“Tonight? Jack, he’s been searching for it for days. How will you—?”
I press a kiss to her forehead, whispering against it, “He doesn’t know Lyon the way I do. I know how Lyon thinks. It shouldn’t take me long to find it.”
She pulls my face down to hers as she folds a key card into my hand. “I stole this from Doug. It’ll open any door on the administration level and the portals to the Crux, but be careful, Jack. He’s going to be pissed when he finds out Chill is gone. He already killed Boreas. If he catches you—”
“He won’t find me.” I steal another deep kiss as I consider throwing her over my shoulder and dragging her with me into the catacombs. We’re both breathless when we finally break apart. I wipe a tear from her cheek. “I’m going to get you out of here, I promise.” Even if I have to kill him to do it.
She whispers for me to be careful. But I don’t want to be careful anymore. I want to be dangerous. I want to be cold and deadly. I want to find my smaze, rip Doug’s magic from his body, and jam the Staff of Time down his throat.
44
Lets Death Descend
FLEUR
There’s no point in locking myself back in Doug’s bedroom after Jack’s gone. The closer Doug gets to his apartment, the clearer his emotions become. His suspicion snakes through me, its long tongue sniffing around the edges of my magic. He knows something is wrong.
The light on the security panel blinks green a second before the door swings open. “Where are the Guards I stationed outside? And what are you doing out of your . . .” His head tips curiously and his lips part, a deadly flash of recognition flickering in his eye. It jumps to the bedroom behind me.
He licks his lips, as if he can still taste Jack’s scent in the room. “Sommers was here.” He saunters closer. His shirt is soured with the smoke from the hallway outside. “And he left without you.”
“Because I asked him to.”
“How honorable,” he says, brushing past me into the bedroom.
“It takes courage to walk away. You should try it sometime.”
“I was talking about you.” He inspects the room as if he’s expecting Jack to leap out from behind a door. I feel his thoughts probing, searching for an opening into my head.
“It’s endearing how you think he’s safer out there, hiding like a mole in the catacombs.” He drops onto the couch, loosening the top button of his shirt, less wary of me now that he knows there’s nothing I can do to hurt him. “But I’m not the only deadly thing lurking in the dark.” He raises an eyebrow, inviting a question. But I’m not sure I want to know what he’s talking about.
Doug watches me. I feel his magic circling mine, pacing, taunting. “Tell me, what did you and Sommers talk about while I was gone? Did you tell him about our little predicament?” he asks smugly.
“None of your business.”
“You must have told him. Otherwise, he never would have left. He’s far too heroic for that. But you didn’t tell him everything, did you?” He tips his head, watching me curiously. “Let me guess . . . you didn’t tell him how you got that stab wound in your leg. Because if he knew how vulnerable you are, he might be reluctant to defend himself. See? Like I said . . . you’re too honorable for your own good. He didn’t deserve you.”
His use of the past tense makes me want to put him through the faux window. “He deserves a hell of a lot more than you.”
Doug drags his phone from his pocket and scrolls absently through his messages, his voice falling low. So low, I almost can’t hear it when he mutters, “He’s a dead man, anyway.”
Static crackles in my hair. “What do you mean?”
“None of your business,” he says, mocking me, as he tosses his cell phone onto the coffee table. A pulse of pain flares inside him. Not the persistent physical pain I’ve felt since our magic became tangled. This is sharper, more acute. Betrayal.
An image flickers through my thoughts . . . no, through our connection. The picture is hazy at first. Hard to grasp. All I’m getting is a girl. The contrast of short, dark hair against a blurry face. I chase it deeper into his mind, concentrating hard as the girl’s features slide in and out of focus.
I know her. I’ve seen her before. The short pixie cut. Her petite frame. This is the same girl I saw trailing behind Jack and our friends in the video footage on Doug’s phone. But as the image grows clearer, so does my certainty that I’ve seen her somewhere else.
I’m not the only deadly thing lurking in the dark.
