Seasons of Chaos

by Elle Cosimano

  Whatever irritation I felt moments ago melts away as he swings out from under the bar and tugs me gently onto his lap. The calluses on his palms catch on the loose fabric of my skirt as he slides his hands up my hips, leaving snowy white trails of chalk on the dark cotton before settling on the small of my back.

  “If you’re not careful, you’re going to hurt yourself,” I say, the words tinged with worry. “Your physical therapist—”

  “My physical therapist gave me the green light,” he reminds me. It’s been nearly eighteen months since Gaia brought him back from the brink of his last death with three arrow-shaped scars in his back and a hole in his heart where his magic used to be. A hole he insisted would fill with time. But some days, I’m not so sure.

  My brows knit and he draws me closer.

  “The doctor said you could ease your way back into a light training routine.” I wipe a bead of sweat from his cheek. “Three hours a day in here isn’t ‘light training,’ Jack. And benching two twenty—”

  “Isn’t going to kill me.” He turns my hand over and presses a kiss against my palm. Goose bumps ripple over me as his lips travel to the crook of my arm. “My body’s in excellent shape,” he whispers, his dark dusting of morning stubble igniting a trail of shivers over my collarbone. “But if you want to test my endurance, I’m completely on board with that.”

  Laughing, I push him back by the chest with questionable effort. “I’ve got Spanish lessons in less than an hour.” And if he keeps kissing me like this, I swear to Gaia, I’ll never make it to class.

  He draws me back against him by the front of my shirt. “I’ll give you a very good reason to ditch.”

  I swat his hands away as I stand and wipe the chalk from my skirt. “You can show off your physical prowess when I get home.”

  “What if I want to show you now?” His fingers graze my waist as it swings out of reach. I let my gaze linger playfully on his chest. Then lower. My grin widens as I settle into a sparring stance.

  “Fleur,” he laughs, “this isn’t exactly what I had in—”

  I drop to the mat, sweeping his legs out from under him. His breath rushes out with the force of his fall, and before he can react, I’m on top of him.

  “Fleur—”

  Slamming his wrists against the mat, I pin him down with my knees. Something flashes in his eyes, wicked and wild. “Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be?” He surges under me, throwing me sideways, careful to control my fall as I crash down into the thick foam. We grapple, breathless and giggling, tumbling over each other until he’s got me pinned.

  “You’re holding back,” he says, loosening his grip, giving me an out I don’t need. He may be stronger, but the windows to the villa are completely open to the garden outside. I could summon roots and vines to haul him off me and hang him from the ceiling by his toes if I wanted to.

  I melt into the mat, my laughter dying as the hard angles of his hips sink to fit against the soft, warm space between mine.

  “Maybe I like you like this,” I whisper.

  I see it then, in his almost-flinch—whatever it is he’s been stacking on that weight bar and carrying alone. His dark hair falls over his eyes.

  “Hey,” I say, angling my face to catch his gaze. I know why he spends so many hours in here. And while I can’t deny the end result is amazing, it hurts knowing why he’s become so obsessed. “I love you, Jack. You.” I didn’t fall in love with him because of his magic. Nor did I fall out of love when he lost it. If anything, I fell harder, loving him more, for the strength it must have taken him to give it away. “I love you like this.”

  Lacing our fingers together, I raise our hands up over my head, bringing our faces close, the same way I held him down at the edge of the pond near the safe house, the night we shared that first earth-shattering kiss. It had started as a snowball fight, two Seasons wrestling in the marshy grass in a fit of laughter to see who would come out on top. Maybe he let me get the best of him that night, but it didn’t matter. Did it? Our lips met somewhere in the middle.

  “I’m making you late.” His nose brushes mine, and his mouth skates over the edge of my lips. “You should probably get ready for class.” The words are lost in the haze that wraps around me as he grazes my ear. His voice is deep, rough with desire, sending a delicious shiver through me, and I wonder if he knows how much power he has. How he ignites my blood and makes my body thrum, even without his Winter magic.

