Page 76 of The Bound Zodiac

I rose off the ground, my feet leaving the stage entirely, and the starlight lifted me, carrying me upward until I hung suspended in the center of the dome, my body wreathed in blinding white light. In the reflection of the shield, my hair—the sleek black ponytail I’d spent an hour perfecting—was bleached white from root to tip as it broke free and writhed around my head, the color draining like ink from water, until it streamed around my head like a corona.

Hundreds of portals erupted in front of me. They bloomed like silver flowers, each one the size of a penny, each one a perfect circle of starlight. They filled the air between me and the dome wall, orbiting, humming, their combined harmonic so high it made the barrier itself vibrate. Two hundred. Three hundred. Four hundred. They kept coming, pouring out of me like blood from an open wound, and I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t want to stop them.

Five hundred. Six hundred. Seven hundred.

My skin was tearing. I could feel it, actual fissures opening along my arms, my chest, my face, and starlight poured from the wounds like liquid. The pain was beyond anything I’d ever felt. Beyond the Abyss. Beyond every training session, every portal convergence, every moment of my life. It was like being unmade from the inside.

Eight hundred. Nine hundred. A thousand.

The portals filled the dome. They were everywhere, above me, below me, in every direction, a thousand pinpricks of silver light so dense they blotted out everything else. The starlight had consumed me entirely. I was white. Pure white. My skin, my eyes, my hair, my dress—all of it burned with the same blinding, terrible light.

“Now!” I thought, or maybe I said it, or maybe the bond simply carried the intention. I reached out with both hands and pulled.

The thousand portals converged. They slammed together like a collapsing star, each one folding into the next. The sound was apocalyptic. A roar that shattered every remaining window in the ballroom, that cracked the marble floor from wall to wall, that made the very foundation of Imperium Academy groan.

The portals fused. Twenty became ten. Ten became five. Five became three. Three became two. And then, with a final, deafening detonation of light and force, the last two portals crashed together and became one.

It stabilized in the air before me, ten feet across, a perfect circle of silver-white light, humming with enough raw power to level a city. And through the event horizon, I could see a vast endless expanse of emerald trees and violet grass.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ROWAN

She was as bright as a star, hovering over our heads. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I could only stare. Her body was wreathed in blinding white light, hair streaming around her head like a corona of bleached silk. The starlight pouring from her fissured skin was so bright it hurt to look at, but I couldn’t look away. None of us could.

The portal she’d made hung in the air before her, ten feet across. The event horizon was a perfect, shimmering disc of silver-white light, and through it, I could see straight through to the other side.

Emerald trees. Violet grass stretching to a horizon sky the color of crushed amethysts, and something that might have been a sun—or two suns—casting light in shades I’d never seen before. The air that spilled through the portal smelled sweet and floral and ancient and utterly alien.

Ophiuchus.

The Second Crossing.

I felt the shock ripple through every one of us, but before we could fully process, Rafe’s barrier dropped. The magical dome shattered inward. Rafe was on his knees, blood streaming from his nose, his shield brothers catching him as he collapsed. The barrier dissolved into motes of fading light, and the bane poured in.

“RUN!” I screamed. “EVERYONE THROUGH THE PORTAL! NOW!”

My shield didn’t hesitate. We moved as one unit, fanning out, shouting, grabbing people, shoving them toward the shimmering disc of light that lowered to the ground level. Draco was dragging civilians off the floor. Eris’s duplicates materialized through the crowd, forming a chain, pushing people forward.

“Move! Move, move, move!”

I don’t know why, maybe desperation makes people listen to anyone who sounds like they have a plan, but they stopped and listened. They saw the portal. They saw what was on the other side. And they ran for their lives.

It was a stampede. A tidal wave of bodies surging toward the light. Shield teams broke free of their fights and sprinted for the portal. They leapt through the event horizon in clusters, disappearing into that violet-green world without hesitation.

Assembly members went next. I saw Director Orion herself, her silver gown torn, her chignon destroyed, sprinting alongside her security detail. She grabbed a young woman by the arm and shoved her through, then followed. Bureaucrats who’d spent their lives suppressing the very knowledge of the home worlds were now diving headfirst through a portal to one, and the irony was so thick I could have choked on it.

Order members poured through to my immense, knee-buckling relief. Tala was one of the last, her velvet dress shredded, her face streaked with blood and tears. She paused at the threshold, looked up at Jupiter, at the burning, broken angel holding the door open, and I saw her mouth the words thank you before she stepped through and vanished.

The bond screamed. It wasn’t a sound, really. It was a feeling. A white-hot feeling of agony lancing through every connection, every thread, every fiber of the magic that bound us to her. Jupiter was holding the portal open through sheer, suicidal will, and the cost was written across her body in fissures of bleeding light.

The pain coming through the bond was indescribable. Something that felt like being slowly dissolved, like every cell in her body was being unmade and remade simultaneously. She was suspended in her magic, lost in it, beyond consciousness, beyond thought.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to fly up there and pull her down and wrap her in my arms and tell her to stop, to let go, that it was enough. But I couldn’t. Because if she let go, the portal collapsed, and everyone still in this ballroom died. So I kept shoving people through. Kept screaming. Kept moving.

Jupiter’s parents made it. Her father had her mother’s hand in a death grip, and he was running flat-out, his suit jacket gone, his face a mask of fucking terror and fierce, desperate pride. He looked up at his daughter, at the vessel his daughter had become, and I saw his face crumple for just a second before he dragged his wife through the portal and disappeared with Noodle clutched in his grip, hissing and fighting to get back to Jupiter.

Then Lydia’s shield went in as a unit. Tye carried Kassie over his shoulder because she couldn’t see the bane, couldn’t understand what was happening, and he wasn’t going to leave her behind. Lydia was at his side, ice still forming on her knuckles, her blue dress dark with blood that might have been hers or someone else’s. Valeria was right behind them, lightning crackling in her wake, and Rafe—barely conscious, supported by his shield brothers—stumbled through last.