“There is no way out of this,” she says with a resigned sniffle. “I can’t run. Not if my sister is trapped here.”
“We’re not going to run. We’re going to fight.”
She laughs, ducking under my arm. “You’re out of your mind. It’s impossible. We’re not strong enough.”
“Nothing is impossible,” I hiss as she wades away from me. “You said it yourself. He’s afraid I won’t cooperate with the Dismantling. That I’ll hurt someone. And believe me, I’d love nothing more than to knock him off his throne.”
“You can’t. He’s Chronos now.”
I shadow her through the water, careful to keep my voice low. “Yes, now, Kai. But whoever has the staff has control.” Lyon made the mistake of revealing that much to me when he showed me that vision of the battle beside the lake. Lyon only had to take Michael’s staff and use it to kill him. Lyon is soft—he’s a scholar, not a fighter. His Guards are new and inexperienced. All I need is a shot at disarming him. “The staff is the key to taking his power. He’ll have it with him at the Dismantling. I’m going to find a way to get it.”
“Lyon will know what you’re up to before you’ve even finished planning it. He probably already does.”
“He’s a coward. He won’t look that far.” Lyon’s hands had been shaking when he covered the eye. That last glance inside it cost him something. Whatever he saw in that vision threw him off his game, as if the future unnerved him. Maybe even terrified him. And I have to believe the person he saw wrecking his future was me.
Kai looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “There will be at least four Guards in that room. Maybe more. Not to mention Gaia!” She whispers Gaia’s name with an almost fearful reverence. “Even if you could get close enough to take the staff, you’d never make it out of that room alive.”
“So I’ll break into his office and steal it before then. No one says we have to wait for the Dismantling.”
She stops moving to gape at me. “Stolen magic is cursed magic.”
“Who fed you that line of crap?”
“A librarian in the Hall of Records. She said stolen magic comes with a price. And if you take someone’s magic without their permission, you inherit their weaknesses and faults.”
“Bullshit. There’s no such thing as curses.”
Her laugh is dark. “Bet you didn’t think there was any such thing as magic once, either.”
“Whatever,” I mutter, splashing her and making her duck low in the water. “I’ve been here a long time, and I’ve never heard anything like that.”
“Even if you could steal the staff, you’d have to find a way out of our cell first.”
I gesture loosely at the pool around us. “And?”
With a roll of her eyes, she asks, “What about the Guards?”
I pull her toward me, close enough to whisper, “All we need is a little distraction.”
She looks up at me through thick, wet lashes, and I catch a glimmer of hope under them. “Even if you could manage to break into his office,” she says quietly, “Gaia has a pet inside. A snake. You won’t make it two steps out that door before Gaia finds out and the Guards are all over you.”
The snake. I hadn’t thought about it until now. I draw back from Kai, scraping trails of warm water from my face. Getting into Lyon’s office wouldn’t be impossible. Overtake the duty guard when he comes to our cell, steal his key card, take the staff . . . One stroke of the scythe—that’s all it would take to bring an end to Daniel Lyon.
But Kai’s right . . . the snake poses an obstacle. If it is one of Gaia’s pets, then it could also be one of her spies. She’d sense everything that snake sees, and she would know what I’m up to the moment I breach Lyon’s office.
“It’s odd,” I say in a low voice, almost to myself, as I watch the smazes weave through the holes in the vents. “I’ve never seen a snake in the Observatory before.” As long as I’ve lived here, there have only been the crows, bees, flies, and smazes—the creatures Gaia uses as vessels for magic. If it were an ordinary pet, it wouldn’t be kept in a tank inside a locked office. It would live in the menagerie with all Gaia’s other creatures, until it became a host for some dead Season’s soul.
No, this snake is different. Its eyes aren’t ordinary at all. They remind me too much of Gaia’s.
Kai’s shudder ripples the surface of the pool. “I hate snakes. That one was creepy. Like the one in the painting in the gallery.”
I turn sharply to face her. “Which painting?”
“The one of Chronos and Ananke.”