  “Are we ever going to talk about this?” I ask.

  Jack’s breath stills against my neck. He pulls back a little, just enough to search my face. He presses a too-soft kiss to my lips before untangling himself from my hands. Suddenly, his warm weight is gone, and he’s reaching down to help me up. “I’ve got my meeting with Lyon, then I’m going for a run.”

  “Where?”

  “To the park,” he says, reaching for a towel.

  My hands freeze where they smooth the wrinkles from my shirt. Forcing a smile, I hitch a thumb over my shoulder, gesturing at the treadmill I bought him for Christmas. He hasn’t turned it on once since I took it out of the box. The sleek black machine sprawls like a slumbering cat, positioned strategically in front of the open window. “It won’t kill you to try it, you know.”

  “Neither will running outside alone.” He tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. We both know why I bought it. He knows I hate running. That I only go running with him at the park every morning because I’m afraid to let him go by himself. I don’t worry about myself out there. The rules of our world have changed since the rebellion. Most of the restrictions that used to keep Seasons in check have been lifted, giving us more freedom than we’ve ever had before. But while most Seasons seem grateful for the change, I’m not foolish enough to believe there aren’t still a few out there who feel loyal to Michael and miss the old ways. Lyon assures us he rounded up as many as he could find, but it only takes one, and Jack’s face is far too recognizable—he might as well be the poster boy for the whole revolution. And as much as I hate to admit it, he’s vulnerable without his magic. Daniel Lyon may have granted Jack immortality as part of the benefits package for the roles we played in overthrowing Michael, but just because our bodies don’t age doesn’t mean we can’t be injured or die. We both have to stay vigilant if we want to plant safe roots here. And running alone in the city isn’t smart.

  “Why won’t you use it?” I ask, leaning a hip against the treadmill.

  “Because . . .” He rakes up his sweat-matted hair, the jagged crown of black spikes falling back over his eyes as he paces away from me. “It makes me feel claustrophobic.”

  “It’s in front of the window.”

  “I can run outside. It’s perfectly safe. I don’t want to be hooked up to electronic devices all the time.”

  I tap my ear, where my transmitter usually sits. The one Jack makes me wear whenever I leave the villa. “Aren’t you being a little hypocritical?”

  He shakes his head, laughing silently, his hands on his hips as he saunters toward me. He curls his arm around my waist. “I’m supposed to be your Handler. Not the other way around.”

  I lean back, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah? Well, maybe I don’t need a spotter, either.”

  His lips chase mine, smiling against them as he steals another kiss. “Too bad. You made your choice. You’re stuck with me.”

  I wrap my arms around his neck. “I’ll never regret it.”

  Jack had been as good as dead, bleeding out beside a frozen lake, when I was given the choice to save one person to be my Handler and protector for the rest of my immortal life. Watching him die nearly killed me, and I have no intention of losing him again. “Treadmill, please,” I say, ruffling the ends of his damp hair. I rise up on my toes to plant a last kiss on his cheek. “Or wait for me to get home and I’ll go with you.”

  “Wear your transmitter!” he calls after me.

  “I have my cell phone,” I shout over my shoulder.

  “Fleur?”
r />   “I know!” My voice carries across the veranda as I stride to our bedroom. I hate that damn tracking device, probably for the same reason Jack hates the treadmill—they remind us too much of the life we fought to leave behind. But as Jack so often insists on pointing out, cell phones are difficult to locate with any degree of accuracy, and they’re useless if you need both hands free to fight. And he’s right—my tracker is the only reliable way he can keep tabs on me when I’m away from home. So, because it means a lot to him and I hate to see him worry, I tuck it in my ear before slipping on my sandals and packing up my textbooks for class. As I drag my backpack over my shoulder, I catch movement across the courtyard.

  Through the window, across the veranda, I watch as Jack scoops up his running shoes and turns off the lights.

