Chapter 4
Rowan
I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Sitting in the warm candle light of the restricted archives, surrounded by towering shelves of crumbling tomes, Jupiter Black looked like a painting of a tragic goddess.
She was tracing the faded ink of a star chart with one finger, her brow furrowed in concentration.
The inky black serpent tattoos on her arm seemed to shift and writhe in the candlelight.
Sometimes I wondered if they were actually enchanted.
“You’re staring again, mate,” Jamie whispered, kicking my boot under the heavy oak table.
I didn’t look away. “Can you blame me?”
Jamie sighed, leaning back in his chair and running a hand over his face. “She’s looking for a way to break the Nightfall bond.”
“I know. And those bastards deserve what’s coming to them.”
I pushed my chair back, the wooden legs scraping slightly against the ancient stone floor, and closed the distance between us, Jamie following after me, not saying a word.
As I approached, the scent of her cut through the musty smell of decaying parchment.
She didn’t look up as I stopped beside her chair, scanning the dense, blocky script of the book.
“Old Latin,” I noted, leaning down just enough to get a better look at the page. “Mixed with archaic runic shorthand. It’s a bastard to translate if you aren’t used to it.”
Jupiter flinched slightly, her shoulders tensing before she forced them to relax. “It’s giving me a headache. I can make out about every third word. Something about ‘severing the astral tether’ and ‘blood price.’”
“Let me see.” I pulled up a chair, sitting close enough that I could feel the radiant heat of her body, but careful not to let our shoulders touch. I knew she was touch-starved and touch-averse all at once.
I traced the line of text she’d been reading.
“It says, ‘To sever the astral tether without the consent of the bound, the axis must endure the ice of the void. The blood price is exacted not in death, but in the tearing of the soul’s fabric.’” I looked up, meeting her startlingly silver eyes.
“Jupiter, this is dark stuff. The kind that leaves permanent scars on your soul. If you try this ritual, it might kill you.”
She swallowed hard, looking back down at the book. “I don’t care. I can’t keep living like this, Rowan. It feels like I’m being drowned in acid. I need them out of my head.”
The thought of those bastards made my blood boil. “We’ll find a way. But we’ll find a way that doesn’t destroy you in the process. You have my word.”
She looked at me, a flicker of genuine surprise parting her lips. “Why are you doing this? All of you. You barely know me.”
“Because I like you. More than is good for me, I think.”
“Am I interrupting?”
I didn’t need to turn around to recognize that voice, but I did anyway.
Eliza Reece stood at the end of the aisle, her arms crossed over her chest. She was wearing the standard Imperium uniform, but she’d tailored it to cling to her curves, projecting an air of calculated obvious perfection.
Her sandy blonde hair was styled in its immaculate bob, and her golden brown eyes were narrowed on Jupiter.
Eliza’s lip curled into a visible sneer, her gaze raking over Jupiter with undisguised contempt. “Rowan. Can I speak to you for a second? Alone.”
My heart sank like a stone in a bottomless lake.
Just the sight of her was enough to make my blood run cold.
For so many years, I’d thought Eliza was going to be our axis.
We courted her, protected her, and poured our souls into the prospect of a future with her.
We’d loved her, truly and deeply, in the way a shield is meant to love the center of their universe.
And then she betrayed us. She cheated behind our backs, stringing us along while she secretly courted a transfer shield from Russia—the Riftward Shield.
When she finally bonded with them, the shock and humiliation had nearly destroyed Stardust. To cope, Lucas, Theo, Phoenix, and I had spent the last two years fucking our way through too many human women, desperately trying to scrub the memory of Eliza from our skin.
All of us except Jamie.
I glanced at Jamie now, sitting rigidly in his chair.
He hadn’t moved a muscle, but the scarred skin of his face was pulled taut, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the oak table.
Jamie had never been with a woman. He’d been saving himself entirely for when we completed the bond, holding onto that sacred connection with a reverence the rest of us couldn’t fully comprehend.
Eliza’s betrayal broke something inside him. Even now, two years later, Jamie avoided any and all women, keeping himself locked in a fortress of his own making.
Eliza was an American, a Reece, and the sister of Aiden Reece from the Nightfall Shield. Looking at her now, the resemblance was undeniable. She had that same striking blonde hair and those same calculating, golden-flecked eyes as her asshole brother.
But as I looked from Eliza’s perfectly manufactured, icy beauty back to Jupiter, I realized with immense satisfaction that I very much preferred Jupiter.
There was literally no contest. Eliza was utterly dull and uninteresting compared to Jupiter’s cascade of midnight silk black hair and burning, moonlight eyes.
Eliza was nothing but regret and heartbreak.
“No, Eliza, you can’t.”
Eliza’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“I said no. Whatever you have to say to me, you can say it here, in front of Jupiter and Jamie. Otherwise, you can turn around and walk back out with at least some of your dignity, not that you have much of that left.”
Her sneer deepened, her gaze flicking back to Jupiter with venom. “I was trying to do you a favor, Rowan. My brother warned me about her. I thought you of all people would know better than to let a manipulator sink her claws into your shield.”
Jamie stood up so fast his chair crashed backward onto the stone floor. The sound echoed through the cavernous archives like a gunshot. “Get. Out.”
Eliza took a step back, her mask of poise slipping for just a fraction of a second. “You’re making a mistake. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
With a sharp pivot on her sensible black shoes, she marched out of the archives, the sound of her footsteps fading down the corridor.
Cursing under my breath, I reached down to right Jamie’s chair. He didn’t sit back down. Instead, he grabbed his pack and slung it over his shoulder, his hands trembling slightly.
“I need a bloody smoke,” he muttered before he turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadows of the library.
I watched him go, my chest aching for him, then slowly sat back down. She was watching me curiously. Less angry than I expected and more confused.
I cleared my throat awkwardly, running a hand over my face, feeling a flush of shame heat my neck.
“Eliza was going to be our axis, but she played us for years. Made us think she was actually in love with us. I feel like such an idiot now. For months she was secretly bonding with the Riftward Shield after they transferred here from Russia two years ago. When she finally made it official with them, she didn’t even have the decency to tell us to our faces.
We had to find out from the Assembly’s registry when we applied to make it official. ”
She didn’t offer empty platitudes or pity. She just reached out, her fingers lightly brushing my forearm. The contact sent a jolt of pure electricity straight to my core, and fuck, it made my cock swell.
“I’m sorry, Rowan. I know exactly how much that kind of betrayal hurts.”
“I know you do,” I said softly, turning my arm just enough so that my skin rested fully against hers. “But Eliza was wrong about something else. You aren’t a manipulator. And I don’t give a damn what her brother or anyone else at Dominion says. I trust what I see. And I trust what I feel.”
Her breath hitched, and for a long moment, we just sat there.
I wanted to lean in. I wanted to press my lips to hers and prove to her that she was worth so much more than the pain Nightfall had put her through.
But I held back. She was fragile right now, even if she refused to admit it, and I wasn’t going to push her.
“Come on,” I said, gently pulling the heavy book away from her. “You aren’t going to find a safe way to break an axis bond tonight. Let’s get you back to the tower.”