Light in the Canyon
JACK
Fleur and I make it to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon by late afternoon. Coming here was Fleur’s wish once. Fulfilling it has been mine. But now, sitting in the middle of a crowded parking lot, watching tourists file into their cars with their maps and souvenirs through the heat waves rising off the sedan’s hood, neither one of us gets out of the car. A month ago, I daydreamed about being here with her, the two of us framed by the sunrise over the canyon. About what it would feel like to kiss her with our feet dangling over the abyss. Now it just feels as if we’re falling toward something we’re not strong enough to climb out of. Like we’re being pushed.
“I don’t know about this,” I tell her. There’s an itch under my skin, a need to keep moving. To keep running. To get Fleur to the mountains under a high, dense canopy of trees where we’ll both be stronger. But maybe that’s just where Lyon wants me to go. Maybe that’s exactly what Chronos expects of me.
I rub my eyes, blotting out the visions of my death. At the very least, I know I won’t die here. It’s too damn hot, no thin ice to fall through.
“It’s just the desert getting to you. You’ll feel better once the sun’s down.” Fleur takes my hand. Her warmth and strength take the edge off, make the heat and thirst and nerves almost tolerable. But what happens to her if this journey ends the way Chronos insists it will—if I die at the end of this road, and Fleur’s left with no one?
“Amber and Julio will come. I know it,” she says.
“The Grand Canyon’s huge.” There’s too much ground to cover. The longer we stay in Arizona, the easier it will be for Chronos’s Guards to find us. There are too many crowds. Too many people who’ve probably seen our faces on the news.
“There’s only one state road in and out. Julio and Amber knew we’d planned to come here next. If they’re still...” She shuts her eyes. Doesn’t let herself speak the wordaliveout loud. “If they’re still in Arizona, they’ll find us.”
But so might everyone else.
“One night,” I remind her. This was the promise I made to her when we left Julio behind. I take her face in my hand, stroking the tracks of the silent tears she cried all the way from Phoenix. We’ll give them one night to make it to the Canyon. Then I’m taking her someplace safe.
We leave the car where Amber and Julio will be sure to spot it, in the middle of a sprawling parking lot near a visitor center and a cluster of shops. Fleur draws the hood of her sweatshirt low to cover her hair. I tuck her close to my side as we veer away from the crowds, cutting through the trees on foot toward one of the waypoints along Hermit Road. The desert sun beats down on me. My legs are sluggish, my feetheavy. The trees here are short—scrubby and spare—and don’t offer any relief. Fleur awakens around them. She moves through the growths of pine and fir and cottonwood, touching the woody branches of juniper and mesquite as we pass, leaving a trail for Julio and Amber to follow, assuming they’re alive.
My mind twists with worry as I watch her trail her scent over the landscape, imagining all the other Seasons and Guards who could track her this same way.
I peel off my shirt and tuck it into the waistband of my jeans. The temperature’s gradually falling, the evening breeze over the canyon cooling the sweat on my skin. In a few hours, night will fall over the desert, and I worry how Fleur will handle the cold, if my strength will be enough to see her through until morning, or if we’ll both be too tired to be much good to each other.
We emerge from a copse of scrawny trees onto the winding road that traces the rim. Fleur draws in an awed breath. The wide red mouth of the Canyon stretches for miles. Clouds unwind themselves over crevices and gorges, the setting sun spilling watery orange light over the endless peaks. A breeze catches Fleur’s hair, plucking at a memory.... The sun rising behind her on a mountain in early spring. Me, turning off my transmitter to be alone with her, only to wake up two months later and discover she did the same. That she held me and kept me from blowing away.
If the vision I saw in the staff is true—if every choice I’ve made means I drown in blood and ice for her—then Chronos is right. There is only one way this will end. Because I will never regret it. I just hope he’s lying about the rest of it.
I wrap my arms around her. Maybe just to keep her close, to keep her safe while her toes tease the cliff’s edge. I press my cheek to the warmth of her temple, inhaling the sweet smell of her skin and the softness of her hair as the sun shrinks down to a hot gold flash against the horizon. When the colors have all but melted from the sky, I guide her down a steep decline in the rock face, hidden from the road.
“Where will we go if they don’t come? If they don’t find us?” She shivers against my chest, our bodies cradled on a crag overlooking the cliff. It’s the first time her faith in this place has wavered.
“Somewhere warm.” I wrap my sweatshirt around her, tucking her into me as the temperature begins to fall. My mind wanders to a poster on the wall of Lyon’s classroom, a landscape of trees and flowers where spring lives forever. “Somewhere you’ll be safe.”
“What about you?” She leans back against me, her body nestled between my legs so that every inch of us touches.
“What about me?” I don’t know how to tell her that there is no safe place for me. No way to hide from what’s coming for me.
“Do you remember that night on the construction site last year,” she asks, “when you first told me you wanted to run away? I asked you what you wanted from all this, and you never had a chance to answer me.”
I think back to that day on the mountain when she held on to me. Then to the note she left for me with Poppy—how she signed ityours. I think about the Guards she shredded to protect me, the night she kissed me by the pond, and last night in the hotel. I think about all those times she trusted me, believed in me,choseme. All along, Lyon knew. He knew that was the one thing I truly wanted more than anything else. And yet it’s something I could never ask her for. Even now, after all we’ve been through, I won’t.
Instead, I turn her face to mine, tip her head back, and kiss her, a featherlight brush of my lips.
“I love you,” she says.
My heart stops, clenched around those words. She snuggles deeper into me, her warm breath puffing out in thin clouds as she falls asleep in my arms.
“I choose you,” I whisper against her hair. I’ll choose her, again and again, over everything else.
I stay up for a while, keeping watch, listening to the wind rustle in the quaking aspen. Watching the moon rise. I lean my head back against the rock face and close my eyes, ignoring the hard stone digging into my back, lulled by the sound of night insects, the scratch of crickets and chirping cicadas. A low buzz rises up from the canyon, rousing me from the edges of sleep. Not the soft howl of the wind or the hushed rush of the river below us. This hum feels out of place.
Like bees.
I ease out from under Fleur and crawl to a ledge, listening as the intensity of the hum builds. With a brilliant flash, a green light rises over the canyon wall. I scramble back from the drone as it rises, then falls, hovering inches in front of me.
