Seasons of Chaos Read online

  Dedication

  For my readers. None of my worlds would exist without you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1. A Strangely Aching Heart

  2. If I Should Ever Come Back

  3. The Callus on His Soul

  4. Without a Breath of Storm

  5. Cracked and Sprung

  6. Alone in the Winter Rain

  7. Of a Love or a Season

  8. Those Who Favor Fire

  9. Promises to Keep

  10. Let the Night Be Dark

  11. A World Torn Loose

  12. Snatch Me Away

  13. And Left No Trace

  14. In His Footsteps Stray

  15. Chill and Shiver

  16. Something Sinister

  17. Coil and Hissed

  18. By the Highway Home

  19. Patch of Old Snow

  20. Into the Storm

  21. Smothered in Their Lairs

  22. Night Falling Fast

  23. First to Yield

  24. Like Ghosts by Night

  25. One Step Backward Taken

  26. Snow for Cold

  27. The Heart Aching to Seek

  28. A Deeper Roar

  29. The Tree the Tempest

  30. Against Us in the Dark

  31. How the Cold Creeps

  32. Let Loose by the Devil

  33. Till the Tree Could Bear No More

  34. Heaps of Broken Glass

  35. Trusting Feathers and Inward Fire

  36. Before I Sleep

  37. Waste them All

  38. But Not a Ghost

  39. Not Cease to Glow

  40. A Careful Voice

  41. A Few Might Tangle

  42. Snow for Dust

  43. Fire for Form

  44. Lets Death Descend

  45. The Edge of Doom

  46. The Road Not Taken

  47. “Come Out! Come Out!”

  48. Send More Sparks Up

  49. And Goes Down Burning

  50. A Crash of Wood

  51. To Perish Twice

  52. His Besetting Fears

  53. To Seize the Earth by the Pole

  54. Bow and Accept the End

  55. Clinging to Its Last

  56. Tattered and Swift

  57. He Must Seek Me

  58. Not One Was Left to Conquer

  59. Through the Thin Frost

  60. And Lo, It Is Ended

  61. All the Difference

  62. And We Moved on

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Elle Cosimano

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The Observatory

  March 2023

  DOUG

  Waking up after seventeen months in stasis is like recovering from a blunt force trauma to the head. The headache, the nausea, the shakes, the thick fog that steals all sense of place and time, leaving only the vague notion that I’ve been here before. Not just in this room or this place. But in this very moment.

  “Douglas, are you all right?” The professor sits behind Chronos’s desk, on Chronos’s throne. The Staff of Time is leaning on a stand at his elbow like it belongs to him.

  Daniel Lyon steeples his fingers, watching me across the desk with a wariness that could almost pass for concern.

  “I’m fine.” I hide my stasis tremors behind tightly clenched teeth. I want to set his chair on fire. Want to drown him, freeze him, strangle him with my bare hands, but every cell in my body feels weak, my magic spent. And he knows it. He hasn’t even gone to the trouble to restrain me. A single guard—some dickhead I’ve never even seen before—waits outside the door.

  A stasis chill takes hold. My back clings to the leather armchair, my Observatory-issued coveralls already drenched with cold sweat. All those months spent in a chamber have my senses cut sharp. The desk light’s too bright, the old man’s blue eyes too penetrating. The musty odors of the antique canvases and moldering books around the room are thick enough to choke me. Under it all, I swear I can taste the rot in the catacombs below us. And something else . . . a faintly fetid reek from an enclosure on a shelf on the back wall—one of Gaia’s terrariums. The strange emerald serpent coiled inside isn’t one of her usual pets. It’s unlike any creature I’ve seen in the Observatory before, and I dig my nails into the armrests, wondering whose magic is trapped inside it. I hope like hell it’s Jack’s.

  The snake’s forked tongue flicks over the glass, the glittering diamondlike facets of its eyes shimmering as it watches us. It takes everything I have to drag my gaze from the tank.

