Doug didn’t. . . . He couldn’t stand the thought of losing anything—not his position, not his friends, and definitely not his magic. And then he had to go and take more. Gaia warned Lyon about holding on to too much power, that it was dangerous. That all that magic would eventually tear him apart. Lyon had traded one magic for another. But Doug . . . he had to have it all—Time and Inevitability, Earth and all four of her elements. If it weren’t for Fleur, Doug would probably self-destruct and take the whole world with him.

Doug isn’t just Chronos anymore. He’s the embodiment of entropy. A damn vessel for chaos.

Lyon’s chair topples behind me as I spring to my feet. “A vessel for chaos. That’s it. That’s what you’re trying to tell me,” I whisper.

We are only matter in a closed system, Lyon had written, incapable of being created or destroyed. . . . Go back to your beginnings . . .

I run for the door, my footsteps muffled by the hum of generators as I use the key card Fleur gave me to maneuver through the Observatory, following Lyon’s map back to the east wing. Steps away from the Control Room, I freeze at the sound of wheels on glass. I duck into a side hall and crouch in the shadows. A crow blinks from her perch, head tipped, as two custodians amble past me, pushing mop buckets toward the Control Room. I watch the bird with wide, pleading eyes, waiting for it to call me out. But the crow stays mercifully quiet until they’re gone.

Glass crackles under my feet as I pass Gaia’s menagerie. The wall is framed by jagged shards, the habitats destroyed and all the cages empty. A gigantic bulbous beehive lies abandoned on the ground, crushed from the force of its fall. Tiny piles of ash—the souls of dead Springs—dust the floor around it.

The crow swoops over my head, her wings brushing the branches of the ancient fig tree shadowing the archway ahead. The gallery beyond the arbor is dark. I pluck a torch from the wall and strike a match. I can just make out the crow ahead, resting on a hunk of fallen ceiling under the dome. As I enter the gallery, I lift the torch toward the quake-damaged fresco. The fire licks at the brilliant colors, making the missing sections of the painting seem darker in contrast.

Most of the story is there—the painted history of the origins of the world. My beginnings . . . the birth of the Seasons.