I grab the first guy’s wrist, swinging the knife away from my throat. My fist crashes into his nose and he reels back, cupping it. I whirl around, kicking his friend backward into the brush. For a single bright, shining moment, it’s like my magic is back. Like I’m a Winter again, fighting for my life, immune to the cold. Until a lash of white-hot pain grabs me as the knife drags against my throat.

FLEUR

The second-floor classroom is stuffy and hot, and even after drinking half my cappuccino it’s impossible to concentrate. The thick odor of sweat in the room mingles with the heavy perfume of the woman sitting behind me and someone else’s garlic breath from lunch.

My gaze flicks longingly to the single open window at the far side of the room, where a slight breeze carries in the faint earthiness of the park down the block. My thoughts run to Jack, to the hunch in his shoulders as he stares out the window of the training room between sets each morning, as if he wishes he were someplace else.

Or someone else.

He’s been restless lately. There’s a recklessness in the way he’s pushing his body. As if he’s testing boundaries. Testing limits. Running for hours on end sometimes, as if he can outrun this person he’s become. I can almost smell the frustration building inside him. The pent-up anger he directs at himself is a growing misplaced hostility that makes me worry he’ll do something foolish and hurt himself.

The teacher drones on, conjugating verbs on the blackboard. I scrape my books together and quietly excuse myself from the room. My transmitter’s a hard knot inside my ear and I turn it off, dropping it into my pocket as I descend the steps. Jack’s probably not sitting in front of his computer at home anyway. He was too keyed up when I left the villa. Too restless after our wrestling match. I know exactly where I’ll find him.

I push through the door of the school, then cross the street and head for the park. Under the clean, fresh scent of the running creek, the air smells rich and floral. I taste the breeze for signs of Jack and catch the tang of his sweat. His human scent is one I’m still growing used to, different from the peppermint, holly berry, and pine that marked him as a Winter. The faint traces of those smells have almost entirely faded since he lost his magic, replaced by cool musk body washes and minty shaving gels. Under them, the natural human warmth of his skin is the scent I cling to. The one I lean into when I crawl under his arm at night and curl into every morning when we wake up.