“Did he just ask you out?”

Fleur waves goodbye to the barista. “If you’d come to class with me once in a while, maybe you’d know.” I can hear her smile. See it in the bounce of her step as she saunters from the shop. “Don’t you have a meeting or something far more important to do than spying on me?”

“Nothing will ever be more important than what I’m doing right now.” My attention shifts between her GPS, her vitals, and her bodycam footage. I turn to my second monitor, scrolling quickly through satellite weather images and the day’s news headlines. The weather’s clear a few hundred miles in every direction. Nothing to suggest any other Seasons wandering too close to our region or encroaching on Lyon’s boundaries without permission.

She hauls open the door to her language school. “Did you see what I left for you in the kitchen this morning?”

“The cinnamon roll?”

“The canal cruise through Amsterdam,” she says, climbing a set of winding concrete stairs. “Will you talk to Lyon about it?”

The whole idea gives me heartburn. “Fleur, I don’t know if—”

“He owes us this.” Fleur’s red light stops moving. I lift my head to the feed from her body cam. She’s standing outside her classroom door, her crossed arms reflected in the glass pane, staring back at me.

“I’ll talk to him,” I promise.

The corners of her mouth lift in the glass, a small smile just for me, as she reaches for the door. “I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“Be safe,” I murmur.

I don’t relax until Fleur’s red light settles into the fourth seat in the second row of her classroom. I feel a stab of sympathy for Chill, my former Handler. I wonder if this was how he felt every time I walked out the doors of the Observatory during the thirty years I spent as a Winter. If he had nightmares and lost sleep worrying over me while I was out in the world alone.

An incoming video call flashes on one of my screens.

“Professor,” I greet Lyon as I strap on my wrist monitor. I still haven’t gotten used to the idea of calling him Chronos, but I’m not sure he’s gotten used to being Chronos, either. I lean down, my voice muffled as I drag on my running shoes. “You’re punctual, as usual.”

I sync my wrist monitor with Fleur’s tracking program, making sure the red light blinks on. Professor Lyon’s weekly check-ins are usually short. If I hurry, I can make it to the park and get a few miles in before Fleur gets home. She won’t even know I left the house.