Page 79 of The Bound Zodiac

They were there before I could fully process it. All of them converged on me from every direction, moving so fast they blurred, and the bond, the bond that had been screaming and white-hot and agonizing, snapped back into place like a rubber band, flooding me with terror and relief so intense it nearly knocked me over.

“Jupiter—”

“Jesus Christ, Jupiter⁠—”

“Holy fucking shit, you’re alive, you’re alive⁠—”

“Don’t you ever—don’t you EVER do that again⁠—”

“Thank every god that exists, thank every star, thank⁠—”

Hands were on me. Everywhere. Percy’s palm cradling the back of my skull. Aiden’s fingers wrapped around my wrist, checking my pulse with shaking hands. Eris’s massive arm braced across my shoulders, holding me upright. Draco was on his knees in front of me, his violet eyes wild, his face streaked with dirt and blood and something that looked suspiciously like tear tracks.

Lucas had one hand on my knee, the other pressed flat against his own chest like he was trying to hold his heart inside his ribcage. Rowan was behind me, his chest against my back, his breath coming in ragged gasps against my hair. Theo and Phoenix flanked my sides, and Jamie was crouched at my feet, green eyes locked on my face, Gretchen perched on his shoulder with her feathers puffed to twice their normal size.

They were all talking at once. Overlapping so I couldn’t parse individual words anymore, just the overwhelming, bone-deep relief pouring through the bond, through every thread, every connection, until it filled me up so completely there wasn’t room for anything else.

“We’re here,” I said, and my voice was barely a whisper, scraped raw and thin. It hurt to even try, but I did. “We’re actually here.”

Percy’s hand tightened on the back of my neck. His eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot. “We’re here, honey. You did it. You fucking did it.”

I looked around, realizing we were on a hillside. The grass stretched in every direction, violet and emerald and silver, rippling in a wind that carried that impossible floral sweetness. Behind us, the landscape morphed into gentle, rolling hills dotted with trees.

It suddenly occurred to me that the bane were gone. Lightyears away on Earth. I doubled over, a sob tearing out of my throat that was equal parts relief and horror. We’d left them behind. We’d left the bane behind, sealed away on a planet that was now… what? A hunting ground? A graveyard? I didn’t know. I didn’t know if I could go back for the rest of our people, or if this was it.

But the bane weren’t here. I could feel it, the absence of that cold, wrong pressure, that soul-crushing darkness that had haunted every moment of our lives on Earth. The air was clean. The magic was clean. There was no rot, no decay, no wrongness.

Around us, the survivors were scattered across the hillside in clusters. Hundreds of them. Shield warriors in torn formalwear, Assembly members clutching each other, civilians sobbing into the grass. I saw Tala sitting on a boulder, her velvet dress in ruins, Malakai’s arm around her shoulders.

I saw Lydia’s shield huddled together, Rafe pale but conscious. Kassie was curled against Tye’s chest with her face buried in his neck. I saw my parents. My mom was on her feet, scanning the crowd, and when her eyes found mine, she crumpled. My dad caught her, and they both went down to their knees, and I felt their relief hit me across the distance like a wave. Tears spilled over onto my cheeks as I smiled at my daddy, and he smiled back.

Everyone was trying to get their bearings. Shield teams were forming defensive perimeters, checking injuries, taking stock. Assembly members were shouting at each other, already trying to establish some semblance of order. Someone had started a fire. Someone else was passing out water… which I had no idea where they could have gotten it from.

And then I noticed the cluster of people standing at the edge of the cliffside. They were maybe two dozen, maybe more, gathered in a tight knot at the crest of the hill where the ground dropped away. They were facing outward, away from us, and they were perfectly still.

“Jupiter.” Draco’s voice was careful. “We need to show you something. But you need to brace yourself.”

I looked at him. His violet eyes were bright, almost feverish. “What is it?”

“Just—” He swallowed. “Just come see.”

They helped me up, and my legs were jelly, my body a wreck of fissured skin and aching bones, and I leaned into Percy on one side and Lucas on the other as they half-carried me across the hillside. The grass whispered under our feet. The wind picked up, warm and sweet, tugging at the tatters of my dress.

The cluster of people parted as we approached. I recognized some of them. Order members, shield warriors, a few civilians who’d been brave enough to venture to the edge. They stepped aside without a word, and the expressions on their faces made my stomach drop. Awe. Disbelief. Tears streaming down.

We reached the cliffside, and the wind hit me full-force. It whipped through my hair. My now…very white hair, bleached from root to tip. The air up here was thinner, colder, carrying the scent of soil and growing things. I braced myself against Percy’s chest, and I looked.

The world fell away beneath my feet. The cliff dropped hundreds of feet to a valley floor carpeted in violet grass and emerald trees, and beyond the valley, stretching to a horizon that seemed to curve with the planet itself, was a city.

It was crystalline. Every building, every tower, every structure was built from something that caught the twin sunlight and fractured it into a thousand colors. The towers spiraled upward, some of them impossibly thin, others broad and massive, their surfaces shimmering.

Bridges of translucent crystal connected the spires at dizzying heights, and even from miles away, I could tell the entire city had been grown rather than built. It was beautiful. It was magical. It was the most breathtaking thing I’d ever seen.

But… That wasn’t right, was it?

The cities should be in ruins.

Nature should have taken it all back.