I grab Doug’s phone off the table before he can stop me and click open his photos app, scrolling through his videos as he scrambles after me.
It’s her. Kai Sampson, one of Michael’s Guards. I only saw her for a moment on the mountain before Jack and I were separated and she went after him. But her name is burned into me like a brand. Jack still screams it sometimes, bolting upright in bed in a blind panic, grabbing at invisible arrows in his back.
Doug snatches away his phone.
“No!” The word rattles the room. “You call off that Guard right this minute!”
“I would, but she’s not mine. Sommers brought her here. Come on,” he says, taking me roughly by the arm. “We’re leaving. There’s something we need to handle up top.”
Jerking free, I step out of his reach. Kai’s face is suddenly clear in Doug’s mind, his feelings for her glaring under a painfully bright light. He resents her. Doesn’t trust her. And what does he mean, Jack brought her here? “Why? Why would Jack do that?”
“Because they both wanted the same thing. He wanted to find his smaze so he could swoop in and rescue you, and she wanted to find her sister.” Another face appears in his mind. A blue streak in her hair. Frost on her skin, a white swirl in her eyes.
“Névé,” I whisper, finding it suddenly hard to breathe. “Névé was her sister?” They’re both looking for Jack’s smaze. “I don’t understand. Why would they come here together?” Jack couldn’t have known. Névé’s death has haunted him. He never would have used that kind of secret for leverage. But Doug . . .
“You,” I say, struggling to stay grounded as his mind becomes agitated and violent, “you told her. That’s where you were going when you left the office before.”
“Kai Sampson’s not my problem!” Doug rounds on me. “Do you want to know what my problem is? My problem is this.” He pulls a dead leaf from his pocket and crushes it in his hand. “Sixty-eight Seasons are in the wind, this place is falling apart, and people are beginning to question my ability to fix it! That’s my problem!” He bangs his pointer finger into his temple. “And as long as you’re along for the ride, it’s your problem, too! So when you’re finished worrying about whatever bullshit scavenger hunt for your boyfriend’s magic is going on in the catacombs, maybe you could help me figure out how to restore the world to its proper working condition!” His mind is a storm of emotion.
I have to find Jack. I have to get a message to him. And I can’t do that while Doug’s watching me. I have to keep calm. Hold my emotions in check. I don’t know how much of my mind Doug can see, or if he’s even figured out that he can, but if he suspects I’m up to something, he’s sure to try.
“Fine,” I say with a forced calm. “But I’m not going out there in a bloody prison jumpsuit. I want real clothes. Warm ones. And a coat.”
He eases away from me. “I’ll call Lixue—”
“No,” I say, careful not to think of Jack as I slip my recalcitrant hands into my pockets. My fingers curl around the wooden ornament I took from the floor of Doug’s office earlier. “Last time she picked my clothes, I nearly froze to death. I’ll choose the clothes myself, or I’m not going.”
“Fine,” he grumbles. “We’ll stop in Gaia’s room on the way.”
45
The Edge of Doom
JACK
I turn Lyon’s desk chair upright and fall into it, reading his letter again, certain I must be missing some clue inside it. I’ve been through all of his scattered files.
I’ve checked the underside of every tossed desk drawer and the margins of every poetry book. Elbows on my knees, I stare at the secret panel in the floor. Leaving Fleur in Doug’s apartment feels like a mistake, but I know better than to try to force her to go. All I can do is find the eye, come up with a plan, and wait.
The worst part—the worst fucking part, worse than knowing she’ll spend another day trapped in there with him—is that she’s doing it because she thinks she’s protecting me. Because she’s afraid for me. I’m supposed to be her protector, her Handler, the one who guides her out of impossible situations like this one. And instead of following me out of that suite, she’s determined to stand her ground and be my personal tornado, to shield me from Doug. But she’s forgotten the most important lesson we’ve learned.
You can’t make the perfect storm alone.