  “Why was I kept in stasis so long?” Three months would have been long enough to recover, even from the most violent death.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Lyon’s tone is gentle, cautious. As if I’m something fragile, to be handled delicately. And I hate him all the more for it.

  I massage my palm, blinking back a hot rush of emotion. I remember Denver’s body crumbling to dust in my hands. Remember how I clamped ash-covered fingers around Fleur Attwell’s neck, and the rage . . . the blinding rage I felt in that moment. My throat tightens painfully around the words. “I remember climbing out of the lake in time to see my best friend murdered in front of me.”

  “Fleur was merely defending herself and those she loved.”

  “And what about the ones I loved!” The word “loved” vaults from my mouth before I can wrestle it back. The room blurs behind a hot, bright oil slick of emotions. They’re gone. Michael, Denver, my team—

  “Noelle Eastman,” Lyon says gently. Her name steals the air from the room. “I had hoped to be the one to tell you about her.”

  I shake off his sympathy with a callous shrug. “Tell me what? That my own girlfriend turned against me to defend your stupid cause? That she betrayed me to protect Jack Sommers?” I spit out his name, glad he’s dead. Grateful at least for this one small victory.

  “Noelle did what she felt was right. She protected you in the only way she knew how—”

  “She sent me home!” I slam my fist against his desk, making the snake flinch back from the glass. “I know it was Noelle who killed me and sent me back through the ley lines! I smelled her coming.” I smelled the familiar faint scent of vanilla on her skin. Felt the warmth of her whispered apology in my ear right before she slit my throat.

  I can still feel the phantom pull of the ley lines as they dragged me back home into stasis, the lingering dull tug in my soul. I shove back from the desk, aching for her for reasons that make no sense. “Where is she anyway?” I growl. “If she’s awake, I have a few words I’d like to say to her.” Lyon just stares at me, pity in the shine of his eyes. “Where is she!”

  “She’s in the wind,” he says, so softly I almost miss it.

  I slump into the chair.

  In the wind. Gone. Her soul scattered.

  “Who did it?” I ask in a strangled voice. “Was it Fleur? I swear on that fucking staff, I’ll—”

  “Chronos struck the killing blow,” he says, silencing me with a flash of white teeth. Lyon’s eyes have gone hard. In them, I see a glimmer of Winter—the famed, fierce Season he used to be, not the middle-aged professor—staring back at me.

  Of course he would protect her. Defend her. Lie for her. Fleur’s one of the traitors who put him here.

  “No!” I rise, nearly toppling my chair. “Noelle was an officer on my team. Traitor or not, she should have answered to me!”

  “And if she had? If she had explained to you why she sided with Jack, would you have list
ened?”

  I slam both palms down on his desk, ready to climb over it and rip out his throat. “You sanctimonious son of a bitch!”

  Lyon’s eyes darken as they slide to the staff, the twitch in his hand the only clue that he feels threatened by me. A black velvet sash is knotted around the head of the staff, covering the crystal eye at its center, as if Lyon is afraid of its power. As if he’s too fucking chicken to look into it and see his own future.

  I lean over the desk. “Do it, old man,” I whisper. “Go ahead and kill me. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Because Jack is dead, and it was my team that killed him. And you want to make me suffer for it.”

  I lock eyes with him.

  “Jack survived. He’s alive, Douglas.”

  I fall back a step. “No. You’re wrong. There’s no way he’s alive. I saw him fall through the ice. I watched him drown!”

  “What you didn’t see was the loyalty of those who loved him, and the sacrifices they made to save him.”

  “That’s impossible.” It’s not possible that Denver and Noelle are in the wind. That Chronos—my Chronos—is gone and Jack Sommers is still breathing. “You’re lying!”

  I stumble back from the desk, my heels connecting with the chair behind me as Lyon rises and reaches for the staff. The razor edge of the scythe glints as he lowers it between us and unwinds the velvet sash from the eye. It catches the light, throwing rainbows over the desktop. Flashes of my own face are captured inside them, flickering on the polished wood.

  “What is that? What are you doing?”

