from the crowds, cutting through the trees on foot toward one of the waypoints along Hermit Road. The desert sun beats down on me. My legs are sluggish, my feet heavy. The trees here are short—scrubby and spare—and don’t offer any relief. Fleur awakens around them. She moves through the growths of pine and fir and cottonwood, touching the woody branches of juniper and mesquite as we pass, leaving a trail for Julio and Amber to follow, assuming they’re alive.
My mind twists with worry as I watch her trail her scent over the landscape, imagining all the other Seasons and Guards who could track her this same way.
I peel off my shirt and tuck it into the waistband of my jeans. The temperature’s gradually falling, the evening breeze over the canyon cooling the sweat on my skin. In a few hours, night will fall over the desert, and I worry how Fleur will handle the cold, if my strength will be enough to see her through until morning, or if we’ll both be too tired to be much good to each other.
We emerge from a copse of scrawny trees onto the winding road that traces the rim. Fleur draws in an awed breath. The wide red mouth of the Canyon stretches for miles. Clouds unwind themselves over crevices and gorges, the setting sun spilling watery orange light over the endless peaks. A breeze catches Fleur’s hair, plucking at a memory. . . . The sun rising behind her on a mountain in early spring. Me, turning off my transmitter to be alone with her, only to wake up two months later and discover she did the same. That she held me and kept me from blowing away.
If the vision I saw in the staff is true—if every choice I’ve made means I drown in blood and ice for her—then Chronos is right. There is only one way this will end. Because I will never regret it. I just hope he’s lying about the rest of it.
I wrap my arms around her. Maybe just to keep her close, to keep her safe while her toes tease the cliff’s edge. I press my cheek to the warmth of her temple, inhaling the sweet smell of her skin and the softness of her hair as the sun shrinks down to a hot gold flash against the horizon. When the colors have all but melted from the sky, I guide her down a steep decline in the rock face, hidden from the road.
“Where will we go if they don’t come? If they don’t find us?” She shivers against my chest, our bodies cradled on a crag overlooking the cliff. It’s the first time her faith in this place has wavered.
“Somewhere warm.” I wrap my sweatshirt around her, tucking her into me as the temperature begins to fall. My mind wanders to a poster on the wall of Lyon’s classroom, a landscape of trees and flowers where spring lives forever. “Somewhere you’ll be safe.”
“What about you?” She leans back against me, her body nestled between my legs so that every inch of us touches.
“What about me?” I don’t know how to tell her that there is no safe place for me. No way to hide from what’s coming for me.
“Do you remember that night on the construction site last year,” she asks, “when you first told me you wanted to run away? I asked you what you wanted from all this, and you never had a chance to answer me.”
I think back to that day on the mountain when she held on to me. Then to the note she left for me with Poppy—how she signed it yours. I think about the Guards she shredded to protect me, the night she kissed me by the pond, and last night in the hotel. I think about all those times she trusted me, believed in me, chose me. All along, Lyon knew. He knew that was the one thing I truly wanted more than anything else. And yet it’s something I could never ask her for. Even now, after all we’ve been through, I won’t.
Instead, I turn her face to mine, tip her head back, and kiss her, a featherlight brush of my lips.
“I love you,” she says.
My heart stops, clenched around those words. She snuggles deeper into me, her warm breath puffing out in thin clouds as she falls asleep in my arms.
“I choose you,” I whisper against her hair. I’ll choose her, again and again,