pounded on the door twice before he could make contact again.
“Go away!” I yelled, my eyes clamped on Aries’s lips.
“Capricorn requests an audience,” Kes growled from outside.
I stood with Kes. I’d combed my hair as best as I could and quickly changed dresses, slipping the teal one over my head. I’d undone the sides the other night to extricate myself, only to knot them again, hoping I did it right and the fabric strands would stay knotted.
Aries and Kes flanked me as we walked to the room where Capricorn waited. Aries insisted I go with him and held my hand as we entered the sitting room. It was the same one in which I’d first spoken to Xavier. Capricorn was settled on one of the twin sofas.
She was beautiful, her skin covered in a thin, pale coat of fur and garbed in a dress of animal skin tailored to fit her form. My eyes tracked down to her legs, noticing the fur on her knees had rubbed away, leaving a fleshy pad exposed. In place of feet, she had matte black, cloven hooves. Matching small horns protruded from her head, pointing backward. They were chipped and layered, not nearly as smooth and polished as Aries’s were, and she watched me with the strangest eyes I’d seen. Each one had a double iris, the pupils of which were rectangular.
She slowly stood and Aries tucked me behind him. I popped the snap off the leather holster on my leg and took hold of the knife’s handle. Just in case.
“I’ve spoken with Aquarius and Virgo,” she announced. Her voice was small and feminine, almost fragile. “What you did to us was wrong.”
Aries stiffened.
“But I understand why you did it,” she conceded, standing to face Aries. “What I can’t understand is why you’ve pledged yourself to her. So, that’s the answer I need before deciding who to align with, or if I should remain neutral.”
Aries explained how he’d made the Guardians and how he told Kes, because he was chief among them, that if he was ever to awaken, he would owe him a single right. He’d warned him not to squander it on things that faded away before drifting to sleep. When he woke, Kes invoked the right on my behalf.
“Virgo has explained that you can break your vow, yet you won’t,” Capricorn posed cautiously, watching us with her four pupils expanding and contracting with the light in the room as she walked around the table, coming closer.
“I don’t trust Virgo on the matter. She claims to have been ever faithful to Lager, yet also claims to have knowledge of severing the pledge. It makes no sense. But even if it were true and the vow could be broken, I would not break it. Larken doesn’t deserve to die because of my mistake, or his.”
I glanced at Kes, who was rigid beside me as he watched Capricorn slink closer. Her hooves clacked along the stone.
“So, this was not your attempt to overtake us?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Have I made any attempt to overpower any of you? Even Taurus?”
“You can’t deny the power she feeds you,” Capricorn scoffed, crossing her fur-covered arms.
“I cannot,” he said. “But neither do I wield it against you. It simply is. Just as she simply is.”
Capricorn leaned forward and sniffed, rapid little huffs pouring out and being brought into her nose. Her shrewd eyes flicked to Aries. “Aquarius told me that she stripped Cancer’s claw away.”
“I was only defending myself,” I told her. Kes shot me a glance that said to shut my mouth before Capricorn stuck the tiny horns on her head up my—
“He’s coming for you,” she said. “Taurus will not relent.”
“I know.”
A slight smile played upon her lips. Her four pupils flicked to my thigh where my dagger was hidden from sight. “You’ll need much more than that blade and mettle to defeat him.” She turned her attention to Aries. “I’ve heard enough. I will stand with you.”
Tension began to melt from his shoulders.
“But if you try to use the power against any of us other than to defend yourself against an attack, I will be the first to gut you.” She flicked a look my way before vanishing.
I let out a breath and rubbed a hand over my heart. It was pulsing again, pain throbbing through the hole that wasn’t really there.
“How much more powerful are you than the rest of the Zodia?” I asked. When he faced Taurus in the graveyard, he