“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 washerscent, 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.
“If you don’t know where you come from, how can you possibly understand the depths of what you’re capable of? It’s not just astrolabes and battle relics we keep hidden down there. It’s culture. It’s art. It’s literature. And notjusttheoretical texts on magic. My mum has a collection of poems from the Libra home world. They were preserved on these incredibly fragile, crystalline slates that had to be magically transcribed onto parchment centuries ago just in case they shattered. She used to read them to me as bedtime stories when I was a boy. She translated them into English, doing her best to preserve the original rhythm and meter. They were beautiful. Poems about skies with twin suns, about canyons that went miles deep, where the wind sang through the hollows of the world.”
Jupiter’s breath hitched slightly, her gaze dropping to my mouth before fluttering back up to my eyes. The air between us thickened, charged with static electricity. I wanted to reach out. I wanted to trace the line of her jaw, to pull her across the cushions and onto my lap, to see if she tasted as sweet as she smelled. But I held back. I wanted her to trust me implicitly, to feel safe with me.
“That sounds incredible,” she whispered. “I’d love to read them someday. If... if your mother wouldn’t mind.”
