I turn as a low groan rises down the street. Kai curls on her side, her face pinched with pain. Auggie runs to her, his hands moving over her as he checks her for injuries. He pries open her eyelids. “We should get them inside. Hurry,” he says, sliding an arm under Kai.

Kai’s eyes flutter open as Auggie hefts her to her feet. There’s a collective gasp as she lifts her head. Her eyes meet mine, glittering like two pale diamonds under her heavy lids.

Kai touches one of them with her free hand, her face a mask of disbelief as she prods the skin around it. She pats her pocket, as if she’s lost something and can’t remember where it is.

“Jack’s plan worked,” Poppy says, cringing as she watches Kai hobble toward the door. “Sort of.”

During the short ride in the van, Poppy and Chill had explained Jack’s plan. Jack, assuming he was human and incapable of taking the magic, was supposed to give the staff to Julio. Amber was supposed to take the eye. And hopefully, when Julio struck Doug with the scythe, the magic would split apart and bind itself to whoever was holding the object it was tied to. Julio would take Chronos’s magic, Amber would take Ananke’s, and presumably, Gaia’s magic would be drawn to me.

Jack’s plan still worked, just not exactly the way he imagined.

Auggie tries to move Kai inside. Her face twists with pain and she slides from his arms, planting her feet on the ground. She looks down at me, piercing me with a strange, almost bottomless gaze. It’s like placing two mirrors face-to-face and staring into them. Like you could see infinity in their reflection. She blinks, shaking her head as if she’s trying to make sense of what she’s seeing. “The Winter magic,” she rasps. “You have to take it back from us.”

I hold tightly to Jack’s hand. “We’ll wait. When Jack wakes up, he’ll make his own decision. I won’t make it for him.” Jack had swung that scythe out of desperation, in self-defense. He couldn’t have known this would happen. He planned for Julio to become Chronos. That’s what they’d all agreed to. He should be allowed to choose his own magic—his own fate.

I hover protectively over Jack, brushing back the iced locks of his hair. His forehead’s freezing, his skin glazed in frost. Ever since he died and lost his magic at the lake, this is all he’s wanted—to come back and claim his magic, to become a Winter again. It feels wrong to make this choice for him without asking. I can’t do that to him. Not again.