Sweat beads on my lip and I wipe it away. I’ve marched past that painting a thousand times on my way to and from the Control Room. It’s the only representation of Ananke that exists on the campus. In it, she’s depicted as a serpent. And Kai’s right. The eyes of the snake in Lyon’s office are the same as the ones in the painting—the same as Gaia’s. Diamondlike. Faceted, like the crystal eye in the staff.
I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before. Those eyes. The similarities.
“We should go,” Kai says. “The Guards are going to come looking for us soon.” She takes a few steps toward the other side of the pool, but I take her by the arm and drag her back through the water, keeping us out of earshot of the smazes.
“What if the snake isn’t a pet?”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
“Why else would the snake be kept in Lyon’s office, apart from all Gaia’s other creatures and spies, if it isn’t special? If it isn’t worthy of a place closer to Chronos?” As my excitement rises, so does my voice. It takes everything inside me to tamp my adrenaline down. “What if the snake is a host for Ananke’s magic?”
Kai shakes free of my grip, her face paling. “Then I vote we leave it alone. There’s a reason that thing is in a cage.”
I corner her, forcing her to hear me out. “Don’t you see? Michael must have trapped her soul when he killed her and put her magic inside that snake.” She stares at me the same way I’d stared at the images projected on Lyon’s desk, both mesmerized and too afraid to look away.
“So?”
“So Inevitability held power over everything—Chaos, Earth, Time . . . all of them. Chronos killed Ananke because he was afraid of her. Her magic outweighs them all. And if Ananke’s magic can be stolen and put in a snake, then it can be stolen and put in something else.” If an animal can be Ananke’s host, then so can a man. All I have to do is get my hands on that snake and draw the magic out. “With that kind of power, I can do exactly what Lyon is afraid of. I can stop the Dismantling.”
“And then what?” she asks warily.
“I can give you what you truly want . . . your sister and your magic.”
6
Alone in the Winter Rain
JACK
My lungs are still burning from the sprint home as I step out of the shower. No matter how many plates I tack onto the bar or how many miles I run, I can’t work off the frustration. It’s anchored deep. Not in my muscles or lungs. It’s a persistent ache behind my heart, and I’m certain it’s slowly killing me.
I leave the bathroom without waiting for the fog to clear from the mirror, unable to stand the sight of myself. A stubborn smear of blood stains the towel where it brushed my neck. I couldn’t defend myself against two human assholes trying to steal my watch. That wrist monitor is my only means of keeping Fleur safe outside the villa, and if she hadn’t shown up when she did, they would have slit my throat and taken it.
I haul open a drawer and drag a fresh T-shirt over my head. My cell phone vibrates on the dresser. I scrape it toward me, scanning the notifications on the screen. An email from Lyon.
Jack,
Your visas are in the post. I’ve attached a report you should see. In light of recent events, both here and abroad, Gaia and I feel it’s best if you and Fleur reconsider your vacation plans.
I’m sorry, Jack. I’m here if you need to talk. And my offer stands. I’ve included updated pas
sports with your visas as well as two travel vouchers, enough to cover flights from Mexico City to London, in case you change your mind about coming home.
Until our call next week,
Daniel
Professor Daniel Lyon
The Observatory, Department of Humanities
I linger on those last two lines, and a grin tugs at my lips. Lyon still hasn’t gotten around to changing his title in his email signature. He’s far too sharp, his attention to detail too unerring, for this to be an oversight. Lyon’s new title carries significantly more weight—Father Time, Chronos, Grantor of Immortality, Ruler of Our Universe . . . Most would be thrilled to tack any one of those honorifics onto the end of their name, or over it, erasing who they were before. But not Lyon. I’m guessing he’s as uncomfortable using his new title as I’ve been. And something about that makes that ley line to his office shine brighter.
Until I open the attachment at the bottom of the screen.
