The softening sky to the east hints at the hour. I feel like I could sleep for a week. Could be happy crammed in this shithole cabin forever, as long as Fleur’s beside me.
“I’ll be back in a minute. I need to... you know.” She hooks a thumb at the outhouse behind the cabin as she peels away from me. I watch her go, and even though she must be freezing, there’s a bounce in her step I’ve never seen before. The sweet scent she’s kicking off smells like an entire garden in bloom.
A thin wisp of smoke winds up from the chimney. Inside, it must be getting cold. I head for the woodpile and grab a few logs for the fire.
Then nearly drop them, my smile crumbling.
A piece of paper’s stuck in the chopping block, pinned in place by the blade of the ax. A cell phone rests beside it.
I set down the wood, glancing back through the trees to make sure Fleur’s safely inside the outhouse before I tear the paper free.
Ten digits. A phone number. The handwriting is Lyon’s. The same loopy old-fashioned letters. The same feathering ink of a fountain pen.
This was supposed to be a safe house. How did he find us? No one was supposed to know we were here.
The outhouse door creaks open. I stuff the cell phone and paper into my pocket before Fleur is near enough to see. She comes to me with that same bounce in her step, that same smell of hope, and that lightness in her eyes is crushing me. She takes the front of my T-shirt in her hands and rises up on her toes to kiss me. Her lips part, and I feel a little of my strength fade, my magic slipping from me as it feeds her.
I plant a guilt-ridden kiss on her forehead. “You’re freezing,” I tell her, rubbing her arms, though I’m probably only making things worse. “You should go inside and warm up. Get some sleep.”
“Are you sure?” She hugs herself against the wind.
“I’ll be in soon.”
She picks up the two logs at my feet and carries them inside. Doesn’t notice the scrap of torn paper still lodged under the ax’s blade. Once she’s gone, I search the shadows, the trees, the ridges above me for any sign that someone else might be here. I scent the air, but all I smell is woodsmoke and Fleur.
I climb the hill a safe distance from the cabin, high enough to catch a cell signal.
The line connects but remains ominously silent. Seconds tick by. I know Lyon’s listening.
“What do you want?” I ask cautiously.
“Jack.” Lyon breathes my name as if he’s relieved to hear my voice. I wish the feeling were mutual. “Are you all right? Is Fleur with you?”
“We’re fine,” I bite out. “Where are you?”
“Not far,” he says. But not near, either. Any hint of his scent was long gone when Fleur and I got back from the pond.
“How did you know where to find us?”
“The crows. They’ve been watching the coast, waiting for you to surface. I’m only sorry Chronos’s Guard found you first.” I lift my eyes to the moonlit branches around the cabin. I haven’t seen a crow since we left Croatan Beach. I search the shadows in the woods for one of Gaia’s smazes, but the darkness is too deep.
I grit my teeth, remembering the Summer who mysteriously showed up on the beach. Cyrus, already dying at the end of his season, had insisted Gaia was the one who’d sent him there. “How do you know it wasn’t Gaia who told the Guards where to find us?”
“You can trust her, Jack.”
“If you trust her so damn much, why’d you kill her bee?”
The line falls silent, his voice tinged with remorse when he finally speaks. “The burden of that choice doesn’t fall on Gaia.”
I sink down onto a boulder and rub my eyes. I’m tired. Too tired for this conversation. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.”
“You have no reason to be sorry. It’s a fair question,” he says. “It was the only way I could be sure you’d make it out of the Observatory. I don’t expect you to understand. Not yet.”
“I think I do.” I bury my head in my hands. Lyon’s never betrayed me before. Even still, I know I should hang up. It’s too risky, communicating with him this way when he’s so close to Gaia. It’s hard to knowwhere his loyalties lie. When I close my eyes, all I see is the light of the bee, dying under the sole of his shoe. But I don’t have anyone else to turn to. “Amber’s replacement found us at Croatan Beach. He didn’t go back through the ley lines.”
The phone goes quiet again, and I worry I’ve crossed a line. That I’ve confessed something unforgivable. “Did you take him?” Lyon asks.
The question guts me. Did I take him? Am I responsible? Was I the one to steal his life? Or does it only feel like I did because this whole damn trip was my idea?
