Seasons of Chaos

by Elle Cosimano

  . . . got a hit on a street cam in Peckham . . . She got off a bus there an hour ago.

  58

  Not One Was Left to Conquer

  JACK

  My door’s already open when Lixue swings the car into the alley behind Auggie’s place. The van’s nowhere in sight. I tap the speaker in my ear, but the connection is still down.

  “Fleur?” I call her name as I tear through the puddles toward Auggie’s door. “Where is everyone?”

  Lixue gets out behind me without bothering to shut off the car. “I don’t know. They should be here by now. They were supposed to meet us . . .” Lixue’s next words hang unfinished. There’s a soft snap behind me, and something heavy thumps to the ground.

  I turn, stumbling backward from the car. The driver’s side door hangs open, the windshield wipers slapping rain over the side. Lixue lies in the middle of the street, her head bent at an unnatural angle. Sparks of her magic mix with clouds of exhaust.

  Doug stands over her, blood streaming from his nose. A deep violet bruise darkens his cheek and burn marks checker his coat. He doesn’t spare Lixue a glance as he treads over a puddle of her ashes.

  How the hell did he find us? I have the eye; he couldn’t have known where we were going. And there’s no way he made it here this quickly on foot.

  I look past him, expecting to see a car full of Guards, but he’s alone.

  “Haven’t you learned by now?” he asks, limping closer. “There’s no point in running. You can’t stop what’s coming. You can’t hide from Inevitability.”

  I back away from him, one slow step at a time. “I can stop it. I can change it. We both can. It’s not too late to make the right—”

  “Don’t you dare finish that sentence. You and Lyon can both go to hell.” He lumbers toward me, gripping his scythe with both hands. Nostrils flared, he lurches to a stop halfway down the alley. His head tips toward the sound of a door creaking open behind me.

  “What a surprise,” Doug says, baring his teeth. “You look like shit, Kai.”

  I stiffen at the familiar sound of an arrow being drawn from a quiver. I turn slowly over my shoulder. Rain drips from the short dark ends of Kai’s hair. Her hands shake with stasis tremors around her bow. Her arrow’s already nocked and ready, the wicked retractable barbs aimed somewhere between me and Doug.

  “What can I say? I’m full of surprises.” Her voice is raspy and low as if she’s just woken up. An oversize flannel shirt hangs lopsided on her shoulders, the buttons misaligned, as if she rushed to fasten them. The pajama pants she wears are far too big, trailing the ground so only her toes stick out.

  Doug spits blood on the pavement. “Glad to see you made it out of the Observatory.”

  “Are you?” Her bare feet drag through the puddles, slow and cautious, her narrowed eyes darting between us as she creeps steadily closer. “I was under the impression you didn’t care. Maybe I was dreaming, but I could have sworn I heard the Guards call you on the radio when the evacuations started. If I remember correctly, I believe your exact words were, ‘Let her rot down there.’”

  Doug’s laugh is harsh. “You remember that, do you?”

  “I remember a lot of things you never meant for me to hear.”

  His smile crumbles. A muscle works in his jaw as they exchange a long look. Thunder rolls, ominously close.

  “How’d you get out?” he asks.

  “Someone carried me.” The point of her arrow shifts slowly to me. She licks rain from her lips, drawing a steadying breath as if she’s preparing to shoot. “Sommers has the eye. He took it from me.”

  Instinct makes me raise my hands. “Can we talk about this?” I ask in a low voice. “Please.”

  “You’ve already said all I needed to hear.” Her gaze leaps to mine, pointed and piercing. As if she’s trying to shoot a message straight through me. She slinks sideways into the middle of the alley, trapping me between her and Doug.

  His face slackens with surprise and his eye rakes over me. “You have the eye? Let me see it.”

  “Show me your back, Winter,” Kai says quietly.

  I blink against the rain, searching the alley for a way out. There’s a wall behind me, a building in front of me. Kai to my right. Doug to my left. I consider taking my chances and running. Better to go down fighting, right?

  But something in Kai’s words . . . and in her eyes when she said them . . . makes me hesitate.

  She’s staring at me with that same determined laser focus she had while we were in the cavern, right before she doused the torch and we ran.