I rub my eyes, replaying our conversation, reminding myself she’s not entirely alone. Knowing my smaze has come to visit her heartens my resolve to find it. If my smaze knows her—if it has any desire to protect her the way I do—then maybe it really is mine after all. Maybe Kai’s right, and the only thing holding me back from claiming it is my fear of actually facing it.
I pull my head from my hands and check the clock on the wall. I have a few hours before I’m scheduled to rendezvous with the others. Enough time to find the eye and hunt down my . . .
My gaze locks on the whiteboard. On the last notes Lyon wrote on it before he died.
ENTROPY: chaos, disorganization, the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system.
“Entropy is the general trend of the universe toward death and disorder.”—James R. Newman
I walk to the board and wipe the word entropy with a finger. It doesn’t smudge away. Below it, a permanent marker rests on the tray.
Lyon didn’t want this message erased.
I read it again. My mind hooks like a scythe around the single underlined word.
Chaos. It was what Chronos feared most. What he couldn’t predict. It was his reason for seeking balance and control. To keep chaos at bay. And then Fleur and I came along and toppled his entire world. We invited chaos. Unleashed it. And from the ashes of it all, Lyon and Gaia re-created our world. They made it better. Peaceful. They gave everyone here a reason to hope.
Everyone except Doug.
So he lost a war. We all lost something that day. Pieces of ourselves. People we loved. Fleur and I were no exception, but we moved on with our lives.
Doug didn’t. . . . He couldn’t stand the thought of losing anything—not his position, not his friends, and definitely not his magic. And then he had to go and take more. Gaia warned Lyon about holding on to too much power, that it was dangerous. That all that magic would eventually tear him apart. Lyon had traded one magic for another. But Doug . . . he had to have it all—Time and Inevitability, Earth and all four of her elements. If it weren’t for Fleur, Doug would probably self-destruct and take the whole world with him.
Doug isn’t just Chronos anymore. He’s the embodiment of entropy. A damn vessel for chaos.
Lyon’s chair topples behind me as I spring to my feet. “A vessel for chaos. That’s it. That’s what you’re trying to tell me,” I whisper.
We are only matter in a closed system, Lyon had written, incapable of being created or destroyed. . . . Go back to your beginnings . . .
I run for the door, my footsteps muffled by the hum of generators as I use the key card Fleur gave me to maneuver through the Observatory, following Lyon’s map back to the east wing. Steps away from the Control Room, I freeze at the sound of wheels on glass. I duck into a side hall and crouch in the shadows. A crow blinks from her perch, head tipped, as two custodians amble past me, pushing mop buckets toward the Control Room. I watch the bird with wide, pleading eyes, waiting for it to call me out. But the crow stays mercifully quiet until they’re gone.
Glass crackles under my feet as I pass Gaia’s menagerie. The wall is framed by jagged shards, the habitats destroyed and all the cages empty. A gigantic bulbous beehive lies abandoned on the ground, crushed from the force of its fall. Tiny piles of ash—the souls of dead Springs—dust the floor around it.
The crow swoops over my head, her wings brushing the branches of the ancient fig tree shadowing the archway ahead. The gallery beyond the arbor is dark. I pluck a torch from the wall and strike a match. I can just make out the crow ahead, resting on a hunk of fallen ceiling under the dome. As I enter the gallery, I lift the torch toward the quake-damaged fresco. The fire licks at the brilliant colors, making the missing sections of the painting seem darker in contrast.
Most of the story is there—the painted history of the origins of the world. My beginnings . . . the birth of the Seasons.
The legend starts at one end of the hall, with an image of Chronos and Ananke joining together—just water and wind in a cold, stark universe. Their union was full of conflict. Time and Inevitability couldn’t seem to get along, and the universe eventually erupted in fire, giving birth to Chaos. The painting moves through time as it crosses the dome, to the birth of our world. Gaia’s image hovers over the highest point in the room. Dressed only in leaves and flowers, she’s standing in the ashes of Chronos and Ananke’s fiery union. Our elemental magic exploded from Chaos, and Gaia harnessed that magic to create the first Seasons.
