
I read it, the others crowding at my shoulders and reading it with me.
‘The Nightfall Shield transfers to Imperium as a combat unit and academic cohort. Their bond with me remains intact and functional, but not personal in nature. Professional cooperation in training and the field are non-negotiable. No expectations beyond that.’
“Christ.” Eris raked a hand through his hair. He knew all this already, but seeing it in writing was surreal. He met my eyes. “We’re really going to act like co-workers…”
“That’s the fucking plan,” I said with a long, tired sigh.
“There’s a room assignment sheet as well,” Winters said.
“You’ve been housed together in the visiting shield quarters on the east side until you can act like adults and we know you won’t kill each other.
Once you have settled in with Jupiter, you will be taking up residence in Ophiuchus Tower.
Classes begin for you Monday. Training integration is at Professor Saris’s discretion, and I’d advise you not to test him, because he’s seen every kind of arrogance the Assembly produces in transfers. ”
She looked at each of us in turn, and her voice lost its administrative polish for a moment.
“For what it’s worth, gentlemen, I was not in favor of this transfer.
I was overruled by the only vote that mattered.
She’s extended you more grace than the file on my desk says you’ve earned, and this institution intends to make sure that grace costs her nothing. Are we understood?”
“Understood,” I said and the guys echoed it.
“Then welcome to Imperium.” She picked her document back up. “Close the door on your way out.”
The visiting quarters were comfortable and clean.
Fancy compared to Dominion, which had been nicer than many five-star hotel accommodations.
A proper common room dominated the space with a fire already laid, four bedrooms off a shared landing, tall windows looking out over a courtyard where the rain came down softly.
Somebody had stocked the kitchen shelf with tea and honey.
There was a note on the table in handwriting.
‘For anything you need, my TA office is in the east stair. W. Thomas.’
“They’re being decent to us,” Aiden said, sounding as exhausted as I felt in my bones.
Draco moved through the room and sank into the chair nearest the fire with his eyes closed. Watching him, I felt the old, useless anger rising up again. Anger at whoever had put a dart through his window, at whoever had put a bat to the back of Eris’s skull, at every unanswered question I had.
The Assembly’s investigation had produced nothing. Our fathers’ promises had produced even less than nothing. We’d left Dominion with two injured shield brothers, one theory nobody could prove, and the growing conviction that we couldn’t trust anyone in the Assembly back home.
Whoever they were, they’d gotten half of what they wanted.
She’d come running, that terrible, miraculous night.
She’d crossed an ocean in a heartbeat for men who’d broken her.
And then she’d gone home, to them, and the door had closed again, and the bond had gone back to being a wound that just wouldn’t fucking heal over.
My father called an hour after we’d unpacked, which meant someone was reporting to him.
Either that or the prick stuck some kind of tracker on me or in my phone.
I wouldn’t put it past him. I took it out on the landing, because whatever this was going to be, my shield brothers had heard enough of it for one lifetime.
“You’ve arrived,” Charles said. No greeting. “Good. This transfer, whatever its origins, is an opportunity, and I trust you not to waste it. Whatever damage you did, familiarity sands it down, and the bond does the rest. Six months, I’d say, if you’re disciplined about it. You’ll get her to fold.”
Rain ticked against the landing window. Down in the courtyard, a couple of Imperium students hurried through the wet with their bags over their heads, laughing at something as if they had not a care in the whole damn world.
There’d been a time when my father’s voice could reach directly into my chest and twist my soul into something ugly.
Twenty-six years of ugliness and bitter resentment.
The great Callahan project, and me its most expensive asset, and the worst part, the part I’d only understood after everything burned down, was how much of him I’d let take root in me without noticing.
The entitlement. The blue-blooded exceptionalism.
I’d looked at Jupiter across the Convocation Hall on her first day at Dominion and some rotted inherited part of me had done exactly what my father was doing now—weighing how valuable she could be.
“Are you finished?” I asked, ready to flop onto my new bed and nap for a few blessed hours before we had to be anywhere.
“Excuse me?”
“I need you to listen to me closely, Charles, because I’m only doing this once.
” I kept my voice down, already mentally picturing his face growing redder and redder.
“We didn’t transfer here to complete some fucked up little task for you.
We transferred because she’s our axis, and she’s in the middle of something enormous.
When danger comes for her, we intend to be standing between her and it.
That’s the entire strategy. There is no six months.
If she never speaks to any of us again outside training, we’ll die grateful for that. ”
“Sentiment,” my father said, with the mild distaste of a man finding a hair in his soup. “You’re a Callahan. You don’t get to retire into sentiment. The family has obligations you seem determined to—“