Chapter 17
Jupiter
I stood in the space between two ancient yews on the edge of the grove, my hands outstretched, searching for the seam between shadow and light.
The trick, according to the threadbare copy of ‘A Study in Ophis Phenomena,’ was not to force it.
The dark didn’t respond to violence. It yielded, if you were patient.
If you asked the right way. I wasn’t patient.
I was never patient. My first two attempts at darkrending had ended with scorched leaves and a headache that made my ears ring.
“Let’s try again,” I said, to myself, to Noodle, to the gathering dusk.
Noodle slid his head out from under my sleeve and flicked his tongue in the air. ‘Hypothesis…’
He wasn’t wrong. Most Ophis lore was written by people who’d never met one, let alone practiced the magic. We were like unicorns or yetis to the Assembly.
I let myself sink into the shadows at my feet, feeling their coolness brush against my ankles.
I thought of the time three nights ago when Jamie had shown me how to drift into the dreamscape, how effortless it had felt to slide sideways from reality the moment I fell asleep.
It only worked if he was there to pull me in from the other side, of course.
This was less graceful, more like climbing inside a trash bag and hoping the bottom wouldn’t rip.
I reached. I asked. The darkness responded like a living thing, flowing over my skin, up my legs, tangling around my hips and chest. I felt my own magic meet the dark, and for a split second, we were the same thing.
The world melted around me, the trees blurring into streaks of ink, the temperature dropping ten degrees. My skin prickled with static, my hair lifting from my scalp. There was a snap, and I found myself ten feet to the left, behind a mossy boulder.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, my heart slamming in my chest.
‘Again,’ said Noodle.
“Yeah, again.”
I did it three more times, each slip easier.
By the last try, the air was thick with something that smelled like fresh tar.
The book said that darkrending was a rare ability.
The ability to use shadows as a form of transportation by folding them around oneself and slipping right through.
Not quite portaling, but similar enough.
I had to admit it was a fucking thrill when it worked.
Was it practical? No. Not really. In fact, I was exhausted.
I was about to go for one last round when the bond pulled violently.
I doubled over. The pressure was instant, like someone had hooked a talon inside my sternum and yanked hard and fast. I screamed against the pain.
There was a stinging sensation in my head, and a tugging in my abdomen that nearly had my knees buckling.
Noodle hissed, his whole body quivering. ‘What is?’
“Nood—what’s—”
I had no more time to think, or speak. The compulsion came on so fast and so hard that I couldn’t refuse it.
The wordless command ran through every cell of my body with the force of a nuclear blast. I snapped upright, vision gone white, and heard glass shatter somewhere far away.
Noodle’s body went rigid around my neck.
My mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood.
Without thinking, I grabbed reality with both hands and tore it open. The seam I ripped was so wide and so unstable it set the air around me vibrating, a micro-earthquake that rattled loose a thousand leaves from the trees.
‘Careful—’ Noodle started, but we were already gone.
The cold of Imperium’s autumn night went silent and black, then there was a roar of wind in my ears, a brief plunge into empty space, and then I was looking up into Percy Callahan’s dark eyes.
He was standing in the center of the corridor, just as stunned as I was, his hands still half raised from where he’d clearly been about to throw a punch, or maybe a blast of magic. For a second, neither of us moved.
Then the world snapped back to its proper speed.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” I could feel the depth of his need to touch me, the ache of the bond re-knitting itself with a violence that made my whole body tremble. But there was no time, the danger was still there, building, cresting, threatening to explode.
“Something’s wrong. Where are the guys?”
Something clicked in his eyes that suddenly glowed red.
He didn’t answer. He was already moving, running past me, and I followed, Noodle clinging to my shoulders for dear life.
We careened through the main hallway, down the familiar turns of the residential wing, and into the Nightfall Shield’s suite.
Eris was just inside the door, slumped against the wall, a line of blood running from his nose. He looked up at us with eyes that didn’t quite focus. “Draco’s—”
Percy didn’t wait for the rest. He tore through the living room, knocking over a chair, and burst through Draco’s bedroom door.
Draco was on the floor, convulsing. His skin was slick with sweat, his chest barely rising in shallow, gurgling gasps.
His eyes rolled back in his skull, showing only the whites.
There was a dart in his jugular, with a clear barrel half-filled with a black, viscous fluid.
