I slink to the edge of the trees. The sky to the northeast is smudged with billowing clouds, obscuring the sunrise. A stiff breeze nudges the fog over the valley, exposing the landscape underneath. Lyon and Gaia are nowhere in sight. Eight members of Chronos’s Guard are spread around the opposite shore of the lake. Four more are positioned near the only road in. The other eight must be somewhere behind us, probably already creeping up the south slope.
“Jack Sommers!” A treeful of parakeets awakens, shrieking from their branches. A startled crow swoops over our heads and disappears across the valley. “I order you and your accomplices to surrender to me!”
Chronos.
I lean my head back against a tree trunk, weighing my options as the air grows heavy with the threat of rain.
The tent flaps barely move as Chill, Poppy, and Marie poke their heads out.
“If I do, what happens to the others?” I shout.
“Your friends will be escorted to the Observatory to face Termination before an audience of their peers, to repair what you have broken.”
Julio reappears, nodding to let me know Noelle’s team is in position.
“And if we choose to fight?”
Amber’s, Fleur’s, and Julio’s answers are written in their stances, on the points of their knives. I search Chill’s face. He looks naked, vulnerable without his glasses. Yet his eyes are steadfast on mine, even through the dark. Poppy gives me an approving nod. Marie, who’s been clutching Slinky against her chest, lets him down. She chooses a sturdy log from the woodpile and brandishes it like a weapon.
“Then you and your friends will perish here.”
Slinky darts off with a hiss as lightning strikes close.
There’s a muffled cry from Noelle’s camp on the south slope. Two golden flares soar high above the trees, catch the wind, and slowly gutter out. Fleur and I exchange an anxious glance. We’ve lost two from Noelle’s group already, and the battle hasn’t even started yet.
Fleur maneuvers closer to the ledge. “They’re too far,” she whispers. “I can’t disarm them from here. I’m going down.”
“No,” I say. “We stay together. We let them come to us. Noelle’s team will thin them out. We’ll pick off the rest here.”
“They’re coming. I can feel them.” Fleur presses her fingers to her temples, her eyes closed in concentration. She jerks her fist twice, in close succession. Two more screams echo from the south slope. This time, the two flares gather into tight, bright balls of light and soar through theforest toward a ley line. “Two Guards down,” she says. “But the rest are too close to Noelle’s team. I can’t tell which are the Guards and which are ours anymore.”
The wind whistles through the trees, rattling branches. Grunts and shouts grow louder, the roar of fireballs and the clash of knives building to a crescendo as the Guards cut through Noelle’s camp. Flare after flare lights up the south slope and dies out, each light closer and closer to our position. Julio and Amber look to the sky, tensing as they keep count. A cold dread seizes me when Noelle calls out, ordering what’s left of her team to fall back.
“Something’s burning.” Amber turns to Fleur as the wind shifts, blowing gray smoke toward us.
Fleur winces and shakes out her hands. “They’ve set fire to the south slope.”
I swear under my breath. “They’re going to try to smoke us out.”
“Leave it to me.” Julio closes his eyes. There’s a sharp fall in air pressure as the barometer plunges. Raindrops spatter the forest floor, and within moments, the sky rips open. The fire hisses under the barrage of rain, and the smoke billows around us. I shift the wind with the brush of a thought, and a cold mist falls over the camp.
“I feel them. They’re here. Five of them. Just over that ridge.” Fleur points between the trees as the smog clears. Julio, Amber, Fleur, and I fan into a line as five transmitter lights blink around us, evenly spaced, slowly converging through the hazy gray light. Amber wields Woody’s combat knife. Fleur and Julio wield knives we took from the Summers on the highway, and Chill kneels like a sprinter in the opening of his tent. Poppy withdraws a length of rope from her pocket, silently passing one end to Marie in the next tent.
The Guards can’t smell our Handlers. Won’t know they’re outnumbered.
Chill and I lock eyes as the Guards come into view. I rest a hand at my side where our Handlers can see it, counting down the seconds with my fingers, measuring the Guards’ strides. Taking stock of the enemy’s strengths.
Five red lights.
Four Guards advancing—one in the trees.
Three...
I lose count, my heart missing a beat when Kai Sampson slides out from behind a trunk, an arrow nocked in her bow. The moment’s too familiar in my mind. Her utter stillness. Her piercing gaze. This is how the vision of my death begins.
I force my focus back to Chill, trying not to wonder how he’ll die or if he’ll suffer.
Two... two Guards advance past the tents, one closing in on me, the other on Fleur. I lock eyes with my Handler—my best friend—one last time.
