Chapter 2
TWO
Jupiter
The car rolled through onto a long cobblestone drive flanked by massive oaks that had been growing here long enough to arch over the road and touch in the middle, their bare branches knitted together.
The academy rose at the end of it, five stories of dark stone dressed in iron and ivy, with towers at each corner and windows that glinted in the morning light.
It was the most beautiful and most threatening building I’d ever seen, and I’d been to Assembly Headquarters in Geneva.
Fen stopped the car at the base of wide stone steps where a handful of other vehicles were already unloading. I sat for a moment looking up at those doors—iron and carved with the twelve zodiac symbols in a ring. It wasn’t lost on me that mine was absent.
I got out of the car and the cold hit me immediately.
I pulled my jacket tighter and looked around at the other arrivals.
There were maybe twenty people in view, all around my age, ranging from openly excited to visibly terrified.
I’d been told that all new students were arriving today, but the formal orientation and designation declarations weren’t until tomorrow morning.
Today was check-in, dormitory assignment, and administrative chaos.
The Assembly had made arrangements. Calla Orion had been very careful and very specific about those arrangements, which meant that when I declared my designation tomorrow, the fallout was going to be contained as much as it could be.
Translation… not very contained at all, because the 13th Zodiac had been a myth for longer than the oldest zodiac alive and their ancestors could remember.
Walking up to a declaration podium and announcing myself as an Ophis was going to throw the zodiac world into utter panic.
I pulled my bags out of the trunk, settled Noodle’s case in the crook of my arm, and climbed the steps.
The entry hall was enormous, which I’d expected from the outside, with ceilings that disappeared up into shadow and a floor of dark stone worn smooth by what had to be centuries of feet and a central staircase wide enough to drive a car up.
The walls were hung with zodiac sigils, twelve of them in order around the room, each one rendered in silver against the dark stone. The registration desk, which was staffed by a tired-looking woman with red hair, was blessedly empty of students.
“Name and ID,” she said, without looking up.
“Jupiter Black.”
She looked up.
I watched the series of emotions that crossed her face, from recognition, to shock, then professional neutrality.
She knew who I was. The Assembly would have told senior staff.
She knew, and she was performing not-knowing for the benefit of the students around me, which I appreciated and which I would remember as an act of kindness.
“Room 412,” she said, handing me a key card. “East wing. Elevator’s through there.” She nodded toward a corridor. “Orientation packet is in your room. Declarations are tomorrow at nine in the Convocation Hall.” A beat of awkward silence. “Welcome to Dominion, Ms. Black.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying to sound as warm as possible.
I found the elevator, rode up to the fourth floor, and found room 412 at the end of a long hallway with dark wood floors and electric sconces that looked out of place in the old building.
The room was bigger than I’d expected, with a queen bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and tall windows overlooking the back grounds where I could see training fields and outbuildings through the bare trees. There was a private bathroom thank fuck. I’d been dreading the bathroom situation in silent horror.
I put my bags down, sat on the bed and opened Noodle’s case.
He uncoiled slowly, raised his head, and looked around the room, his tongue flickering out to taste the air.
His scales were the deep matte black of expensive ink, and in the filtered morning light coming through the windows he looked gorgeously lethal.
‘Smells like many people.’
I snorted. “It’s a school. There are many people.”
‘I don’t like many people.’
“You don’t like any people. Except me.”
‘Correct,’ he said, satisfied, and then he found my pillow and arranged himself comfortably.
I thought for a second, how blissful it must be to live as a snake, with no worries, no cares in the world save for your next meal or next nap.
I unpacked methodically, clothes in the wardrobe, gear tucked flat under the bed where I could get to it fast if needed, books on the desk, the small framed photo of my parents on the nightstand where I could see it from the bed.
When I was done, I sat at the desk and opened the orientation packet, and I was deep into the section on training protocols when my phone lit up with a text.
L: We’re on the second floor. Tye already charmed someone into telling him where the best wifi spot is.
J: Of course he did. Meet for dinner?
L: Obviously. There’s a dining hall on the main floor. 6pm?
J: I’ll be there.
I set the phone down and went back to the orientation packet.
Then I turned to page seven and found the full details of the declaration ceremony.
My stomach did a few cartwheels. Students would approach the declaration podium in alphabetical order and by designation, the casting stone would read their zodiac, and the result would be announced to the room.
In front of everyone. We manifested our zodiac at 18, but there were initiations if you wanted to join officially.
I was going to have to stand up in front of twelve hundred people and announce that I was a zodiac that everyone thought was a myth.
I was absolutely fine with it. Cool as a fucking cucumber. I’d fought monsters in the dark for three damn years and had come out the other side. This was a declaration ceremony at a school, and I was not going to be rattled by a crowded room.
In reality, I was about three seconds from a full-blown meltdown.
‘You’re doing the thing,’ Noodle said from the pillow.
I hadn’t realized I was tapping my fingers on the desk. “What thing?”
‘Your heartbeat is very fast.’
“Thank you for that, Nood. Very helpful.”
‘You’re welcome,’ he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or sarcastic. Little butthead.
I spent the rest of the morning unpacking and then orienting myself to the building, taking a solo walkthrough, checking exits, pathways, corridors and the places where the light didn’t reach.
Dominion was massive, built across multiple wings that had clearly been added to the original structure over centuries.
By midday I had a workable mental map of the first two floors and the training level.
I had to admit it was gorgeous. There were many modern amenities, but most of it was original architecture.
I took my time appreciating the sweeping staircases, the arched doorways, the tapestries murals and rune etchings in the wood.
There was so much history here. I could almost imagine my own parents walking these same halls, going to their classes, talking with friends, learning their magic for the first time.
