Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
JUPITER
Two days of training later, I was ready to chew my own arm off. Not even metaphorically. I mean I would have genuinely considered it if it meant I got to stop playing referee to nine impossibly headstrong men who couldn’t manage to get along if I paid them cold, hard cash.
The combined field exercises had gone from disastrous to merely catastrophic, and nearly every session ended with me nursing a headache that could have felled a horse and the sensation that my body had been run through a meat grinder.
On the fourth night, I gave up on sleep entirely and ended up in the Scorpio common room with Mara, who’d made me a cup of chamomile and lavender tea, and we binged a few Gossip Girl episodes.
I’d been complaining about my guy problems for the better part of an hour when Mara leaned over and said, “You know if you want to get away from those assholes for a while, there’s a swimming hole about twenty minutes’ walk east of the ward line?
Still inside the barriers, but far enough that nobody goes there during the week. ”
I blinked at her. “Will I find pixies there? I’ve been trying to capture one since I got here, but no dice.”
I was going to find one, one way or another.
She snorted, shaking her head like I was crazy. “Probably. And the kelpie, if you believe the legends.”
“The kelpie?”
She’d grinned, the firelight catching the silver ring in her nose.
“Kelpie… or a water horse. It’s an old Scottish tale.
Not sure they’ll ever let you see them though.
Most of them are shy. Humans don’t believe in them, and if humans found out, they’d probably hunt them.
So they keep to themselves. But if you know where to look—” She’d tapped the side of her nose.
“Hoof prints have been spotted in the swimming hole, but that’s just a rumor. ”
So that was how I found myself, two afternoons later, pulling on the only pair of shorts I’d packed and a faded black t-shirt that had seen better days, stuffing my camera into the pocket of my backpack alongside a water bottle and an apple.
The weather had turned warm enough that the fog had burned off entirely, and the sun through my window was actually warm, which in England felt like a minor miracle.
Noodle and I took the east gate out of the courtyard, past the old stone arch.
The forest opened up almost immediately.
There were gnarled oaks and silver birches, the path narrowing to little more than a deer track within the first few minutes.
The air smelled like damp earth, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, I breathed properly.
The path wound downhill, following the curve of a small stream that grew louder as we went.
Ferns brushed my calves, damp from the morning’s mist, and overhead the canopy thickened until the sunlight came through in dappled patches.
Birds I didn’t recognize called back and forth.
Something small and fast rustled in the undergrowth to my left, and Noodle’s head swiveled to track it.
‘Mouse,’ he said hopefully.
“Not a mouse. Probably a squirrel. Please don’t eat a squirrel in front of me.”
‘Cruel…’
The stream widened gradually, the sound of water growing from a murmur to something more substantial. I caught the first glimpse of it through the trees. Just a flash of sunlight on moving water, and then the path opened up.
A waterfall, maybe eight feet high, spilled over a shelf of dark stone into a pool that was startlingly clear, the bottom visible through water the color of green glass.
Gnarled oaks arched overhead, their roots gripping the bank like old fingers, and the canopy was so thick that the light came through in shifting, liquid patterns across the surface of the water.
Ferns crowded the edges. Wildflowers I didn’t know the names of grew in clusters along the bank, white and yellow and pale purple.
The air smelled like wet stone and something sweet—honeysuckle, maybe, though I couldn’t see any.
I pulled my camera out of my backpack. It was an old one.
My dad’s, actually, a manual film camera he’d given me when I was fifteen and insisted I learn to use it properly before I was allowed to touch anything digital.
I’d brought it to Imperium on a whim, mostly because it reminded me of home, and it had sat in my desk drawer for weeks gathering dust. But this was worth the film.
I raised it and framed the waterfall through the viewfinder, adjusting for the dappled light and snapped my first one. I took three more—the pool from different angles, the oak roots gripping the bank, the way the light caught the surface of the water and turned it gold.
Noodle slid down from my shoulders and into the grass, disappeared into the ferns along the bank, and I heard the faint rustle of him investigating something in the undergrowth.
I set the camera on a flat rock and crouched at the water’s edge, trailing my fingers through the surface.
