“Sorry for what?” she asks.
“I couldn’t protect myself against those Guards. How the hell am I going to keep you safe?”
“I never asked you to,” she says sharply.
“What about Julio and Amber? What about the others?” I remind her. “They’re all here because of me. Because all I could think about was you and that red line, and I was selfish.”
“You wereselfless!” I feel her static. Smell her standing right behind me, and I round on her.
“No, I was stupid! I was so fucking sure I could do this. That I could get us out of there!”
“You did!”
“By the skin of our teeth! And now what?” Every fear and doubt feels like it’s cresting to the surface. I don’t want to be the reason for that flash of sadness in her eyes. But I can’t stop. “We’re stuck in thisshitholecabin with barely enough food to last the week! Poppy and Marie are sick. Woody’ll be lucky if he doesn’t develop an infection. We can’t stay here forever. Chronos must have had Guards posted all up and down the coast, waiting for us. We killed a Season last night, Fleur! They’re not going to let us just walk away from that. It’s only a matter of time before...” I wince.
“Before what?”
I grab my jacket off the ground, my throat closing around the one thing I don’t have the balls to say. “You saw what happened to Hunter. That could have been any one of us.” I can’t even look at her. I told her that we could go anywhere. That we could write our own ending. We crossed an entire fucking ocean and Chronos still managed to find us.
Pity you have to die.
I shrug into my jacket, kicking up leaves as I head up the mountain, deeper into the woods.
“Jack,” she calls after me. “Jack, stop!”
My foot snags on a root. The ground rushes up to meet me, and I catch myself just before I fall facefirst into the dirt. I kick out to free myself, but the root’s tight around my ankle. With a hard jerk, it flips me over.
“Don’t you dare turn your back on me when I’m talking to you.” Fleur’s hair is a wild tangle of pink static and her hands are shaking. She comes close enough for me to see the anger blooming in her eyes, to smell the ozone crackle of her temper, beautiful and terrifying. I inchback on my elbows as she hovers over me. “Every single one of us is here because we wanted to be. Except maybe Marie. Whatever. She and her damn cat are both free to make their own choices from here. But the rest of us signed on for this, Jack! We chose it, for better or worse. And in case it’s escaped your attention, we made it. We’re alive. We’re together.Becauseof you. Not in spite of you.” The forest falls silent, as if she commanded it to. A flurry of voices—laughter and a playful riff of Julio’s guitar—carry from the warm glow inside the cabin down the hill. “When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, come inside and eat. The only one of us with any regrets tonight is you.”
Fleur stomps down the hill toward the cabin and slams the door, leaving me exactly where I thought I wanted to be—alone in the cold.
I shake my foot loose, but the root that tripped me is already gone, buried in the ground.
Regrets. Fleur thinks I regret getting her out of that place. But the only thing I regret is not being more careful. The only thing I wish I could take back was my own overconfidence when I told them we could all survive this. That there was hope for us all.
I trek uphill around clusters of rock, navigating by memory in the dark, until I reach an elevation high enough to clear my head. Lantern light flickers in the cabin’s window below. The chimney puffs out clouds of poplar smoke, and through the thin walls, I can hear them laughing.
Maybe Fleur’s right. None of us expected it to be easy. We’re alive. Off the grid. We’re together. Maybe that’s enough.
I sink down on a boulder. It felt so touch and go between us on the boat, hostile and new, all of us distrustful, confined to close quarters with nowhere to go. But here... I look out over the endless blue ridges, as far west as my eyes can see in the dark. If we come apart here, we’re lost.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting when I finally push myself to my feet. The light’s gone dim in the cabin, and I wander back down the hill, surprised when I creep up the porch steps and find Fleur lying outside the door. Her sleeping bag’s drawn up around her ears. Her teeth chatter from the cold. Inside, I can just make out five shadowy sleeping bags spread around the belly of the stove, and Amber huddled by the draft in the opposite wall.
The sight of Chill bundled inside a thermal bag brings on a pang of loss. His body temperature’s already risen, adjusted to a mortal’s normal. I shouldn’t be surprised; I saw it coming. The way he’s squinted at the maps more each day. How he demurred when I asked him if he wanted to drive to the cabin this morning.
I kneel beside Fleur and lay a palm on her cheek. Her eyes open, confused at first until they find mine. She slides out of her sleeping bag and I give her my sweatshirt. She drags it over her own, making her body seem more solid and her hair frizzy, rousing a memory of last night’s battle that only makes her seem more beautiful.
“I don’t regret this,” I whisper. “Not any of it.”
Then I take her hand and lead her into the woods.
FLEUR
The air smells like Jack—like the crisp, cold hush that falls just before it snows. I hunch into his sweatshirt as he takes my hand and guides me down the ridge under a starlit canopy of pine. The longer we hold hands, the warmer and more awake I feel, and the stronger my legs become.
He pauses on a moon-drenched slope. Leaning close, he points out a nearby peak, its surface raked with trails.
“That’s where I died the first time,” he says. He drags his finger tothe right, gesturing to an imposing roofline breaking through the trees near the slopes. “Second floor, third window from the left. That was home,” he says, guiding me down.
