19. Jules
Jules
Something’s wrong.
Not dramatic wrong. Not demon-in-the-walls wrong. Worse.
Subtle wrong. The kind I could almost ignore if I kept moving.
So I keep moving.
Camille has been cold since this morning.
Not normal Camille cold, all polished efficiency and weaponised eye contact.
This is deliberate distance. A wall rebuilt overnight because apparently sharing a bed, having sex, and feeling each other come apart through a magical bond qualifies as something that changes nothing.
Which should not bother me.
The plan was never for me to like her. The plan was to get her to like me. Make the unshakeable Camille Hart crack, win whatever game I decided we were playing, and walk away smug about it.
Instead, my brain chooses now to develop feelings.
Excellent timing. Apparently I’m losing my touch at the exact moment it matters.
The lights hit, the crowd roars, and I step into it like I always do: smile on, body loose, rhythm locked.
This part is easy. It has always been easy.
Find the beat. Ride it. Own it.
Except tonight the beat feels wrong. Not faster, exactly. Sharper, like every count cuts a little deeper than it should.
I hit the first turn anyway. Clean. Precise.
The crowd reacts instantly, louder than usual. Their energy strikes hard enough that I feel it in my bones.
“Okay,” I mutter beneath the music. “We’re doing that tonight.”
Fine.
I can handle intense.
We move into the next sequence with our weapons already drawn, their light woven into the choreography. Kaia leads with Aurora raised above her, Remy tracks the formation with Inkthorn trailing black script, and Heartglass flashes in Mina’s hand.
I cross center stage with Voltstep crackling at my sides.
Half a step too early.
I correct automatically, but it does not feel like a correction. It feels like something else catches me and pulls me back into place.
I frown.
“Focus,” I tell myself.
Shake it off. Keep going.
The crowd screams again, too loud and too sharp. They are not reacting to us so much as feeding something.
No.
That is ridiculous.
I pivot into the next line and let muscle memory take over. Except my body does not follow the path I expect. The movement sharpens instead, every angle too tight and every strike too fast.
Predatory.
This isn’t right.
Mina glances at me mid-step, concern flashing across her face.
I grin at her as if everything is fine.
Because it is.
It has to be.
I should signal the wing. Stop moving. Give Camille the symptom she needs to pull the show.
Instead, the next count arrives, and I take it.
The audience surges.
Something inside me snaps.
Pressure crashes through my body, immediate and crushing, forcing its way through my bones, my lungs, my throat.
“Get out,” I breathe.
The words do not sound right.
My voice does not sound like mine.
The choreography shifts.
Not ours. Nothing we rehearsed.
My body moves anyway, too precise and too controlled. I catch my reflection in the camera rig during a turn.
My eyes are wrong.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
“Not doing this,” I mutter, though my mouth does not quite match the words.
The crowd erupts.
Of course they do. They think it is part of the show. The predatory movements, the sudden change in formation, the smoke thickening around my feet. To them, it is choreography.
They think this is good.
Remy is watching me now. Really watching.
Kaia adjusts the formation without breaking character, guiding us into the combat sequence early. Mina misses half a step because she is still looking at me.
Don’t.
I force myself through a wide spin, using the movement to drive her back towards her mark.
“Stay on your mark,” I snap beneath the music.
The voice that comes out is sharper than I intend.
Not fully mine.
Something laughs inside me, low and threaded through the music, the rhythm, and every nerve in my body.
“Oh, hell no.”
I plant my foot and try to ground myself.
The bond.
Where is Camille?
I reach for her instinctively. She is there, but distant and muted, like trying to grab someone through deep water.
She is close. I know she is. Somewhere beyond the side-stage lights, exactly where Bane told her to stay.
The distance is not physical.
It is everything we have been doing to the bond since this morning.
The music builds. The audience hits another peak.
Whatever is inside me pushes harder.
My body locks mid-step, jerks, then moves again without permission. I snap one arm out too fast, Voltstep striking the edge of a lighting rig with a metallic crack.
Sparks explode above the stage.
The crowd screams in delight.
Pain shoots up my arm.
Good.
