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 wordlesscommand 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’sbedroom 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.
