“You’re an idiot, you know.”
I nearly jump out of my skin, breaking out in a layer of frost before I recognize the voice.
“Poppy? What are you doing out here?” She sits on a boulder watching the reflection of the moon on the lake. I ease down beside her, close enough to hear her strained breaths.
“Can’t sleep,” she says in a thin, hoarse voice. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Fleur never slept well on the nights before Julio found her. It’s as if something inside us always knows.”
“When something’s coming?”
“When we’re dying.” She says it so matter-of-factly, this flat, unvarnished truth. Not even a sigh to suggest she has the slightest wish to dwell on it.
I look away when our eyes meet. “You’re not going to die,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “Any fool could see why you picked this place. It’s going to kill her, you know. Whatever it is you have planned.”
“No plan.” I purse my lips. Just a crystal-clear picture in my mind of how things might go down. I’ve been too busy praying that Lyon and Gaia get here in time. And that if they don’t, when the time comes, Fleur will fight. That she’ll make the choice I hope she will.
That they all will.
“What do you think she’s going to do when you and I are gone?” Poppy asks, the words broken by crackling labored gasps. “You think she’s going to live on that hill alone? You think she’ll be happy as Julio and Amber’s third wheel after she loses you?”
Up until this moment, I’ve tried not to imagine what happens after the ashes settle if the dominoes don’t fall like I hope they will. “Chill will take care of her.”
“No, Jacob Matthew Sommers. You will.” Poppy rises to her feet and jabs her finger in my breastbone, her sunken eyes suddenly wide-awake and ferocious. “You will stand with her or you will die with her, but if you break her heart, so help me Gaia, I will haunt you from both my graves!” She pauses for a rasping breath that leaves her pale and shaken. “I granted Fleur a dying wish when we left the Observatory. Now I’m asking one of you. Don’t let her die alone, Jack.”
With weak fingers, she pats my shoulder. Slowly, she makes her way back to her tent, and I stand in the dark, rubbing the ache she’s left in my chest.
49
Our Best Men With Thee
JACK
At some point, every Season knows it’s time to fade. This is why the snow melts and the seas grow cold. It’s why the leaves turn and the blooms wither. Because after a while, we’re not strong enough to hold on anymore.
Eventually, we all let go. But that doesn’t mean we go quietly.
Lyon and Gaia will come; I believe that. Maybe others will, too. But the truth is, sometimes help doesn’t come in time, and we have to find the strength to face what lies ahead on our own. We have to trust in our own choices. This was mine.
I watch the lake as if the answer’s hidden somewhere in it, wishing I could look under that rippled surface and know exactly what’s about to unfold. All I know for certain is where we’ve been, what we’ve learned about each other, and how many miles we’ve managed to come.
All I know is that I trust them. If Chronos is right and I fall through the ice, I won’t be left alone.
The valley succumbs to fog. As the new day looms below the horizon, the milky-white film rolling over the lake feels like an omen. The insects have gone silent; the night creatures foraging in the brush are still.
The wind shifts.
I shoot to my feet and ease back from the ledge, deeper under the trees. Behind me, a tent zipper slowly whines open and Julio slides through the narrow flap. Quiet as a cat, he’s at my side, blade unsheathed.
How many?he mouths.
I shake my head slowly. I can’t be sure. He slips off toward the southern slope to warn Noelle’s team.
I catch a scent behind us. The crackle of twigs and the flash of a knife as Fleur and Amber creep down the hillside toward us. Thunder echoes in the distance.
“Could you see them from the top?” I ask, barely above a whisper.
Fleur and Amber shake their heads.