After three years of a solitary existence working for the Assembly, I had to admit that this situation wasn’t so bad.
Not all zodiac students would become warriors.
Not everyone became a member of a shield team.
Only those with substantial defensive magic.
Both my parents had gone to school here and graduated with teaching degrees.
They were both Scorpios, and met in their dorm their first year.
All my life I thought I’d have followed in their footsteps to become an academic. But the fates loved a good joke.
The library occupied an entire wing and I wanted to move in and stay for the rest of my life.
There were gorgeous cathedral ceilings with star charts painted across them, shelves that rose to the upper floor galleries with stone balconies, long reading tables in old, rich mahogany, everything lit by warm brass lamps.
I stood in the entrance for a moment and just looked at it.
The Assembly housing was functional and secure and aggressively impersonal.
This was a monument to history that spanned unimaginable time.
Something warm filled my chest at the thought of spending the next four years here exploring.
It was the closest thing to belonging I’d been allowed to want.
I turned away before I made too much of it and went back to the main hall, and that was when I first saw the infamous Nightfall Shield. One of many shields this academy produced, but arguably the most sought after. I knew them on sight.
There were four of them, standing near the far end of the entry hall in a loose group, clearly not waiting for anything in particular, but speaking in low voices.
The tallest of them had dark ash blonde hair that fell past his shoulders, pushed back from angular features that were genuinely unfairly pretty for a man, with golden eyes that were currently aimed at something across the room.
He had the lean muscular build of someone who trained to fight.
There were small piercings in his ear that caught the light.
That would be Aiden, a Leo zodiac. I’d been given information on all of them.
Beside him was a man with pure white hair paired with black expressive eyebrows.
He had gauges in his ears and a barbell through his brow and what I was fairly certain was a tongue ring from the way he was clicking something against the backs of his teeth.
His forearms were covered in tattoos that disappeared under his sleeves.
This was Draco. Scorpio zodiac. His hazel eyes were currently aimed at the floor and he looked like he was only physically present in this conversation while most of him was somewhere else entirely.
The large muscular one with copper hair, shorter on the sides and longer on top, had a well-kept beard and amber eyes and was saying something to the man beside him that involved some kind of intense hand gesturing I couldn’t read from here.
His name was Eris. Gemini. Scottish, I believe.
He was incredibly large. Not overly muscled, but rather thick and dense.
And the last one, the one with the chocolate brown hair, tattoos, dark eyes and at least five silver rings on both hands, was currently looking straight at me.
Percy. Ares zodiac. I’d been told he was dangerous.
Looking at him from across the room with his arms crossed over his chest and his expression absolutely not welcoming, I believed it completely.
He radiated bad-boy don’t fuck with me vibes.
Little did he know, I could match it.
I held his gaze for long enough to establish dominance, a little smirk stretching my lips that made his eyes narrow, and then I turned and walked toward the corridor as if I’d never seen him at all.
Behind me, I heard nothing to indicate they’d noticed.
That was fine. Tomorrow they’d know exactly who I was, and after that, everything was going to get significantly more messy.
The Assembly wanted me to bond with their shield.
To become their axis if possible, but something told me these four men wanted nothing to do with that plan.
Dinner with Tye and Lydia was just what I needed, and I was fucking starved.
The dining hall had long tables and warm lighting and the smell of homemade food rather than the Doordash I was used to ordering.
Tye had somehow already found a corner table that he’d clearly been holding for the last thirty minutes since texting me.
He stood up when he saw me and pulled me into a hug that lifted me half off my feet, because he was six-foot-two and built like a damn linebacker, with the same dark eyes as his sister.
“Jupe,” he said, setting me down. “You look terrible.”
“I look amazing, thank you.”
Lydia, across the table, was already laughing, her curly dark hair piled on her head. “I already got you food because I knew you’d forget to eat breakfast.”
I sat down and discovered that she had, in fact, gotten me food, which was a bowl of something that smelled like it had garlic in it and therefore was already my favorite thing about Dominion.
“How’s Noodle?” she asked.
“Imperious. Unimpressed. Sleeping.”
“So, unfazed.”
“Damn freeloader is what he is.”
Tye told me that he’d already mapped the training schedule and Lydia told me that she’d made friends with someone in the Aquarius dormitory who seemed interesting.
I told them about my walk-through of the building and my conversation with the registration woman, and at some point I said, quietly enough that it was just for them, “I saw the Nightfall Shield today.”
They both went very still for a moment.
“And?” Tye said.
“And they look exactly as advertised.” I stabbed something with my fork. “The Ares one stared at me like I shat in his soup.”
“Percy,” Lydia said. “He’s hot as fuck. They all are.”
I scoffed. “Most zodiacs are hot as fuck. Magic kind of has that effect on people.”
Tye was looking at me with narrowed eyes. “You ready for tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
“Jupe…”
“What? You asked.” I shrugged. “It’s not like I have a choice. I just need to get through it without someone freaking out and attacking me or something.”
The dining hall filled around us as the evening went on.
I watched people arrive and find seats, finding friends they grew up with at some of the boarding schools rich parents sent their kids to.
I never went to one of those schools. My parents did alright financially, but I’d always gone to public school.
The Nightfall Shield arrived as a group and took a table in the far corner that faced the room.
I watched every head in the hall track them as they passed.
Women stared at them with longing in their eyes, probably holding out hope that they would show enough magical promise this year that they would choose her as their axis.
Not likely. They sat down and didn’t look at anyone and ate, and nobody approached their table.
Nobody except a pretty girl with red hair who leaned down to say something to Aiden, and he turned to look at her with an expression so blank and unimpressed that she straightened back up and walked away, looking like she was seconds away from bursting into tears.
Assholes, the lot of em.