Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Percy
I moved without thinking, my legs carrying me across the debris-littered square before my mind could process the pain searing through my shoulder.
Blood soaked my combat suit, the wound throbbing with each heartbeat, but I barely felt it.
All I could see was Jupiter lying motionless on the pavement, silver light still flickering beneath her skin.
“Jupiter!” I dropped to my knees beside her, my hands hovering uncertainly over her body. She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t responding. The portal was gone, shattered by whatever impossible power she’d channeled, but at what cost?
Then she convulsed, her back arching off the ground as silver light erupted from her skin.
The scream that tore from her throat wasn’t human, or zodiac, or anything I’d ever heard.
It was raw cosmic energy given voice, the sound of stars dying.
Fissures of blinding starlight cracked across her limbs, spreading rapidly up her arms and across her torso, splitting her open from the inside out.
“No, no, no,” I hissed, gathering her into my arms despite Cassandra shouting at me to stay back. The wound in my shoulder screamed in protest, but I ignored it. “Jupiter, stay with me.”
Her eyes flew open, but they weren’t her eyes anymore. Twin suns burned where silver irises should be, so bright I could barely look at them. Her body jerked and twisted in my arms, the starlight pouring from the fissures in her skin.
“What’s happening to her?” Aiden demanded, dropping to his knees beside me.
Draco appeared on her other side, blood still streaming from the gash across his face. “It’s like before, in the Abyss. Magical burnout.”
“Only worse,” Eris added grimly, completing our circle around her.
Fear unlike anything I’d ever known gripped me, squeezing until I could barely breathe. Not the cold, familiar fear of battle or the calculated fear of failure I’d grown up with. This was a visceral fucking terror that she was slipping away right in front of me.
“Jupiter,” I whispered, cupping her face in my palm. Her skin burned against mine, but I didn’t pull away. “Come back to us. Come back to me.”
I reached for my magic, ignoring the searing pain as I called on the Aries power that flowed through my blood. Red energy gathered in my palm, and I pressed it against her chest, directly over her heart, just as I had that first time in the Abyss.
“What are you doing?” Someone demanded, trying to pull me away. “You’ll kill yourself!”
I shrugged them off, never taking my eyes from Jupiter’s face. “She’s our axis,” I growled. “Get the fuck back.”
Unlike that first time, the starlight didn’t burn where it touched me.
Our bond had changed something fundamental between us, creating channels where our magics could flow into each other.
I could feel her power raging out of control, too vast for her body to contain after what she’d done to the portal.
“Help me,” I ordered the others, my voice cracking. “Like before. Take some of it.”
They didn’t hesitate. Draco placed his hands on her legs, his purple Scorpio magic rising to meet her silver light. Aiden gripped her right arm, gold energy flowing from his palms. Eris took her left, his Gemini magic shifting through a rainbow of colors as it adapted to what she needed.
I could feel the moment our magics connected with hers, creating a circuit that allowed her excess power to flow into us instead of tearing her apart.
The starlight was overwhelming, ancient and wild in a way that made even my experienced magic feel like a child’s sparkler in comparison.
It flooded into me, filling spaces I hadn’t known existed, burning away darkness I hadn’t realized I carried.
“Take it,” I urged the others as Jupiter’s body continued to convulse. “Take as much as you can.”
The other shield teams had formed a perimeter around us, their faces a mixture of awe and terror as they watched starlight flow between the five of us in pulsing waves.
I caught glimpses of Cassandra barking orders into her comm unit, of medical teams rushing toward us, but they all seemed distant and unimportant.
Nothing mattered except the woman in my arms, her life force flickering like a candle in a storm.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” I hissed against her ear as another wave of power surged through our connection. “We just found you. You don’t get to leave now.”
The starlight began to recede from her limbs, the fissures slowly closing as we absorbed the excess magic.
Hope flared through the bond. It was working.
We were taking the burden off of Jupiter exactly like a shield was supposed to.
I already knew it would cost us. I knew without a doubt that this bond would become permanent if it hadn’t been before.
Her breathing steadied, the convulsions becoming less violent until, finally, she lay still in my arms.
“Is she...?” Aiden couldn’t finish the question.
I pressed my fingers to her throat, feeling for a pulse. It was there, weak and uneven, but present thank fuck. “She’s alive.”
