“Because we’ll get in trouble. You know the rules.”
Yeah, I know them. A kiss is painful for the weaker Season, a fast-track ticket back to the Observatory, complete with probations and penalties I’d rather not think about. But I would have kissed her anyway. “I guess following the rules has been working for you,” I say with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
She flinches, and I hate myself for it. Chill’s mentioned how Fleur and Poppy have been slipping in the rankings. Probably because she’s far too easy on me.
Idiot. If she only cared about the rules, she would have killed me a week ago.
“Never mind,” I grumble. “You’re right. It’s a stupid way to die.”
“Fine,” she says through her teeth. She tightens her grip on the knife with a precision that says she knew all along exactly where it should go. “On the count of three, then.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Chill warns me.
Too late.
I brace myself. My breath comes fast. In a second, my season will be over. I’ll be locked away, asleep in a plastic cage thirty stories underground for the rest of Fleur’s season. . . .
“Step away from the girl, Jack.”
It’ll be another six months after that before my next breath of fresh air in the fall, when I’ll be stuck chasing down Amber, and Amber can’t stand me. . . .
“I am your Handler and I am telling you to get out of there, Jack!”
It’ll be another three months after that before Fleur comes to find me. A whole year until I see her again. . . .
“Wait . . . ,” I say. I can’t get any air.
Chill bellows at me to run.
“No, no, wait! I’m not—” Fleur and I lurch away from each other at the same time, her blade scraping my rib as she’s thrown off balance. Her eyes go wide. She drops the knife on the ground, shaking out her hand as if it’s possessed.
“For Chronos’s sake, Fleur! You cut me!” I cry out, my voice breaking.
“You told me to!”
“And then I changed my mind!” The pain’s blinding. I twist, the wound screaming as I peel up my shirt and contort myself to see it.
“Don’t panic,” Chill says. “Stay calm. It’s shallow. Your vitals are good.” He’s lying. My side looks like a bad take from a 1980s slasher film. “Get out of there while she’s distracted. Keep moving.”
Fleur cringes as blood seeps through the gaps between my fingers. “I swear to Gaia, I didn’t mean to.” She reaches for me. “Here, let me see it.”
“No, no, no. Don’t—” I back into a tree, too late to stop her. Her hand grazes the exposed skin of my side, and suddenly I’m a living conduit. Every muscle in my body spasms and the hot surge of magic rattles my teeth. I cry out again and she leaps back from me.
“I’m sorry!” she says. “I was only trying to help.”
I drop to my knees, the world reeling as if I’ve stuck my finger in an electrical socket.
“You know what I said about your vitals before?” Chill asks. “I take it back.”
“I know!” I holler at him, wishing he would shut up and leave us alone.
Fleur startles.
“I wasn’t yelling at you. I’m sorry.” I push to my feet, feeling like an asshole. Of all the hundreds of Springs Gaia could have chosen to stick in my tiny corner of the globe to kill me, why did she have to choose one who’s managed to wedge herself into every corner of my mind? One who’s interesting and beautiful and impossible not to think about? Why’d she have to pick one who might feel the same way about me? It just makes everything worse.
“Touching sucked,” I tell her, holding the tree for support. “And we should definitely, definitely not do it again.” I’ll take the knife over slow death by electrocution any day.
Fleur hugs her arms to her chest. “I didn’t mean to cut you. If I’d known you were going to chicken out—”
“I didn’t chicken out!”
“Why are you so afraid of dying, anyway?” She bends to pick up her knife, and I stumble away from it as she gesticulates wildly. “I mean, how many times have we been through this? I’ve killed you, like, twenty times.”
“Twenty-seven.” Her eyebrows rise. She lowers the blade. “And I’m not scared of dying,” I lie. “I just wasn’t ready to go back yet.” I sound pathetic and overtired, like a kindergartner fighting naptime. She’s right. If I had any balls, I’d get it over with. She probably doesn’t run from Julio when he comes for her every summer. According to Chill, she doesn’t even seem to mind. And I’m not sure which is worse: that she’s not afraid of dying, or that she actually likes Julio. “You know what? I just . . .” I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. It’s too hot. Everything hurts. “I can’t be this close to you right now.”
I turn and climb the rough trail up the slope behind me.
Chill cheers me on. I hear his hand smack the desk through my transmitter, followed by frantic keystrokes in the background as he monitors my progress from our dorm room, probably recording every humiliating second of this. “That’s it, Jack! Go!”
Fleur calls my name and I push myself faster. The wound in my side feels like it’s tearing wider with every step. My boots slip on the soft, wet ground, and Chill curses me for leaving such obvious tracks for her to follow.
Higher. I just need to get higher. If I can get someplace colder, I can buy myself more time. My side pulls painfully as I slip off my jacket and drape it over a tree limb for Fleur. The cold is hard on her. It drains her magic and slows her down.
I keep climbing, wheezing and dizzy when I finally collapse into a patch of snow lingering at the foot of an evergreen. I listen for Fleur’s footsteps as the last drops of winter slip from the tree’s needles. The steady patter smells all wrong, and I look down, surprised to find a puddle of crimson slush. A crippling cough takes hold of me. I press back against the trunk, holding the skin around the wound together, but it’s no use. I’m only putting off the inevitable.
There’s no point in hiding from her. Her magic is drawn to mine like a magnet. She’ll know exactly where to find me.
“I know you’re there, Jack,” she says through a weary sigh. “I can smell you.”
I reek like fever sweat and blood. I’m long past my expiration date.
“Stay calm,” Chill whispers in my ear. “I’ll find a way to get you out of there. You’ve got enough juice left in you to make it another day, easy.”
I shake my head. My power’s almost gone, draining like a dying battery. I’m on stolen time and we both know it. I could keep running, but what’s the point? The only thing worse than being killed by Fleur is suffering a slow death alone.
I peer around the trunk of the tree as she slides her arms into the sleeves of my jacket and draws it around herself, hugging it close. She slumps down in a clearing a few yards away, stirring an explosion of butterflies from the wildflowers that have sprung up around her. I dig my hands into my shrinking island of snow, willing it to stay. To freeze. To keep me here.
“It’s the end of March, Jack. Winter’s over,” she says sullenly. She wipes my blood from her knife and falls back on the grass, her boots thumping the ground and making the long, loose fabric of her skirt pool around her knees. A bright orange butterfly alights in her hair and she huffs an irritated breath at it. A long, pink strand flips back from her eyes, but the butterfly only stirs and lands there again.