“Then he’ll die.” Kai’s shaking, sweating and unsteady as she leans into Auggie’s side. But her eyes never leave mine. They’re clear and fever-bright. Her proclamation doesn’t feel like an empty threat. It feels like a statement of fact. As if she’s already seen it happen in her mind.

“You don’t know him. You don’t know how strong he—”

Kai steps out from under Auggie’s arm, bracing her hands against the ground as she kneels in front of me, putting us eye to eye. An image reveals itself in the diamondlike facets. A woman leaning over Jack, taking his magic. I suck in a sharp breath as I recognize the woman’s face. It’s not Gaia. Not Jack’s past I’m seeing. It’s me. Our future . . .

Kai blinks and the image is gone. “He won’t wake up from this. He’s injured and exhausted. The magic you gave him was barely enough to ensure his survival through what he just endured. If he’d been human, he’d already be gone. But he doesn’t have enough power to fight this for long. And his body isn’t strong enough to sustain this kind of pain. There are only two possible outcomes. He cannot be both. And the only way to rid Jack of the burden of Time is for one of you to kill him and take it for yourself, the same way he took it from Doug.” Her gaze slides to Julio, Amber, and Chill.

Julio steps away from Jack. None of the others move.

“Or Fleur can take the Winter magic,” Kai says, letting Auggie lift her to her feet.

“But I—”

“You have Gaia’s power now. You’re the only one who can.”

I touch my chest, thinking back to the moment I lay dying in the children’s hospital. I’d heard Gaia’s voice inside me—heard the choice she offered me. And even though I wasn’t conscious, she knew my answer, as if she felt my heart’s desire. The day Jack died at the lake, Gaia had known his answer, too.

Calling on my new magic, I reach out to Jack’s body. The process is as familiar to me as breathing, as familiar and easy as using my earth magic. Jack’s heartbeat is wild and arrhythmic, his pain overwhelming. The deeper inside him my magic travels, the more chaotic his body feels. I remember Lyon’s face when he took Michael’s magic . . . what Gaia told him.

You cannot be both a Season and Time. One draws its magic from chaos, the other from order. They are diametrically opposed. It would tear you to pieces.

Jack’s Winter magic screams out to mine, twisting inside him like an icy gale. I can feel it, fighting for space. Fighting for control. Can feel him suffering as the magic shears away his strength from the inside.