I toss off the sheet and sit up in bed. Even if his timing sucks, I should still say goodbye before he goes offline.
“I promise. Fleur and I will come visit,” I reassure Poppy. “As soon as the weather’s warm enough.” Chill’s face pops back on the screen and I force myself to smile. “See you on the other side, my friend.” The crow squawks at me again, reminding me I’m late for a meeting with Lyon. I give Chill a salute goodbye and pad off down the hall in my pajama pants to the office, leaving Fleur and Poppy to catch up.
I detour to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and a pastry. Birds whistle and chirp at me as I carry my breakfast onto the veranda. Leaning my elbows on the open wall, I survey the grounds from up high while I eat. The infinity pool below me ripples under a slight southwesterly wind. Built into the side of a high hill, the front of the U-shaped villa is secured by iron bars and ironwood doors, all equipped with cameras. The backis open to the flora around us, an assortment of palms and pines, flamboyants and guavas, zapote and oaks. Only an idiot would try to breach it. Still, it’s my job to make sure the perimeter is secure. Change is hard. And while the Seasons are adjusting to the new rules laid out by Gaia and Lyon (or the new Chronos, as he’s called now), old feuds die hard. Even though our territory is supposed to be under a protective order, I’d be a fool to take Fleur’s safety for granted. Or mine.
I wipe the crumbs from my hands, leaving them for the chattering jays, and head to my office. My workspace looks a lot like Chill’s old one—wall-to-wall computer monitors, speakers, and ergonomic keyboards above a sleek glass desk—but with a lot more air and sunlight. The walls above my computer are plastered with vintage posters—Black Flag, the Ramones, andThe Empire Strikes Back. A framed photo of Fleur and me stands propped on my desk, along with worn volumes of John Donne’s poetry andAesop’s Fables—housewarming gifts from Gaia and Lyon.
I sip my coffee, taking a few minutes to check the security footage from the night before. Then I look over the regional weather reports and skim through my email. A calendar notification pops up on my screen, reminding me of Julio’s and Amber’s arrival, but Fleur would never let me forget it. She’s been talking about this visit for weeks, about all the sightseeing we’ll do and the stories we’ll share. She and Amber want to hit all the shops and museums, and Fleur made me promise we’ll make a special trip to Calle Bolivar to buy Julio a new guitar.
Truth? I’m happy they’re coming. I’ve missed them. Also truth? It’s... weird. We’ve all changed since we first met, but I’m the only one who’s really different. And even though I wouldn’t trade our life herefor the world, bringing the world into our life here has me feeling vulnerable and exposed. Onscreen, I can pretend nothing’s changed. That I’m the same person I was before. I look the same on the outside. It’s the inside that feels... weak, sometimes.
I set down my coffee and rake a hand through my bedhead before logging into the Observatory’s secure chat center. Lyon... Chronos (I’m never going to get used to calling him that) answers on the first ring.
“You’re tardy, Mr. Sommers.” He raises an eyebrow, making me feel like I’m back in the fat leather chair in his office.
“These meetings are too early.”
“Sorry to drag you out of bed.” He gives me a wry look that says he knows exactly what I was doing. I hide a grin behind my mug of coffee.
“How are things back at the ranch?” I ask, changing the subject.
He rubs his receding hairline as if a headache is blooming behind it. “Instituting the new policies has been more challenging than I anticipated.”
“Still dealing with the infighting?” I can picture what those first few months must have been like, as warring Seasons woke to find their rankings had been erased and the rules had changed.
“Some, which was to be expected. But desegregating the dormitories has been... eye-opening, to say the least.”
I laugh out loud and then stifle it at the look on his face. I try to imagine what it would be like to keep Julio and Amber apart if they were living in the dorms. The last time we visited them at their home in Southern California, they were practically attached at the hip. Marie managed to find them a house in Montecito, in the high foothills overlooking theSanta Barbara coast. With warm winters and cool summers, it’s the perfect compromise—a home where they can survive together year-round. There’s a community college nearby for Amber, and Julio gets to surf. But with Marie busy managing security for both of them, I’m pretty sure Amber and Julio just spend most of their days in bed.
“What’s Gaia have to say about it?” I’m surprised London isn’t burning or flooding or quaking to the ground, for all the lack of focus probably going on there right now.
Lyon sighs. “She’s happy. The chaos suits her. Which brings me to the reason for my call.”
“Shoot.” I lean back in my chair and swing my feet up on the desk.
“Are you... okay, Jack?”
My smile slides away. “Yeah, sure. Why do you ask?”
“Because I know what it’s like to lose your magic,” he says delicately. “Letting go of that kind of power is not an easy loss to bear.”
“I’m fine. It’s fine,” I tell him, dropping my legs back to the floor. I rub a spot of coffee from the desktop; it doesn’t quite disappear. “I chose this. Remember?”
“Who are you reminding, Jack? Me, or yourself?”
Our eyes meet on the monitor, and I have the strange sense that he’s seeing me through the glass eye of his staff. That he’s seen the demons I’m hiding from, and he knows exactly when they’ll finally catch up to me.
“I love her,” I tell him. “I don’t regret that.”
“And I know you won’t. Just remember, your magic is here for you, if you ever want it back.” The camera pans away, revealing the orb on Lyon’s desk. The gray smaze that swirls inside it—my smaze—is allthat’s left of my magic. It pushes at the glass, and I force myself to look away. The magic Gaia salvaged from my dying body, and blew into that smaze in the moments after Fleur made her choice, isn’t me. Not anymore. I have no magic now. I’m human, as mortal as they come, just like Holly and Boreas back at the Observatory—a fact I’ve tried not to spend too much time thinking about. I’m lucky, I guess, that my soul and my body are still intact at all. Had Gaia arrived any later, it could have been much worse.
There’s something broken in that smaze. Gaia senses it, too. When she recovered my magic as it was slipping away, I was already so far gone, she was forced to sift through it for the bits of my soul the magic was clinging to. She let the magic have some of the darkest parts—my worst fears and regrets, the pain of my most horrible memories—because she was afraid I’d already suffered too much. My happiness—a new life with Fleur—was a gift, she said when she blew the rest of my soul back inside me and brought me back to life. And like the last gift she had given me, my desperate body reached to take it, even if it had come with a sacrifice.
I glance at the dark cloud inside the glass. I could try to become a Winter again, to reclaim my smaze, like Lyon had. Lyon offered as much when he took it with him back to the Observatory.
“Gaia and I would be here for you, if you decided to try,” Lyon says, as if he’s reading my thoughts. “We won’t let you go through it alone.”
But I’ve heard that before. And I bear scars from injuries I haven’t entirely forgiven him for. Injuries I suffered alone.
