Even the best she could hope for was still a tragedy.
The first rays of light reached above the horizon like outstretched fingers rising from a grave. The sun crested above the Gardens, and the national anthem crescendoed along with it. People clasped their hands together, waiting, wishing.
Ellery held her breath. Domenic clamped the flowers in his fist.
Seconds ticked by, then dragged. But the barren trees didn’t bud.
The snowy meadow didn’t melt.
The band cut off, horns and woodwinds wailing in a final, frantic cry before falling silent.
And Elleryknew.
It was unprecedented. It was unfathomable. But Summer wasn’t coming.
Murmurs rose in an anthem of their own. People called out questions, some pulling each other close, some breaking away from the crowd. Children began to cry, their families too aghast to soothe them. For once, even the reporters didn’t lift their cameras. Instead they stared at the gray sky, the frozen ground, the lifeless foliage.
Then, as one, their stares swiveled to Ellery.
She felt the collective force of their fear, a crushing, foreboding pressure. Instinctively, her defense mechanism kicked in. She reached for Iskarius. And she reached for Domenic.
As their hands brushed, they met each other’s gazes.
He’d never been good at concealing his feelings. Especially not from her. And she knew what lurked in the quiver of his lips, in the haunted depths of his eyes.
Defeat.
Her heart shattered, and yet Ellery endured, as she always did.
She cloaked herself, and she fled.
XXXVIIDOMENICWINTER
In the apartment lobby, the bellhop stared at the drifting snow outside and worried at his wedding band. The radio crackled a death rattle.
The bellhop didn’t notice the revolving door spin. But he glanced up as the flickering chandelier brightened, and inexplicable warmth pressed against his side. Yet just as suddenly, the cold returned, the lobby dimmed, and Domenic took the private elevator to the penthouse.
He dropped his illusion. His fingers flexed around Valmordion, and even after the elevator halted, he swore the ground swayed beneath him.
A frigid draft wafted from the crack of the doors.
Warily, hopefully, he slipped Valmordion into its sheath.
Then, before he even rang the bell, the doors opened, revealing Ellery. Tear tracks glistened down her cheeks. Like him, she still wore her costume from Alderland’s most disastrous holiday, and—
And she held Iskarius.
“Let me go, Dom,” she warned. “You know we can’t do this here.”
Yet Ellery made no move to stop him as he brushed past her. Despite the flurries outside, her apartment windows were thrown open, and flakes accumulated atop the sills and dusted the floor. The phone dangled off its hook. A suitcase lay open on the carpet.
“And what would we be doing, exactly?” he murmured.
“Do you really need me to say it?”
“Well, if you’re so sure we have to fight, why are you running away?”
“What else would you have me do?” She tilted her head up to look at him, blinking rapidly. “Do you think Iwantto run away from the city I love, from the people I only ever wanted to protect? Of course I don’t! But I’ve been waiting for Summer to come, thinking maybe then, we’d find proof one way or the other. But Summerdidn’t come! That hasn’t happened since the Thirty Years’ Chill. So if that isn’t a sign of how badly we messed up, I-I don’t know what is.”