My smile fades as I skim the report, my visions of our anniversary trip to Amsterdam suddenly reduced to smoking piles of dust. Lyon and Gaia have been searching for a handful of AWOL Seasons—bounty chasers who came after Fleur and me when we were on the run from Michael. Most turned themselves in and were granted clemency. Others were caught and brought back to the Observatory for hearings. But a few slipped off the grid as soon as they heard about Michael’s defeat; they haven’t turned up since.
And those are the ones Lyon is worried about.
A pattern of odd and untimely storms suggests they’re alive—and they aren’t lying low. Lyon’s restricting travel for all non-paired Seasons unless they consent to be monitored, tied by a transmitter to a ley line. Which would be an option for a Season like Fleur—whose magic could be pulled back to the Observatory through a ley line if the worst should ever happen to her—but not for a human like me.
I pitch the phone onto the bed, leaving a dent in the comforter. Arms braced against the dresser, I hang my head, struggling to figure out how I’ll break the news to Fleur. We outran an army of Guards and fought off a horde of bounty-hunting Seasons as they chased us across the Atlantic and most of North America, but now that I’m human, we can’t be trusted to leave the safety of our own freaking town.
A breeze lifts the sheer curtains of our bedroom. Raising my head, I catch a flash of pink through the window. Fleur’s perched on the lip of the pool in the courtyard below, the hem of her peasant skirt pulled up over her knees and her feet dangling in the deep end. Ceiba and cypress trees form a pale backdrop, their branches turned down, their pale leaves wavering under the churning gray clouds behind her. Her curtain of hair is tucked behind one ear, revealing the long white wire connecting her earbuds to her cell phone. One foot draws somber patterns in the water as she talks.
The breath I draw feels heavy.
She’s beautiful. Beautiful and awe-inspiring and strong; I don’t deserve her.
I lurch at the sudden ring of my phone. “Cold As Ice” by Foreigner belts through the room and I rush to the bed to silence it. My former Handler’s smug face fills the screen. I didn’t pick the ringtone—Chill did—and no matter how many times I change it back to something that doesn’t make me want to rip my skin off, he manages to hack my phone and swap it out again.
I answer with a sigh. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I sensed a disturbance in the Force.”
I tuck the phone under my ear and peel back the edge of the curtain. Fleur’s still on the phone. And now I know who with. “Poppy told you, huh?”
“Nah. But they’ve been on for almost an hour, and she keeps putting my calls to voice mail. I only managed to get through once, and all she said before she hung up on me was that I should call you. Trouble in paradise?”
“No.” I carry the phone down the hall, slip inside my office, and close the door. I fall backward onto the couch, an arm slung over my eyes. In the drawn-out silence, with my old roommate’s voice in my ear and the sagging cushions of the ratty old couch folding around me, I can almost imagine I’m back in our dorm room.
“Because you can tell me—”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I grumble. When I open my eyes, Fleur’s lopsided evergreen is right above my head. I sit up and swing my feet over the edge of the couch. “It’s nothing. We’re fine.”
“Got it,” he says quietly. And by the grace of Gaia, he lets it go.
“Where are you anyway? Winter’s almost over. Shouldn’t you be home, in stasis?”
“I’ve got a few days left until Jarek gets here to take over. I’m ready to get home to Poppy. I plan to Netflix and chill with my girl for the rest of the summer.” Poppy—Fleur’s former Handler, the girl Chill swore he couldn’t stand until he was offered the chance to spend eternity with her—is Chill’s Handler now. Chill became a Winter during the battle at the lake, when he was mortally wounded while trying to save me. I passed on the opportunity to take Lyon’s old Winter magic so Chill would survive, and in turn, he saved Poppy by choosing her for his Handler. In a few days, his season will be over and she’ll drag his matter—his soul, magic, and energy—through the ley lines, back to the home they share in Fairbanks, Alaska. After some time in stasis, they’ll have the rest of the year to spend together.
“How long will you be out of commission?” I move to my desk chair and switch on my monitors.
“Only a couple of days. Why? Are you going to miss me?”
“You wish.”
“I programmed my face on your phone so you won’t be too sad while I’m gone.”
I bark out a laugh. “I noticed. How’d you do that, anyway?”