  No more jokes about keeping my arrows where you can see them. . . . When are you going to start trusting me?

  Rain beads down her face. She doesn’t blink. Her nostrils flare. Is this some kind of a test?

  Show me your back . . . Winter.

  I look down at my hands, certain I’m imagining the way they shimmer in the icy rain. They’re not even shivering.

  I raise them, slowly turning my back to Kai. She comes up behind me and frisks my wet jeans. Her free hand dips into my pocket. She holds the crystal up where Doug can see it. She’s standing close enough for an elbow to the ribs.

  Her gaze flicks up to mine. A warning.

  Doug’s palm is blistered with frostbite, the cracks red and seeping, as he reaches out expectantly. “Toss it to me.”

  Kai shakes her head. She slips the eye in her pocket, retreating a few steps behind me, putting me smack between them. “Don’t move,” she says. A chill skates through me and I brace for an arrow. I’m not sure which one of us she’s speaking to.

  Doug’s eye twitches. “Give me the crystal, Kai.”

  Headlights slash across the mouth of the alley behind him. Tires squeal as the van skids to a stop.

  Fleur throws open the passenger door, hurling herself out the van, her bare feet tripping on a pair of borrowed sweatpants that could only be Auggie’s. Her pink hair sticks to her face, darkened by the rain. My breath stills at the sight of her.

  “Doug, stop this!” she shouts.

  Julio, Chill, and Amber rush into the alley behind her. I look between them, silently begging them not to interfere. The plan we made in the catacombs is moot. There’s only one way this ends. They should run while they can.

  Doug doesn’t bother to turn around. He closes his eye, lips parted as if he can taste the others in the air. “Do you know why, Fleur? Why I didn’t kill him that day I left you in my office?” he asks, the words taut with emotion. “I could have found him. The same way I found you that day in the catacombs. I could have searched every tunnel and appeared right in front of him. I could have ended him then. Do you know why I didn’t?” His voice shakes, rage straining the cords in his neck. “Because I could feel what it would do to you. I knew it would tear the world out from under you. And I didn’t want to subject myself to that kind of pain again. But now?” He wipes his nose, paling at the thick smear of blood as the rain washes it from the back of his hand. “I’ll gladly kill both of you.”

  Fleur rushes forward.

  Kai’s bowstring creaks behind me. “Stay back, or I’ll shoot him!”

  Fleur trips to a halt. Julio, Chill, and Amber pause beside her, their eyes darting back and forth between Fleur and me as if they’re not sure whether they should charge ahead with her or hold her back.

  I give a slight shake of my head, hoping like hell I’m not wrong about this. Poppy and Marie watch through the rain-beaded windows of the van, their hands pressed to the glass.

  “Doug, please,” Fleur begs. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

  “You’re in no position to ask me for anything,” he seethes, turning to face her. “You had your chance. You had a choice between saving Sommers and saving the world. And here we are,” he says, throwing up his hands. “The Observatory’s gone. The sky is fucking falling. Tell me how it ends, Fleur!”

  “I can’t,” she cries.

  “I can,” Kai calls out. Doug turns to her. A trickl
e of blood flows from his ear. “You want Inevitability?” she asks him. “You want to see how this ends? Fine, you can have it. But I want your assurance first.”

  Doubt rides the crest of his brow. “Assurance of what?”

  “That Sommers will get what he deserves.”

  He laughs. “And you want to be the one to give it to him?”

  “It’s only fair.”

  This is what he’s wanted all along, isn’t it? To watch me die. That my end should be at the hands of someone I thought was loyal to me.

  Fleur’s fist twitches at her side. I give another tight shake of my head, willing her to trust me.

  Doug’s desperate gaze drops to Kai’s pocket. His hands flex around the staff, his palm slick with blood where he holds it. Pain contorts his features and he sucks in a ragged breath. “And in exchange, Inevitability will be mine?”

  “Make your choice,” Kai snaps.

  “Fine,” he snarls. “Be done with it.”

  Fleur cries my name. My breath hitches with the sound of the bow’s release. The arrow hisses past my ear, soaring through the head of the staff—a clean shot into the empty hole where the eye should be.

