Chapter 15 #3
She glanced at me, surprise flickering across her face. Then, slowly, I felt a gentle tug as she accessed the ambient magic I was projecting. The connection wasn’t intrusive—nothing like the bond she must have shared with Nightfall—but it was intimate in its own way.
Rowan must have felt it too, because he shifted closer to her other side. Mark and Peter exchanged puzzled glances, clearly sensing something unusual happening but unable to identify it.
“That’s it,” I encouraged as I felt Jupiter stabilize the spatial distortion with our combined energy. “Perfect, baby.”
Oops. That slipped out. Maybe she didn’t hear…
The strain visibly eased from her face, her starlight brightening as she drew on our power. The bane’s prison solidified, becoming an impenetrable bubble of altered space-time, as if it were inside of a spherical portal that went nowhere.
“Hold steady!”
She’d fallen into a rhythm now, drawing on our combined energy in perfect balance. The creature thrashed uselessly within its prison, growing increasingly more frustrated with its confinement, salivating for our magic to feed on.
The bane were truly sickening creatures.
Some said they were born from the depths of a black hole, strong enough to claw their way past the event horizon, and strong enough to rip portals open, traveling several lightyears at a time.
Humans couldn’t see darkmatter, nor could even the most powerful scientific instruments.
But the Aelari could. We could see darkmatter as easily as regular matter.
The universe was alive with it. Nowhere near as empty as it appeared to the humans.
But with that life came predators, and we’d been forced to fight them since the dawn of time.
“Time!” Professor Saris finally announced after another full minute. “Excellent work, team. Containment wards reactivating.”
The humming of the magical barriers rose around us as the wards snapped back into place. Jupiter carefully released her hold on the spatial distortion, letting the bane slide back into its proper containment field. Her shoulders relaxed visibly as the creature was once again secured.
“Well done,” I murmured, giving her an appreciative nod. “That was textbook perfect.”
Jupiter wiped a light sheen of sweat from her brow. She was smiling now, her eyes alight with excitement rather than wariness. Fuuck, that smile did things to my body.
“Okay that was actually kind of fun.”
“See?” Rowan grinned, clapping her on the shoulder. “Told you there was nothing to worry about.”
We moved to the observation area at the side of the pit where we could watch the remaining teams complete their exercises. Jupiter settled between Rowan and me on the stone bench, her body language noticeably more relaxed than when we’d first entered the dungeons.
“Different from Dominion, huh?” I asked as the next team took their positions.
She nodded, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Night and fucking day. The wards here are solid. I can actually feel how deeply they’re anchored into the stone.”
“Imperium doesn’t cut corners on safety.” Team Two struggled with their bane. The creature was giving them more trouble than ours had, darting between their containment efforts. “Some of these wards have been in place for centuries, constantly reinforced by generations of Aelari.”
For the next hour, we supported the other teams. When class finally ended, Professor Saris dismissed us with a nod of approval. “Black, excellent work today. I expect great things to come from you. Dismissed.”
She smiled widely and saluted at the professor, who arched a brow her way.
“Heading back to your tower, princess?” I asked as we reached the main corridor.
“I should probably shower and change before dinner.” She sniffed her shirt and made a face. “Yeah, a shower is needed.”
She smelled fine to me. “Mind if I walk with you?”
“I’d like that.”
Rowan checked his phone and grimaced. “I’ve got to meet Professor Harris about that independent study project. The deadline’s tomorrow and I’ve barely started.”
“Procrastinator,” I teased, earning a mock scowl from my shield brother.
“Some of us have better things to do than study all hours of the day, Hargrave.” He leaned down and placed a quick kiss on Jupiter’s cheek. “See you at dinner, love.”
I watched him jog off down the corridor, then turned back to Jupiter, whose cheeks were pink. “Shall we?”
We walked in comfortable silence through the winding hallways of Imperium, climbing several flights of stairs until we reached the upper levels where the residential towers were located.
Outside the tall windows, the afternoon sun cast dark shadows across the ancient grounds.
This place had been home for several years now and I never got tired of the view.