The window was open. The night air blew the curtain in lazy, mocking waves. I saw the shadow of a figure moving away on the lawn below, but the bond told me there wasn’t time to chase.
Percy was already kneeling beside Draco, his hands pressed to the wound on his neck, but nothing he did slowed the shaking or the blue creeping up from Draco’s collar. “It’s a neurotoxin. He’s got minutes—less than—”
Draco’s body seized again, his back arching off the floor as the black poison crept higher up his neck.
I’d seen something like before, but only in a controlled environment at Assembly training headquarters—a neurotoxin that attacked the nervous system, shutting down vital organs one by one. Heart and brain last.
“Aquarius…” I gasped, the realization hitting me like lightning. “We need an Aquarius. I can call the twins they’ll—”
“They’re on a mission. Boston I think,” Percy gritted out, his red eyes flashing.
“Fuck!” I had to think. But then it hit me. “Lucas.”
Percy’s eyes locked with mine, and I could tell he hated the idea, but this was Draco’s life. “You can reach him? At Imperium?”
“I can try.” I scrambled to my knees beside Draco, my hands already trembling with the strain of what I was about to attempt.
An accidental portal across the ocean in response to a dying shield mate was dangerous enough, but targeting a specific person’s magical signature across that distance? It could kill me, in theory.
But Draco was dying in front of me. This was not fucking happening.
“Trust me,” I said, just as the door crashed open and Aiden burst into the room.
“What the fuck—“ he started, freezing when he saw me.
“Just hurry,” Percy cut him off, pressing harder against Draco’s neck as the convulsions worsened.
I closed my eyes and reached out, not for a place this time, but for a person.
I’d felt Lucas’s magic signature when he trained with me, the cool, flowing Aquarius energy that reminded me of glacial rivers.
I pictured it now, let it fill my senses, and then I tore at reality with everything I had, screaming in pain as I did it.
The portal ripped open looking jagged and unstable, sparking with silver starlight at the edges. Through it, I could see blurry figures moving in what looked like a common room at Imperium. My vision swam, blood trickling from my nose with the strain.
“Lucas!” I screamed through the portal, my voice breaking. “Lucas, I need you!”
The figures on the other side froze, then rushed toward the opening. Lucas stepped through first, eyes widening as he took in the scene. Rowan followed immediately after him, both men stumbling slightly as they crossed the threshold.
“Jupiter, what—“ Lucas began, then his gaze locked on Draco’s convulsing form. His expression shifted instantly from confusion to deadly focus.
“Neurotoxin,” I gasped, grabbing his hand and yanking him down beside Draco. “It’s in his bloodstream. You need to pull it out before it reaches his heart.”
Lucas didn’t hesitate. He knelt beside Draco, pressing his palms to Draco’s chest, his eyes flaring bright blue as his Aquarius magic activated. “Hold him down,” he ordered. “All of you.”
Percy grabbed Draco’s shoulders, Aiden his legs. Rowan moved to help Percy, and I held Draco’s head steady between my hands, feeling the heat of his skin, the racing of his pulse beneath my fingers.
“The toxin is water-based. That’s good news. I can feel it moving through his system.”
The air around us grew heavy with moisture as Lucas’s magic pulled at the water molecules in Draco’s blood. His hands began to glow with an ethereal blue light that sank beneath Draco’s skin, spreading through his veins like luminous ink.
“Got it,” Lucas murmured, his brow furrowed in intense concentration.
Draco’s body went rigid, and then—horror and relief mingling in my gut—black sludge began to seep from his eyes, nose, and mouth. It poured out in thick rivulets, pooling on the floor beside his head. The stench was overwhelming, like pennies and burnt rubber.
“Keep going,” I urged Lucas, whose arms were starting to shake with the effort.
More and more of the toxin emerged and Draco’s convulsions gradually slowed, his breathing becoming less labored.
The blue tinge receded from his skin. Finally, with one last effort that made Lucas gasp with exertion, the last of the black poison oozed out.
It formed a viscous puddle beside Draco’s head, steaming slightly as it hit the air.
For a moment, nothing happened. Draco lay still, too still.
“Come on Draco,” I murmured. “You don’t get to leave this way. If anyone’s gonna take your ass out it’s me.”
I looked up, meeting Percy’s eyes. I’d never seen him look more afraid than he did at that moment.