Pain is good. Pain is mine.
“Stay with me,” I whisper. “Stay with—“
My voice cuts off as something else forces its way into my throat, curling around the words and reshaping them.
Nope.
I bite down hard enough to taste blood.
The choreography continues because I keep it going. Even like this.
Especially like this.
Mina tries to shift closer during the next formation. I cut across her path, turning the movement into an aggressive flourish for the audience.
“Don’t,” I snap.
She freezes.
Good. Stay back.
Kaia moves in immediately, covering the broken formation with a sweep of Aurora that sends prismatic light over the front rows. Remy adjusts her spacing and brings Inkthorn down through the smoke near my feet, trying to cut whatever is reaching for me without making the audience see the difference.
They know.
Of course they know.
The crowd roars again, and the thing inside me feeds.
I feel it drawing their excitement through the music, turning every scream into pressure beneath my skin.
“That’s not mine.”
The words scrape out between clenched teeth.
My vision blurs at the edges. The music distorts, stretching around the rhythm embedded beneath it.
The same pattern Remy found.
Repetition. Escalation. No release.
The crowd claps in time.
The pressure rises with every beat.
“Get out.”
My body arches without permission. Energy tears through me like a live wire.
Then the backlash hits.
Magic does not feel like fire. It feels like pressure breaking, something ripping loose from a place it was never meant to enter.
Voltstep reacts before I can. My Resonance surges against the foreign pattern threaded through it, gold-white light surging across my arms as my body rejects the thing trying to take control.
The discharge throws me.
One second I am upright.
The next, I am airborne.
I hit a stage platform hard enough to crack something beneath me. Pain detonates through my ribs, the bruising from Seattle reigniting beneath the new impact. My injured knee folds beneath me a second later, and something in my shoulder screams.
The music continues.
For half a second, the crowd screams louder, still convinced this is part of the show. Then Kaia breaks formation and runs towards me.
That changes everything.
Remy stops performing. Mina abandons her mark. The backing track cuts out completely, leaving the arena filled with feedback, scattered sparks, and fifty thousand people slowly realising something is wrong.
The roar collapses into frightened noise.
Then near silence.
For several seconds, I cannot move.
The pressure inside me falters. Not gone, but shaken.
I suck in a breath that feels like knives. “Okay,” I rasp. “That’s bad.”
Still here, though.
Still me.
Mostly.
Mina drops beside me. “Jules?”
Kaia stands between me and the front of the stage, Aurora still in her hand but lowered now, no attempt to disguise what is happening. Behind her, Remy scans the smoke and damaged equipment like she can see the thing still trying to crawl beneath my skin.
The audience has gone quiet enough that I can hear people calling my name from the front rows.
I push myself up because stopping still feels impossible.
Mina catches my arm. “Don’t.”
“Stay back,” I tell her.
Softer this time.
More mine.
Something lashes through me, desperate and angry. I wrench away and stagger toward the empty front platform, putting as much space between my body and the others as I can.
Not them.
It does not get them.
The bond flickers.
Weak, but there.
Camille.
I reach for the familiar structure of her and find distance, strain, and something sharp enough to be fear.
The thing inside me surges towards it.
“No.”
The backlash hits again, smaller but sharper.
My knees buckle.
This time, there is no choreography to hide behind.
I hit the stage.
A scream tears through the arena.
Kaia catches my shoulder before my head strikes the floor, and Mina drops beside us, calling my name. Remy turns towards the wings and shouts for medical.
The crowd starts moving uneasily. Some people are crying. Others hold their phones frozen in front of them, no longer cheering, no longer sure whether they should be recording.
Kaia looks towards the audience, every trace of performance gone.
“We need to stop,” she says into her microphone. “Please stay calm and follow staff instructions.”
That confirms it.
The arena erupts into frightened voices.
The lights are too bright. The sound is too loud. Everything tilts sideways.
“That wasn’t me,” I whisper.
Because it wasn’t.
Something is wrong.
Not with me.
With everything.
The last thing I see before the stage lights blur into white is Camille forcing her way through the side-stage crew, still too far away.
Then nothing.