“I’m still getting used to how old everything is here,” Jupiter commented as we passed a tapestry that had to be at least five centuries old. “Dominion was built to look like a castle, but most of it was constructed within the last few centuries. This place feels like it should be dust by now.”
“It’s arguably the oldest building on the continent. Humans don’t even know it exists. The First Crossing happened before the birth of Jesus Christ. Thousands of years before that actually.”
“History nerd.”
“Guilty. My family’s been obsessed with preserving history for generations. It’s in my blood.”
She grinned. “I can’t even talk. My parents are both professors. You should hear our dinnertime conversations.”
“Maybe someday I will…”
She glanced at me, her cheeks going pink again before looking away.
“This is me,” she said, pausing at the doorway of her tower. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “Would you like to come up? I’ve got some questions about those books we found in the archives.”
I hesitated briefly, my heart rate picking up. Going to her private room felt like crossing a line, but her pretty eyes won me over. “I’d like that.”
Her room was at the very top of the tower, a circular space with windows that offered a panoramic view of the Academy grounds.
I took in the details as she closed the door behind us—the neatly made bed with a handmade quilt that must have come from home, books stacked on every available surface, a sitting area, a kitchenette, wardrobe and a desk.
The entire space smelled deliciously of sweet pears and fresh rain, a scent I now associated exclusively with Jupiter. It made my cock incredibly hard. Painfully so.
Noodle immediately slithered from Jupiter’s neck and disappeared under the bed, apparently on some mission of his own.
“Coffee?” she offered, gesturing toward a small kitchenette tucked into one end of the circular room.
I couldn’t help but scrunch my nose. “I could make us proper tea instead?”
She laughed. “Go ahead. I’m hopeless at making tea that doesn’t taste like dishwater. The Scorpios make fun of me mercilessly.”
“Such an American.” I found the kettle and tea supplies easily enough, and set about preparing two mugs of Earl Grey.
“I’m going to shower real quick. Marinating in my own sweat sounds like a nightmare. Be right back.”
My cock throbbed at the mental image, and all I could do was nod as I made the tea, unable to form coherent words.
All I could picture was her naked body all lathered up under the hot spray just feet from where I was standing, though I’d never seen it before.
It didn’t take much imagination though, given the minuscule amount of clothing she sometimes wore to training.
She was back by the time the kettle started singing, her long dark hair combed straight until it hung near her hips, and her skin glowed as if she’d rubbed some kind of oil into it.
Fuuuuck….me. Literally.
“So,” she said, settling onto a small loveseat near the large window. “Tell me more about these artifacts your families have been hiding from the Assembly.”
I brought over our steaming mugs and handed one to her before sitting beside her. “We don’t see it as hiding, exactly. More like... preserving what the Assembly would rather forget.”
I took a slow sip of my tea, letting the earthy bite of the bergamot settle on my tongue.
It did little, however, to distract me from the intoxicating scent of her that seemed to permeate every inch of this room.
It was her scent, clinging to the throw pillows, the quilt on her bed, the very air we were breathing.
I shifted on the loveseat, stretching my legs out and letting my knee rest casually just an inch from hers.
I didn’t close the gap, but I didn’t retreat from it either.
“The Assembly operates under the assumption that too much nostalgia is dangerous. They believe that if we spend too much time looking up at the stars, mourning the thirteen worlds we lost, we’ll stop fighting the bane on Earth. They view our history as a distraction from the war.”
Jupiter tucked her legs beneath her, wrapping her hands around her warm mug.
The oversized gray sweater slipped off one shoulder, revealing a smooth expanse of olive skin and the dark, intricate ink of her tattoos.
I let my gaze linger there for a fraction of a second longer than was strictly polite before meeting her eyes again.
“But your family disagrees.”
“Fundamentally.” I leaned back against the cushions.
I was a man who lived in my head a lot of the time, analyzing, weighing, balancing.
It was the nature of my Libra magic, but it was also just who I was.
And right now, every analytical part of my brain was quietly cataloging the way the afternoon light caught the dark strands of her hair, the exact shade of silver in her irises, the soft curve of her rosy mouth.