It was cold, but not painfully so. The kind of cold that woke you up rather than hurt your skin like needles.
I cupped my hands and brought a palmful to my face, pressing it against my cheeks and the back of my neck.
The relief was immediate. I hadn’t realized how tightly wound I’d been until the cold water hit my skin.
I sat back on my heels and just listened.
The waterfall was constant but not loud, a steady, rhythmic rush that filled the clearing without overwhelming it.
Birds called from somewhere above the canopy.
Insects hummed in the ferns. Beneath all of it, if I closed my eyes and really reached for it, I could feel the low, resonant thrum of the magic.
No wonder creatures were drawn here. Zodiac magic was a beacon, pulsing out through the land, calling to anything with magic in its blood.
I’d felt it the first time I’d stood in that chamber.
The way it reached for me, pulled at something fundamental in my soul.
If it did that to me, a full-blooded Aelari, what must it feel like to something smaller?
Something that had spent centuries hiding from a world that didn’t believe it existed?
I picked up the camera again and scanned the bank, looking for anything that didn’t belong.
Hoof prints, Mara had said. Kelpies left hoof prints.
I moved along the edge of the pool, careful not to disturb the mud, and sure enough, there, pressed into the soft earth near the far bank, a set of prints that were unmistakably equine.
Too large for a deer. They led from the water’s edge into the ferns and disappeared.
Maybe a horse had come through here at some point and stopped for water.
But I had no idea if there were wild horses out here. Probably not.
I crouched and took a photo of the prints, the camera’s shutter breaking the quiet.
Then I followed them, pushing aside ferns with careful hands.
The trail petered out after about ten feet, the ground turning to stone and moss, but I could see where something had passed through.
There was bent grass, a snapped twig at knee height, the faintest impression in the moss that might have been a hoof or might have been nothing.
I straightened and looked back at the pool. The water was perfectly still now, the surface reflecting the canopy overhead like a mirror. Nothing moved. No ripples, no shadows beneath the surface, no flicker of anything that shouldn’t be there.
I sat down on the bank, cross-legged, and set the camera beside me. Noodle reappeared from somewhere in the ferns and draped himself across my lap.
An hour passed like that. Maybe more. I lost track of time the way you only can when nobody is waiting for you and there’s nowhere you’re supposed to be.
The sun shifted overhead, and the light moved across the bank in slow, golden arcs.
Noodle had fallen asleep across my thighs, his scales warm and heavy, his breathing a faint, rhythmic hiss against my skin.
Eventually, I shifted him carefully onto the grass and stretched my legs out, easing my feet to the water’s edge.
The cold hit my toes, then my ankles as I slid them in.
The water was so clear I could see the pale stones at the bottom, moss-covered and smooth.
My reflection wavered on the surface, fractured by the ripples my feet made.
I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. Sunlight found my face through the gaps in the canopy.
I felt him approaching. A feeling of underlying turmoil churning in slow circles, filtered through the bond. I didn’t open my eyes. Didn’t turn my head. Just kept my face tilted up to the sun and my toes trailing through the water, and waited.
He sat down beside me on the bank. Not too close. A careful distance—close enough to talk, far enough that we weren’t touching. The grass rustled under him, and then went quiet.
“I wasn’t following you,” Draco said. His deep voice was always just slightly rough and scratchy, but somehow I knew it so intimately that it sent waves of goosebumps over my skin. “I’ve been out here three times this week, but I thought nobody came out this far.”
“It’s fine, Draco. I was just kelpie hunting.”
“A kelpie,” he repeated. “You know a kelpie will see you long before you see it, right? They’ve been avoiding humans for centuries.”
“I’m not a human though, am I?”
“Close enough, from their perspective.” He paused. “Why a kelpie?”
“Because Mara said there might be one here, and I’ve been trying to find magical creatures since I got to Imperium.
” I pulled my feet out of the water and tucked them under me, turning to face him properly for the first time.
“I have a whole plan for capturing a pixie, actually. Or at least interacting with one. The Stardust guys think I’m insane. ”
A flicker of jealousy reared its head before he shoved it away.
“Are you happy with them?”