Relief crashed through me with such force I nearly collapsed.
“We need to get her back to Dominion,” Draco said. “Their healers won’t know how to handle Ophis magic, but they can heal physical ones.”
I nodded, gathering her closer despite the protest from my wounded shoulder.
“I’ll carry her,” Eris offered, seeing me wince.
“No.” The word came out harsher than I meant it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of letting her go. “I’ve got her.”
As I stood with Jupiter cradled against my chest, I became aware of the stares from the other shield teams. They were looking at us—at her—with expressions ranging from wonder to fear to naked calculation. The whispers had already started.
“Fall back to the extraction point,” I ordered my shield, ignoring anyone trying to approach us. “No one touches her but us.”
The starlight I had absorbed from Jupiter still hummed beneath my skin, mixing with my own magic. I could feel the others experiencing the same thing, our bond with her deepening, strengthening with each moment. Whatever had happened here today had changed us all.
As we moved toward the extraction vehicles, Jupiter stirred in my arms, her eyelids fluttering. When she opened her eyes, they were silver again, not the burning suns of moments before.
“Percy?” she whispered, her voice so weak I had to bend my head to hear her.
“I’m here, honey.”
Her fingers weakly clutched at my combat suit. “You’re hurt…”
“I’m going to be fine, I promise.”
A small smile touched her lips before her eyes slipped closed again. “Good.”
The medical team met us at the extraction point, a mobile unit with equipment for treating magical injuries. I reluctantly placed Jupiter on the gurney, but I didn’t move from her side as they attached monitoring devices to her.
“Sir, we need to treat your shoulder,” one of the medics told me.
I ignored him, my eyes fixed on Jupiter’s pale face. The starlight was gone now, but I could still feel her magic pulsing through our bond, weaker than before but steady.
“Percy.” Draco’s hand landed on my uninjured shoulder. “Let them help you. We’ll watch her.”
I hesitated, then nodded curtly. As the medic led me to another gurney, I watched Aiden, Draco, and Eris position themselves around Jupiter like sentinels. None of them would let anyone near her who wasn’t absolutely necessary.
The medic cut away my combat suit to expose the wound.
The bane’s claw had gone completely through my shoulder, leaving an exit wound on the back.
Under normal circumstances, it would be excruciating, but all I could feel was Jupiter’s presence in my mind, the faint flutter of her consciousness against mine through our bond.
“This is going to need magical healing,” the medic said, cleaning around the edges of the wound. “You’re lucky it missed anything vital.”
I barely heard him. My attention was still fixed on Jupiter, on the way her chest rose and fell with each shallow breath.
I had never been a man who feared much. I’d been raised to face danger head-on, to calculate risks and accept losses as necessary.
But watching her lying there, broken by her own power, I discovered a new kind of fear.
The fear of losing something I hadn’t even known I wanted until it was nearly taken from me.
I needed her. Not just as an axis for our shield, not just as a weapon against the bane. I needed her.
“Cassandra wants to debrief as soon as you’re stable,” the medic said, pulling me from my thoughts as he applied a healing salve to my shoulder.
“Tell her she can wait,” I replied coldly. “Our axis needs us.”
Two days after the Philadelphia incident, I stood at my window, phone pressed to my ear, watching the fading light cast long shadows across the academy grounds.
My shoulder still ached despite the healers’ best efforts.
The wound was closed, but the memory of that bane’s claw tearing through muscle and sinew remained vivid in my mind.
“This is extraordinary news, Percival,” my father’s voice droned in my ear. “An Ophis axis with demonstrated portal manipulation capabilities. The Assembly is buzzing with reports of what happened in Philadelphia.”
I clenched my jaw, saying nothing. Of course he’d heard. News traveled fast when it benefited the powerful.
“Your mother and I will arrive in two days. We’re eager to meet the girl who’s caused such a stir.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said, sounding mentally dead to my own ears. “Jupiter isn’t a sideshow attraction.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Our son’s axis bond is a momentous occasion for the Whitlock family. Your mother has already arranged a dinner with several Council members who—“
“No,” I cut him off. “She’s still recovering.”
“The reports indicate she’s fully healed. Don’t be difficult, Percival. This is exactly the kind of connection our family has been cultivating for generations.”