  The arrow’s barbs flare with a snick. A trailing line of thick, clear filament falls across my shoulder. Kai jerks the line with a grunt, winding it toward her. The staff slips from Doug’s blood-slicked fingers, and I grab the handle as it rushes toward me.

  Shock slackens Doug’s face. He stumbles, arms outstretched. Time seems to move in slow motion. His shout is feral as he charges toward me.

  I draw the handle back and swing. The scythe buries itself deep in Doug’s chest. He drops to his knees in front of me.

  Amber, Julio, Chill, and Fleur jolt to a stop.

  “Oh no,” Julio whispers as a hot wind whips through the alley.

  Static hisses in the air. We all duck at a sudden deafening crack as lightning strikes a streetlight, showering the alley with glass.

  Doug’s body starts to glow. Beams of light radiate from his eye. Bolts of electricity surge from his chest through the blade, burning cold as they pass into me.

  Amber, Julio, and Chill lift their heads, shouting my name. Fleur pushes to her knees, fighting wind, crawling on hands and knees to get to me. Another fork of lightning splits the sky. I cry out as the bolt strikes Fleur, and behind me, Kai screams.

  59

  Through the Thin Frost

  FLEUR

  I blink awake to a dim gray sky. My clothes are soaked through and my cheek is pressed against cold, wet pavement. Soft rolls of thunder rumble quietly in the distance. A trail of ash-colored water trickles over the street.

  My head feels foggy. The moments before the lightning strike are a blur as I roll onto my side, staring at a patch of scorched pavement. The staff rests on the ground beside it, the handle loose in Jack’s outstretched hand.

  “Jack!” I scramble to his side. The van door slides open behind me. Feet slap the puddles, pounding through the alley as I reach him. Jack’s skin is ice cold, his face slack, unresponsive, when I take him by the cheeks and gently shake him. “Jack, can you hear me?”

  Auggie kneels, nudging me aside to pry open Jack’s lids. Amber, Julio, and Chill rush toward us, hovering over Auggie’s shoulder. Marie and Poppy shove in close to see.

  Jack’s irises are solid white. Frosted mist curls from his mouth with his shallow breaths.

  “Jack’s eyes are doing that creepy Winter thing. And he smells like one. How is that even possible?” Amber asks, her own eyes welling.

  My breath catches. It worked. Those tiny sparks of magic I pulled from Doug and breathed into Jack before I left him at the clock . . . they survived. I feel them stirring inside him now, like an extension of myself.

  That breath of Winter stayed with him, though the park, through the run and the storm on the bridge. It was inside him when he held the staff and killed Doug. But that would mean . . .

  Julio bends down, gently prying the staff from Jack’s hand. No sooner than he picks it up, Julio drops it with a swear. The staff clatters to the ground. He shakes out his fingers, steam rising from his handprint where he touched the handle. “Shit, that’s cold!”

  I take Jack’s hand, peeling back his limp fingers. His palm is fine—the calloused skin frigid, but unblemished where he held the scythe.

  “I kissed him,” I whisper. “I kissed him at the clock before you pulled me into the ley lines. I gave him a breath of Gaia’s magic.” I had reached through my connection, into Doug, where Gaia’s magic was still clinging to me. I had pulled a few sparks of her magic into myself, the same way Doug had pushed it into me before I resuscitated the boy he killed. Only instead of concentrating on the fiery heat of them, I’d focused all my thoughts on the cold. On Jack. On the way his magic had felt when he’d first kissed me.

  I gave him Winter magic.

  “I wasn’t even sure I could. I wasn’t sure it even worked. Jack probably didn’t even know. But the magic must have been inside him when he took the staff. If Jack wasn’t entirely human when he killed Doug, then Chronos’s magic . . .” I turn, looking up at them. “It must have passed to Jack.”

  Julio goes perfectly still. He looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, holding tighter to Jack. Julio takes a step back from me. Poppy, Amber, Chill, and Marie . . . even Auggie . . . they’re all staring at me.

  “Your eyes, Fleur,” Amber says, “they look like Gaia’s.”