  “You wish to know what really happened. I’m showing you.” Lyon turns the staff in increments, every degree revealing new images, moving backward in time until he finds the moment he’s searching for. Denver’s face appears, and suddenly, I can’t speak.

  I watch him die all over again. Watch Fleur murder him. Watch the magic and life and soul slip out of him.

  “Stop,” I grind out. “Make it stop.”

  The image rotates, the perspective shifting with dizzying speed. I don’t recognize this memory. I’m not in my own head. It’s as if I’m seeing myself through someone else’s eyes.

  Through Fleur’s.

  I see myself wrestle her to the ground, grappling for control of her hands. Fighting off her mind as she summons roots and vines to snare me. Noelle is there. She rushes me from behind, and I’m blinded by a quick flash of light—my light—as my own death plays out in front of me, and I’m pulled into the ley lines, back to the Observatory.

  Noelle’s cheeks are streaked with tears. She doesn’t see Chronos approaching from behind, or the swing of his scythe. I squeeze my eyes shut as it hooks her and her magic disperses into the wind.

  The vision shifts toward the shoreline, where Jack lies lifeless in the reeds. His friends hover around him, snapping arrows, compressing his chest. Fleur’s a demon, savage in her vengeance, drawing more elemental power than any Season I’ve ever seen. Transfixed, I watch as she causes the ground to quake, commanding a dozen trees and vines to take down Chronos by his wrists and ankles. Her hair is charged with static, her eyes wild, as she presses his staff to his throat. She’s merciless and terrifying and I’m disgusted by the admiration I can’t help feeling as I watch her. She’s a Season . . . a Season fueled by rage, who’s managed to overpower a god. In the vision, even Lyon hesitates to stand too close to her.

  Until she hands him the staff.

  She falls to her knees beside Jack, just like all the others. Giving up everything for him. Fighting for him.

  He’s alive. Not in a terrarium or in an urn. Not in the wind. He’s alive.

  Sinking into the chair, I drop my head between my knees and fight the urge to be sick.

  “You’re not the only one to suffer a loss, Douglas. Jack survived his ordeal, and he’s stronger for it. Perhaps not in the ways you imagined, but strength is about more than power and magic. It’s about faith and trust and commitment. He made a choice. A choice to embrace his . . .”

  Lyon’s blathering abruptly dies.

  I lift my head. But Lyon’s not looking at me. He’s frowning deep into the crystal. “. . . his future,” he finishes. With a soft clear of his throat, he wraps the velvet sash back around the eye. “I hope you can move on from here as he has, Douglas. It’s important that you try. The world moves on, with or without us,” he says, the creases around his eyes deepening. “In one week’s time, Gaia and I will be dismantling the last members of Michael’s Guard. All those remaining will be awakened and relieved of their duties, as well as the magic granted to them by the former Chronos.”

  The damp jumpsuit chills my skin where it presses against the seat. “What does that mean? What are you saying?”

  “Those who chose to serve under Michael may be swayed by conflicting values and loyalties. I cannot take any chances with the safety of the Observatory or those who choose to reside here.”

  “Choose?” The word tastes all wrong and I spit it back at him. “What does that even mean?”

  “You may elect to retire,” he continues, “in which case you will be stripped of your magic and assigned to a vacant position of service here within the school, where you may live out the remaining years of your natural life. But I will advise you that our systems have changed. Our rules are different now, Douglas. Our Seasons strive to live, both here and above ground, in peaceful coexistence. I will not allow anyone to disrupt that goal.”

  A cold, dry laugh escapes me. “And what if I don’t want to retire?”

  “Then that decision will result in Termination. As will any intimation of harm against Jack or Fleur.” Lyon’s eyes meet mine. There’s no mistaking the unspoken threat inside them. So that’s what this is about. This isn’t about protecting the Observatory. It’s about protecting Jack. It’s about keeping me powerless down here, where I can’t get to him.

  “You might as well just kill me now,” I say through my teeth.

  “It’s a significant decision—”

  Despite the lightness in my head, I launch to my feet. “No, it’s a punishment!”