  2

  If I Should Ever Come Back

  JACK

  I carry my running shoes through the villa, down the long, open-air corridor past Fleur’s paintings to my office, pausing at the kitchen on the way. The jays squawk as I tear into a cinnamon roll Fleur left on a plate for me, awaiting the crumbs she always scatters over the edge of the balcony for them while she eats. Even the branches of the jacaranda seem to lean toward the villa, angled toward Fleur and her earth magic like she’s their sun.

  Leaning a hip against the butcher block island, I drag a finger over the puddle of hardening icing left on the plate. A paper is pinned underneath it, and I lick the last of the sugar from my fingers, careful not to leave sugary prints as I pull the torn page of a magazine from under the rim. It’s an ad, featuring a glossy color photo of a streetscape in Amsterdam, a dreamy-eyed couple on a bridge, promising a week of romance. A handwritten date is circled with a heart—March 11, the day Fleur first agreed to run away with me, which she’s deemed our official anniversary.

  I tack the ad for the riverboat cruise against the side of the fridge with a magnet, alongside the others: a railway tour of the Canadian Rockies, a backpacking trip through Chile, gastronomic tours of Italy and Greece. Now that we’re free of the Observatory, Fleur wants to see the world. She wants to go everywhere, because I promised her we would. But as her Handler, my number one priority is to keep her safe. Nestled in our villa in Cuernavaca, the City of Eternal Spring, surrounded by Fleur’s garden and a security system I’ve spent more than a year perfecting, I can do that.

  But out there?

  We barely survived our journey to get here. It took all eight of us—four Seasons, each with our own magic, and four Handlers to keep an eye on our backs—just to make it this far. We lost friends and allies along the way, pieces of ourselves. We all came away changed—me more than anyone.

  I fling open the door of the fridge in search of some milk to chase away the stubborn lump in my throat. The cold air inside condenses, tumbling out in billowing smazelike clouds, and I lean into them, eyes closed, letting the chilled air roll over me. The hum of the refrigerator drowns out the birds on the terrace, until the kitchen disappears and I’m back at the frozen pond with Fleur. My fingers curl around the cool steel of the fridge door handle. I miss the crackle of frost on my skin. Miss the way Fleur looked at me when I made it snow for her. Miss the zing of magic that coursed through us when we touched.

  Her willingness to give in so easily when we sparred in the training room felt like a concession. A gentle reminder that I’m not a Season anymore. No longer the one who can recharge her magic or heal her with a touch. No matter how many hours I spend fighting those weight machines, I’m just her human Handler. And there are days—my worst days—when I wonder if that’s still enough for her.

  With a sharp shake of my head, I snag the carton of milk and shut the refrigerator doors. Drinking straight from the container, I choke down huge gulps, but it does nothing to wash away the guilt I feel for the pathetic, selfish thoughts I’ve been thinking since I watched her leave the training room.

  I have Fleur. We have each other and our lives. She can take Spanish classes, read romance novels with happy endings by the pool, and paint terrible paintings of every species of plant in her garden. We can make out for hours, then fall asleep in the same bed, without worrying that one of us will die.

  We have a spectacular home, bursting bank accounts, and the added bonus of my immortality, all thanks to our reward for bringing about the rebellion that put Lyon in power.

  We can live here, together in a paradise of our own making, forever if we want to. My magic was a small price to pay for that.

  I pitch the empty milk carton into the trash can and swipe a handful of crumbs from the counter into my palm, scattering them over the balcony for the birds as I leave the kitchen. They dive down to the patio below, chasing the small offering in a greedy chorus as I grab up my running shoes and pad to my office.

  I can’t blame Fleur for wanting to travel. Even though the house is open to acres of wildlife, it can be hard not to feel hemmed in sometimes. Surrounded by security gates and cameras and a fortress of trees, we’re completely safe here on the grounds of our villa. And for the most part, we’re safe in the surrounding region and the towns within it. Daniel Lyon, the new Chronos, and his partner, Gaia, issued a protective order around our home here in Cuernavaca, including a hunting ban for a radius of a few hundred miles. But just because rules are set in place doesn’t mean everyone plays by them. I should know, since I was the one who started the rebellion that got us here.

