Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
JUPITER
We made our way through the old corridors at quarter to midnight. Stardust led the way, Phoenix at my right, Rowan at my left, the others fanned out behind. Nightfall followed, prepared for battle by the looks on their faces, even though I already told him the Order were the good guys.
We reached the Nexus chamber to find the sconces lit, and hooded figures waiting eagerly. Unease rippled through the bond as the guys looked around, probably feeling exactly how I felt the first time I was brought down here. Definitely cultish.
Elders in black, hoods up, faces shadowed, stood in a large circular formation.
Tala was at the front, but I clocked Phoenix’s dad, Malakai, and Rowan’s grandfather’s old shield-brothers, along with Jamie’s uncles.
A couple of the others I didn’t know by name, but the air hummed with their power.
The weight of history pressed down on me despite the vastness of the chamber.
I wondered if anyone had ever stood here and not felt like they were about to be judged by the ghosts of a thousand dead gods.
“Jupiter Black,” Tala said, her voice amplified by the echo chamber. “Bring the bonded and un-bonded forward and speak their names.”
I stepped out into the center, the guys fanning behind me. My heart was hammering. My skin itched with anticipation, fear, and want as I tried to keep it together.
“These are the men who will stand as my shield,” I said. “Percy, Aries. Aiden, Leo. Draco, Scorpio. Eris, Gemini. Lucas, Aquarius. Rowan, Capricorn. Phoenix, Taurus. Jamie, Pisces. Theo, Libra.”
Tala’s eyes swept over them. “Do you know what is being asked of you?”
Nobody flinched.
Percy stepped forward. “We do.”
Aiden’s jaw tightened as he nodded. Then Draco, and then Eris.
Lucas’s was calm and respectful when he said, “We’re ready, Elder Tala.”
Rowan, Phoenix, Jamie and Theo each gave a single cut nod, not bothering to speak.
I felt the intentions like needles sinking into my skin, nerves on fire.
For a split second, I wanted to bolt. There was no going back from this.
Once nine threads tangled up in my head, that was it.
No severing, no running, no more pretending I could be normal.
Not that it was ever on the table to begin with if we were being honest.
Malakai stepped forward, lowering his hood. The torchlight caught silver in his hair, the old scars on his face, the look of someone who’d seen death time and time again.
“It must be now,” he said, and I knew he was right. The air screamed for the bond, the magic pulse thrumming through the chamber, the ancient magic awake and hungry.
Tala turned to me. “Axis, do you accept the burden?”
“I do.”
She nodded once, and suddenly the scrawling script on the stone below our feet began to glow, thirteen sigils lighting up in sequence until the whole chamber was ringed with blue-white fire. Even the elders seemed cowed by it.
“Warriors form a circle,” Tala ordered. “Axis at the center.”
All nine men moved into place around me.
Each one stood in a cardinal position, the way the old world shields used to in the stories.
I stood dead center, pulse hammering in my throat.
I could feel all of them now. Nightfall, Stardust. The familiar, fractured ache of the old bond, and the probing, expectant tension of the new one waiting to be forged.
Tala began to speak in the old language.
The sound of it was liquid, edged in starlight and blood, words older than any living memory.
The chamber vibrated with it. I told myself that one day I would learn the language too so that it would never be lost again.
If we were going to try to rebuild our lost worlds, then we should do it the right way.
Which kind of sucked for me because I’d failed Spanish class three times in high school.
All at once, the guys repeated the phrase after Tala, their voices overlapping, each one layering over the other until it became a chorus. Magic rose in the air. It tasted electric, metallic, and sweet all at once.
I braced myself, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer force of nine magical signatures slamming into me at once.
It was like being struck by lightning, if the lightning was made of liquid fire, and it wanted to fuck me up from the inside out.
My body seized, hair whipping around my head, skin blazing with silver light as the colors converged.
My feet left the floor, toes hovering over the center sigil, and I heard someone gasp. Maybe it was me. Maybe not.
There was a split second there, when panic crawled up my throat and I nearly called out.
Nearly begged them to stop before it became too much.
The power flooding through my body hurt more than I anticipated.
