I wonder what he offered in exchange. A coveted region? A position in his new Guard? Whatever carrot he’s dangling in front of her, it’s a risky play. I’m not the only one in this cell with a choice to make. Everyone has weak spots, bruises that can be prodded. And I know more than a few of Kai’s. “Hell of a failed mission, huh?”

She frowns, turning away from me as if she might be sick again. “I shot Jack Sommers,” she says, huddling under her blanket. “Three clean shots in the back and one in the leg before he killed me.”

I scratch my jaw, unable to help the stab of sympathy I feel. She was loyal to the Guard. Faithful to Michael. She did what she was ordered to do, and this is her reward for it.

“How’d he do it?” I ask, my curiosity piqued.

“Do what?” Her eyes lift to mine, foggy and confused.

“How’d he kill you?”

A humiliated blush warms the pallor of her cheeks. “He broke the shaft of the arrow in his leg and used it to impale me.” The fact that Jack was the one to kill her will only make my job easier. “They were broadhead arrows,” she says, her brows knitted. “Three in the back should have taken him down. I don’t know how he managed to . . .” Her eyes squeeze shut against another wave of stasis tremors.

She’s right. Jack never should have walked away with those injuries. And yet thanks to Fleur, that’s exactly what he did.

“You did your job. There wasn’t anything you could have done to stop what happened after that.”

She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, watching me out of the corner of her eye. “You think it was inevitable?”

Do I? I wonder as I button myself back into my jumpsuit. Inevitability is dead. Ananke—Gaia’s mother, wife of the late Chronos, and the embodiment of Fate—died a long time ago, killed in cold blood by her own husband. The only piece of her that’s left is the crystal eye in the Staff of Time, the Eye of Inevitability that Daniel Lyon is so damn afraid to look into. But if the wielder of Time—the most powerful magic in the universe—is terrified of what he saw in that crystal, there’s got to be a good reason for that. If he’s worried enough to send Kai down here to spy on me, then maybe Inevitability isn’t dead after all. And maybe that magic is more powerful than Lyon’s willing to admit.

“Sommers got lucky,” I say, spitting his name. “It wasn’t fate that landed us here. It was him.” Fleur may have been the one to overpower Michael and take the staff. But everything she did, she did for Jack.