  “It is also a choice, Mr. Lausks.” Lyon doesn’t rise. Doesn’t reach for the staff.

  “Maybe I wasn’t clear, old man. I’m not giving you my magic. I’d rather die than serve you. You are not my Chronos. You never will be.”

  “Your Chronos would never have given you the option,” he says quietly. “I will not take it from you. You will have one week to think on your decision. Extraction is taxing on the body, and you should use this time to rest and reflect. You’re tired, and you have a lot of information to absorb.”

  One week. Long enough for me to recover the strength I’ll need to survive the pain of extraction as they rip away my magic. But not long enough to gather the power to fight it. “And if my decision won’t change?”

  “You may use the week to put your affairs in order. Gaia and I will consider any final requests you’d like to make with regard to your personal property.” His eyes lift to mine. “Death doesn’t have to be the only choice. There is a way forward. Take time,” he says pointedly, wielding that word as if it belongs to him.

  “Is that all?” As far as I’m concerned, we’re done here.

  “Douglas,” he says, stopping me before I reach the door. “I am truly sorry for your loss.”

  Loss, he calls it. As if it’s all a game. As if he plucked a few damn chess pieces off the board and we can all just start over. I shake my head as I shove through the heavy double doors, nearly crashing into the figure cowering on the other side. Kai wraps her arms around herself, pale and shaking like she’s just awoken from stasis. Kai Sampson, the best marksman in the Guard. The champion archer who shot Jack Sommers full of arrows, and for what?

  For nothing.

  “Doug?” Her voice cracks. She reeks like cold sweat as I shoulder past her. “Doug, what happened? What did he want?”

  She has no idea. No idea Jack’s alive. No idea what’s happened while we’ve all b
een sleeping. I don’t tell her what Lyon said. That we’ve lost the battle. That our enemies have taken control of our home. I don’t tell her we’re about to lose our lives, or our magic. Because I have no intention of letting the bastard get that far.

  1

  A Strangely Aching Heart

  FLEUR

  A guitar riff screams against the walls of the villa, drowning out the morning chatter of the jays as I follow the sound through the veranda. By the time I reach the workout room, Jack’s favorite ’80s punk mix is reverberating in my bones. I push open the door, covering my ears against the hammering of drums.

  “Jack!” I can’t even hear myself over the bass. Neither can he, apparently. “Jack, you really shouldn’t—”

  His back rests on the weight bench, his legs spread, his bare feet pressed flat against the floor as he shakes chalk from his hands and adjusts his grip on the bar. It’s loaded down with far too many plates. I open my mouth to shout again. Oblivious, he sucks in a few short breaths, gritting his teeth as he pushes the bar from its cradle. Jack’s muscles tighten into distracting patterns, cords straining in the flushed column of his neck as he lowers the bar and presses it up again.

  Eyes squeezed shut, he pushes out a few more reps. I hover close, my hands poised to catch the bar if it drops. His jaw strains, his breath heating my face as I help guide the bar the last few inches into the cradle.

  His gray eyes flash open as the bar clatters into place with an echoing thud. A smile tugs on his lips. He lies there, covered in sweat, grinning at me upside down, lip-synching the words to whatever song is blaring through the speakers. I reach for his phone and shut the music off.

  “I said, you shouldn’t be lifting this much weight without a spotter!” My voice is too loud, the music still ringing in my ears.

  “I don’t need a spotter.” He arcs his back a few inches off the bench, lifting his shirt to mop sweat from his face. His sly grin widens, teasing a blush out of me when he catches me staring at the taut lines of muscle underneath. We’ve been living together, sleeping together in the same bed, for more than a year, but the sight of him still knocks me breathless sometimes. He reaches up and tugs the end of my pink ponytail until my face hovers upside down above his. Perspiration shimmers in his dark hair and shines on his upper lip, leaving a deliciously salty taste on mine as he steals a sweaty kiss from me. Under the bright overhead lights, his eyes sparkle with mischief.