More than it had down in the Abyss when it was only four magical signatures forcing their way through me. Nine was borderline unnatural.
But I stifled that urge. Because why would I give up after coming so damn far?
I’d already dragged their asses across an ocean and convinced them to accept the fact that I’d joined an ancient cult during my time here.
What was a little pain compared to all the good our bond would bring to our people?
The bond detonated in my chest. Every part of me flooded with magic so bright it washed out everything else. My veins ran molten white. My bones ached with it. My eyes went blind with it.
I felt all nine of them. Percy’s fury, Aiden’s hunger, Draco’s want.
Eris splintered, doubling, slicing and refracting through my mind in endless mirrored lines.
Lucas, a thunderstorm held barely at bay.
Rowan, gravity incarnate, an anchor wrapped around my ribs.
Phoenix, green and gold, warm, a heartbeat that ran beneath everything else.
Jamie, oceanic, endless, sorrow and joy tangled up together.
Theo, a blade of light, sweeping through the haze to heal the pain, the hurt, the want and the longing.
They collided in my head, and it was chaos, at first. Pure, unfiltered chaos. The raw, psychic violence of nine men trying to thread themselves into a mind that wasn’t meant to hold this much power.
But I held it. I fucking held it. I let the magic surge through me, burn me alive from the inside out, until there was nothing left but starlight and the nine silver threads winding around my heart and my fucking soul if that’s what it was.
Sometimes I thought maybe there was a star hiding somewhere inside my body, burning hot and bright and begging for release.
Then, just as fast as the surge had come on, I felt them click into place one by one.
Suddenly, it wasn’t chaos anymore. Those silver threads that had been wind and whipping seconds ago were now braided.
Suddenly I could feel their shock. Their awe.
Their hunger and hope and fear and all that ugly, beautiful want, need, obsession and...
something that felt too much like adoration to dwell on for too long.
I opened my eyes, finding that the room was flooded with silver light, so bright that the elders had to shield their faces. My hair floated around my head like a dark halo, every strand tipped in starlight. My feet didn’t touch the floor.
It was impossible to breathe, but I didn’t need to. Every cell burned with power. And in that moment, every single man in that circle belonged to me, and I belonged to them, and I could feel the threads running both ways, through every inch of my body, through every inch of theirs.
I could feel their hands if I wanted to. Their lips, see through their eyes, breathe through their lungs. It was fucking intoxicating.
Starlight poured from my skin, flooding the room. The runes on the floor glowed white-hot. I heard someone curse. Somewhere, far away, I heard Malakai’s voice. “Let her settle it. Don’t interfere.”
I gritted my teeth and rode the current, letting the power burn through me, letting the threads tighten, white-knuckling my way through the worst of it.
A wave of heat crashed through my body making my back arch at a weird angle.
Magic pulsed around me in waves, every one of them stronger than the last. The feeling was…
fuck. It was like the best orgasm of my life, stretched out and layered with pain and pleasure so intense I wasn’t sure which was which.
My nine men in the circle groaned in unison as the magic punched through them, each one buckling, sweat breaking on their foreheads, hands shaking at their sides. I felt every single reaction in real time, each one echoing down the freshly-forged bond.
When the light finally flickered out, it happened suddenly. My feet hit the floor again, and the chamber went dead silent. I could taste blood in my mouth. Sweat ran down my spine. My body trembled with aftershocks. But I was alive. I was whole. And I was more powerful than I’d ever fucking been.
I laughed, then staggered, and immediately eighteen different hands shot out from nine different directions, catching me before I could fall.
The circle collapsed instantly, every single one of them converging on me.
Strong arms wrapped around my waist, hands bracing my shoulders, fingers tangling in my hair.
I couldn’t tell who was touching me where. I didn’t care.
I could feel them in my head, so clear and bright it was like they were parts of my own body.
I was going to cry. I was absolutely, one hundred percent going to have a hysterical breakdown right here in the middle of the cult chamber in front of a dozen robed strangers and the ghosts of a thousand years.
How fucking embarrassing. Oh god, I needed to get it together. Noodle would never let me live it down.