  I blink, touching the skin around them. I don’t see any differently. But as I look at each of their stunned faces, I feel different. I feel them. Each of them. As if I could reach out with my mind and touch their magic. I feel Amber’s heat. The ebb and flow of Julio’s breath. I feel the wind in Chill’s soul. I feel Marie’s and Poppy’s worry, and Jack’s pain. And something else . . . a magic I can’t quite place.

  I turn as a low groan rises down the street. Kai curls on her side, her face pinched with pain. Auggie runs to her, his hands moving over her as he checks her for injuries. He pries open her eyelids. “We should get them inside. Hurry,” he says, sliding an arm under Kai.

  Kai’s eyes flutter open as Auggie hefts her to her feet. There’s a collective gasp as she lifts her head. Her eyes meet mine, glittering like two pale diamonds under her heavy lids.

  Kai touches one of them with her free hand, her face a mask of disbelief as she prods the skin around it. She pats her pocket, as if she’s lost something and can’t remember where it is.

  “Jack’s plan worked,” Poppy says, cringing as she watches Kai hobble toward the door. “Sort of.”

  During the short ride in the van, Poppy and Chill had explained Jack’s plan. Jack, assuming he was human and incapable of taking the magic, was supposed to give the staff to Julio. Amber was supposed to take the eye. And hopefully, when Julio struck Doug with the scythe, the magic would split apart and bind itself to whoever was holding the object it was tied to. Julio would take Chronos’s magic, Amber would take Ananke’s, and presumably, Gaia’s magic would be drawn to me.

  Jack’s plan still worked, just not exactly the way he imagined.

  Auggie tries to move Kai inside. Her face twists with pain and she slides from his arms, planting her feet on the ground. She looks down at me, piercing me with a strange, almost bottomless gaze. It’s like placing two mirrors face-to-face and staring into them. Like you could see infinity in their reflection. She blinks, shaking her head as if she’s trying to make sense of what she’s seeing. “The Winter magic,” she rasps. “You have to take it back from us.”

  I hold tightly to Jack’s hand. “We’ll wait. When Jack wakes up, he’ll make his own decision. I won’t make it for him.” Jack had swung that scythe out of desperation, in self-defense. He couldn’t have known this would happen. He planned for Julio to become Chronos. That’s what they’d all agreed to. He should be allowed to choose his own magic—his own fate.

  I hover protectively over Jack, brus
hing back the iced locks of his hair. His forehead’s freezing, his skin glazed in frost. Ever since he died and lost his magic at the lake, this is all he’s wanted—to come back and claim his magic, to become a Winter again. It feels wrong to make this choice for him without asking. I can’t do that to him. Not again.

  “Then he’ll die.” Kai’s shaking, sweating and unsteady as she leans into Auggie’s side. But her eyes never leave mine. They’re clear and fever-bright. Her proclamation doesn’t feel like an empty threat. It feels like a statement of fact. As if she’s already seen it happen in her mind.

  “You don’t know him. You don’t know how strong he—”

  Kai steps out from under Auggie’s arm, bracing her hands against the ground as she kneels in front of me, putting us eye to eye. An image reveals itself in the diamondlike facets. A woman leaning over Jack, taking his magic. I suck in a sharp breath as I recognize the woman’s face. It’s not Gaia. Not Jack’s past I’m seeing. It’s me. Our future . . .

  Kai blinks and the image is gone. “He won’t wake up from this. He’s injured and exhausted. The magic you gave him was barely enough to ensure his survival through what he just endured. If he’d been human, he’d already be gone. But he doesn’t have enough power to fight this for long. And his body isn’t strong enough to sustain this kind of pain. There are only two possible outcomes. He cannot be both. And the only way to rid Jack of the burden of Time is for one of you to kill him and take it for yourself, the same way he took it from Doug.” Her gaze slides to Julio, Amber, and Chill.

  Julio steps away from Jack. None of the others move.

  “Or Fleur can take the Winter magic,” Kai says, letting Auggie lift her to her feet.

  “But I—”

  “You have Gaia’s power now. You’re the only one who can.”

  I touch my chest, thinking back to the moment I lay dying in the children’s hospital. I’d heard Gaia’s voice inside me—heard the choice she offered me. And even though I wasn’t conscious, she knew my answer, as if she felt my heart’s desire. The day Jack died at the lake, Gaia had known his answer, too.