I stand under the final image of Chronos and Ananke. Parts of the painting have broken away, but the end of the story is there, exactly the way I remember it. Their outstretched arms encircle Gaia and her offspring, controlling Chaos, their balance keeping it in check. But had they really ever been the ones controlling it? Or had Gaia been the one to bring balance to the universe—to keep the fragile peace between them?
. . . all that power should be wreaking havoc inside him. If part of me wasn’t in there, he’d probably explode. . . .
Chronos’s painted scythe curves toward me. He holds Ananke’s hand, but the expanse of dark matter between them—the chaotic cosmic soup that was the origin of the Seasons—is gone, the plaster cracked and smashed on the floor.
“I’m here, Professor,” I whisper. “I’m at the beginning, seeking answers. What are you trying to tell me?” I nudge aside a piece of rubble with my foot. “Is this it? Is this what we’ve started? The end of the world?” Doug took Time and Inevitability and trapped them together inside him. He’s the very embodiment of their union. Is he the harbinger of Chaos? The beginning and the end of the universe? Is it only a matter of time before he explodes? If I do manage to free Fleur, what happens to the world? How do we save the magic and start over?
The crow, perched on a mound of rubble, caws and flaps her wings. I shush her, but she squawks violently and pecks at a brightly colored piece of plaster. The flame dances as I move toward her. She settles as I rest the torch against the wall and begin pulling chunks of the fresco from the debris. A painted arm. Gaia’s hands. Earth, water, wind, and fire.
A huge slab slides to the floor, revealing a face when the dust settles. A snake curls around Ananke’s neck. Her two diamond eyes gaze up at me, one of them dull and flat. The other seems to wink in the torchlight.
I drop to my knees in the debris, tracing the shimmering edge of the gem with my fingers. Then I work the crystal free of the slab and blow off the dust. The Eye of Ananke stares back at me.
Lyon’s missing piece . . . It’s been hidden in plain sight all along. The eye . . . our future and all the answers . . . the scythe and the crystal . . . the earth and the Seasons . . . all the magic . . .
They were all right here, at the very beginning.
Suddenly, I understand what Lyon wants from me. I see the plan he envisioned before Doug took his life. I know why Lyon brought all of us back here. I told Fleur I’d come back for her as soon as I figured out how to free her. But it isn’t just Fleur Lyon wanted me to save. Lyon expected me to save everyone.
46
The Road Not Taken
FLEUR
“Five minutes,” Doug say
s.
Gaia’s scent is overwhelming in the enclosed space: forests and oceans and desert flowers. And other things . . . rancid odors that shatter the illusion that she might still be here. A loaf of bread is beginning to mold in a bag on the kitchen counter, and the sour reek of spoiled milk drifts from a cereal bowl left in the sink. The potted plants scattered around the rooms sag in their pots. I don’t have the heart to revive them only to leave them to suffer again.
Doug leads me through Gaia’s apartment. Gaia’s dining room table is littered with files and reports, as if she expected to come back to them. He pauses, shuffling through the pages, picking up a hastily scribbled note. The looping script matches Lyon’s signatures on the memos in Jack’s office back at the villa.
It’s time, my love.
Doug crushes the note and tosses it away as he moves to the next room. I linger there, seeing the apartment differently. All the small clues that hint at the hurried, careless manner in which she must have left. All the loose odds and ends she left unfinished. How long had Gaia and Lyon known they were walking to their final deaths?
As I follow Doug, I slide a pen off the table and slip it inside the sleeve of my jumpsuit. Doug opens a set of doors in the hallway, revealing Gaia’s home office.
“Her bedroom must be in there,” he says, gesturing loosely to the only other pair of doors at the end of the hall. “Find some clothes and let’s go.”
Seasons of Chaos Page 27