“A hacker never reveals his secrets.” A bird calls somewhere in the background. Chill’s breaths come through the phone in ragged pants, as if he’s climbing steep terrain. The world feels upside down, with me in front of a computer screen and Chill huffing up a mountainside.
“A couple days, huh?” A sour jealousy washes over me. When I was a Winter, I’d spend months in stasis healing from the trauma of my injuries, and waking up in my girlfriend’s arms had never been an option.
“No blood will be spilled. Just need to sleep long enough to charge my magical batteries,” he says, referring to the discovery that helped us figure out how to survive out in the world without running out of power. The Seasons’ magic operates like a rechargeable battery. We were intended to work in groups, our opposing charges designed by nature to heal each other and replenish each other’s magic. The stasis chambers were Michael’s twisted solution for keeping Seasons apart—controlling us by leashing us to the Observatory by transmitters and making us dependent on those stasis chambers for power—rather than allowing us to coexist. We were too strong together, too much of a threat, capable of toppling the system that repressed us.
Those of us who left the Observatory have all come up with our own solutions. Amber and Julio can charge each other just by touching—something they never seem to stop doing, regardless of the weather in California. Fleur, on the other hand, doesn’t need a Season to partner with, as long as we stay in a climate that favors her. But Chill, choosing to live with his human Handler in Fairbanks, with its short, warm summers, relies on a stasis chamber for a little juice once in a while.
“Huh.” I fiddle absently with the mouse. The violence of the hunts, the pain of killing Amber and being killed by Fleur, the length of stasis and the sickness that followed, the loneliness and isolation of it all . . . those were the parts of being a Winter that sucked—the things I’d told myself I was glad to be done with. And now those things aren’t even an issue anymore.
“You okay, Jack?” Chill spent too many winters listening to my voice through his headphones, sifting through nonverbal cues for signs that something was wrong. That I was in danger—too tired, too sick, too angry at the world . . . ready to give up.
“Yeah.” I sit up in my chair and open my email, shoving aside thoughts that have been gnawing on me since the park. “I’m happy for you,
Chill. No one deserves it more than you and Poppy.” That’s the truth. And it’s the reason I passed up my chance to become a Winter again—so Chill and Poppy could have this life together.
Lyon’s email appears on my screen when I refresh it. “Did you see this report Lyon sent out a few minutes ago?”
“Reading it now.” Chill’s breathing’s steadied, as if he’s finally sitting down. “What do you make of it?”
“He said they’ve been waking the last of Michael’s Guards. They’re all getting stripped. The ones who refuse will be Culled from the program.”
A low whistle issues through the phone. “Those rogue Seasons who were loyal to Michael might be a little riled up about their friends being ashed. Maybe Lyon’s worried about retaliation.”
“Seems that way. Looks like we’re all on lockdown for a while.”
“So much for your anniversary plans. Is that what you all were arguing about?”
All I manage is a grunt in response.
“Hey, that’s Jarek ringing through.” Chill’s sucking wind again, as if he’s back on the move. “I’ve got to take this. Then Poppy and I need to coordinate my trip home. By now, the girls should be done gossiping about you. Maybe you should go talk to Fleur.”
“Thanks, I will,” I tell him. “Have a safe trip home, and give Poppy a hug for me.”
Chill’s first to disconnect. I leave the phone pressed to my ear, listening to the silence on the other end of the line.
7
Of a Love or a Season
FLEUR
Jack steps out from under the veranda, his hands in his pockets, his bare feet pausing in the grass at the edge of the patio. I hardly hear Poppy’s goodbye. My gaze is fixed on the red slash on Jack’s neck as I tug the buds from my ears and rest them on my phone. He approaches slowly, his teeth digging into his bottom lip and his dark brows pulled down. The faint scent of blood reaches me before he does, and he glances up as my eyes dip to the raw wound.
“It’s fine,” he says, answering the question he must read on my face as I drag my feet from the pool. He sinks down beside me before I can stand, close but not touching. “How’s Poppy?”
Seasons of Chaos Page 6
