“What is your name, child?” he asks her.
“Kai Sampson, Father.”
Chronos angles his staff to the light, his brow wrinkling over the images projected on the floor.
“A curious choice in placement.” He smooths the edges of his beard, his eye casting suspicious glances at Gaia as he rotates the crystal counterclockwise. “Why hasn’t the Summer earned a region better suited to her talents?”
“It was a short-term placement. We had a void,” Gaia says quietly.
Chronos tips his head, changing the direction of the staff’s turn a few degrees clockwise. He pauses, his gaze skipping first to Kai Sampson, then to the back of the room. To me.
His blue eye pierces me, holding me helpless in its stare. His cheek twitches below his patch, and I let out a held breath when he finally tears his gaze away from me. He covers that side of his face, concealing the spasm under his hand. “See that Kai is enrolled for training with my personal Guard,” he orders Gaia. “She will report directly to Captain Lausks. Ms. Sampson and her Handler are free to go.”
Kai and her Handler rush from the room, the sweet smell of desert flowers swirling in their wake. The Spring turns to watch her opponent go. Chronos makes a dismissive gesture toward her as he returns the remote control to Gaia’s desk. “The Spring will be Terminated for her recklessness.”
The Spring’s head whips around. Her Handler gasps. Chill stopsbreathing beside me, and all the relief I felt a moment ago is suddenly ripped away.
Gaia’s lips part. She takes a tentative step toward him. “Father,” she pleads, “the storm was unavoidable. She’s young, and Springs are uniquely sensitive by nature. It was a poor impulse, but I’m sure she meant no—”
“Don’t.” His snarl echoes off the walls of the Control Room—a room designed to hear and punish every whispered secret. The muscle ticks below his eye patch, and he reaches to still it. “You sound just like your mother. Ananke used to spew the same rubbish.”
Gaia’s nostrils flare. “Still, I do not think her offense merits Termina—”
In a flash of crystal and silver, the scythe is at Gaia’s throat. The room crackles. Noelle’s mouth turns down at the corners, as if she knows what’s coming. As if she’s seen it before.
Chronos tips Gaia’s chin up with the point of the blade, forcing her eyes to his. “Have you learned nothing from her?” Gaia’s upturned throat bobs as she stares into that cold blue eye, the patch, the scars... “Allow one child to overstep the rules, and the rest will overrun you. If you will not maintain control in my house, then you will find yourself replaced as easily as your pets.” He forces her chin to the side, toward the smaze in the glass on her desk. “Your fondness for them makes you weak, has made you weak before. If you will not do what must be done, then I shall do it for you.” Gaia swallows, barely breathing as he lowers the scythe. Her eyes close, not in relief, but in surrender.
The Spring stumbles backward, her fists clenched stubbornly at her sides. “But it’s not fair! I followed Gaia’s rules!”
Chronos turns on her, the outrage in that single eye sucking all the air from the room. Chill’s hand slides closer to mine. “‘Fair’ would have been to let you rot in your coffin after you fell to your death, a death brought about by impulsive choices. Gaia may have granted you your wasted life, but you remain alive at my behest and are subject tomyrules!”
Noelle stares straight ahead at the wall across the room. Gaia averts her eyes. I brace for what’s coming, too slow to turn away from the flash of the scythe. The Spring screams. A red stain spreads through her pale yellow shirt. Chill’s hand grabs mine as the girl’s Handler cries out, falling beside her. The air around them begins to crackle and hiss, throwing sparks toward the ceiling. Their bodies shrivel, bending over double before slumping to the floor. The wind whistles through the room as if being sucked through a crack.
Then everything goes still.
Chill and I hardly breathe, paralyzed by the two small piles of ash on the floor. Chronos paces before them, as if he’s impatient to be someplace else. The gray pile of dust that was the Spring’s Handler doesn’t move. But the ash that was a Spring a moment ago—a girl strong enough to set off a cyclone—begins to sparkle. Small glowing needles of light lift from her remains like fireflies from a field.
Gaia’s hair lifts, static sparking between the strands. Her eyes shimmer with tears as she opens her mouth, drawing the girl’s magic back into her with a long, shuddering breath.
The light fades in her throat. The girl’s magic, gone.
Chill shivers, pungent sweat breaking out on his skin. I feel like I might be sick. Purges are always conducted behind closed doors. Few Seasons have ever witnessed Terminations, but there are stories... rumors...
My eyes dart back to the writhing smaze in the orb. I start at the sound of Chronos’s timepiece snapping closed.
“I expect her replacement to be assigned within the hour.” He slips the silver watch back into his pocket and turns to go, his staff swinging at his side like the arm of a metronome. Light catches the crystal, scattering beams over the floor as he cuts smoothly down the aisle with his Guards in tow.
He pauses beside my pew. His eye rakes over my face. “I’ve seen you before.” My throat catches, unable to form words. “You are the same Winter who turned down an offer to join my Guard not long ago. The one with the ill-fitting name.”
Noelle breaks protocol to look at me.
“Sommers, was it?” His mouth twitches at the corners. “I should have known. Should have seen it in the irreverence. The brazen audacity of that choice.” His reluctant smile stretches the scars on his cheek. “But yours is a difficult future to read. Your rankings seem at odds with every possible outcome,” he muses, stroking his beard. “Proceed carefully, Mr. Sommers. For a Winter, you demonstrate a rather foolish tendency to tread upon thin ice.”
“Sir?” I stammer.
Chronos rotates his staff. The crystal catches the light. The beam it casts on the floor at my feet sears an image into my mind. There is no sound. No smell or pain or context. Just a glimpse of my future, flickering like a scene from a silent movie. In it, I see the Summer who was dismissed just moments ago—Kai Sampson. Her teeth are clenched, her face framed by the jagged, dark ends of her hair, one eye narrowed above the shaft of the arrow in her bow as she aims it at me.
The image flickers again, flashing to the cracked surface of a frozen lake. The ice breaks under me, plunging me under the water. Blood swirls in the bubbles around me as I sink.