  In the wake of that rebellion, freed Seasons are required to check in weekly with an assigned staff member back at the Observatory. We’re supposed to report any planned trips outside our regions and submit to careful monitoring. When our friends Julio and Amber want to come visit, it’s no big deal—just a few phone calls, some added security measures, and a few plane tickets. But if Fleur and I want to escape off the grid, just the two of us—a Season alone with her nonmagical Handler—things get a whole lot trickier to plan. I don’t know if Lyon’s just paranoid about the handful of rogue Seasons they haven’t been able to round up, or if he received some kind of specific threat, but for the last few months, he’s seemed more and more on edge, and not a week goes by that he doesn’t offer to have a team of escorts bring us home.

  But the Observatory under Greenwich Park in London isn’t home anymore.

  I duck into my office and settle into my chair. My state-of-the-art computer setup boasts three sprawling flat-screens and a sound system that could knock the terra-cotta tiles off the roof of the house. The walls above the monitors are decorated with old posters of classic 1980s films and obscure punk bands. An old crushed-velour couch with pink cushions lines the opposite wall. I don’t know why I bought it from the flea market downtown, except that the frame sags in places that remind me of the couch Chill and I left behind in our dorm room at the Observatory, even if the color’s all wrong. Above it, jammed between Dead Kennedys and A New Hope, hangs one of Fleur’s first paintings: a lopsided evergreen capped in snow.

  I wiggle the mouse, rousing the wall of monitors above my desk. The security panel beeps as the front door opens and closes again.

  A moment later, Fleur appears on a black-and-white monitor in front of me. I slip on my headset as she makes her way down the cobbled driveway, the low heels of her sandals clacking and the long waves of her pink hair playing on a breeze. My chest aches every time I watch her walk out of here.

  She turns and blows me a kiss. The red light linked to her transmitter moves briskly over a map on the next screen, her GPS tracker displaying every turn she makes between here and her favorite café. I’m only half listening as she enters the coffee shop and places her usual order in stilted Spanish. A new barista’s working the counter. I glance up at the footage from her body cam in time to see him wink as he hands over her cappuccino. I don’t know much Spanish, but I manage to pick up the gist of his question in the hopeful lift of his brow.

  “Did he just ask you out?”

  Fleur waves goodbye to the barista. “If you’d come to class with me once in a whi
le, maybe you’d know.” I can hear her smile. See it in the bounce of her step as she saunters from the shop. “Don’t you have a meeting or something far more important to do than spying on me?”

  “Nothing will ever be more important than what I’m doing right now.” My attention shifts between her GPS, her vitals, and her bodycam footage. I turn to my second monitor, scrolling quickly through satellite weather images and the day’s news headlines. The weather’s clear a few hundred miles in every direction. Nothing to suggest any other Seasons wandering too close to our region or encroaching on Lyon’s boundaries without permission.

  She hauls open the door to her language school. “Did you see what I left for you in the kitchen this morning?”

  “The cinnamon roll?”

  “The canal cruise through Amsterdam,” she says, climbing a set of winding concrete stairs. “Will you talk to Lyon about it?”

  The whole idea gives me heartburn. “Fleur, I don’t know if—”

  “He owes us this.” Fleur’s red light stops moving. I lift my head to the feed from her body cam. She’s standing outside her classroom door, her crossed arms reflected in the glass pane, staring back at me.

  “I’ll talk to him,” I promise.

  The corners of her mouth lift in the glass, a small smile just for me, as she reaches for the door. “I’ll be home in a few hours.”

  “Be safe,” I murmur.

  I don’t relax until Fleur’s red light settles into the fourth seat in the second row of her classroom. I feel a stab of sympathy for Chill, my former Handler. I wonder if this was how he felt every time I walked out the doors of the Observatory during the thirty years I spent as a Winter. If he had nightmares and lost sleep worrying over me while I was out in the world alone.