I think back to our time on the run, unable to put my finger on the last place where we felt balanced. Every perfect memory of us together during that time was bookended by danger or disaster. There was never a perfect moment. There was never a guarantee we’d survive. There were no safe places. Fleur and I had accepted the possibility of death. We ran headfirst into it, knowing the risks, for the chance to be together. We found our balance in spite of the danger, not because we were both safe from it.

“But the travel ban . . .”

She chokes out a laugh. “When have the rules ever stopped you before?”

I sit up, my mind spinning.

“Amber, you’re a genius!” I bend over my keyboard, tapping out a quick email to Lyon, asking to reschedule our meeting, before leaping to my feet. “I’ll call you later.”

“Wait, Jack, where are you going?” she shouts.

A smile crackles like frost over my face as I grab my shoes and run for the door. “I don’t know yet. We’ll figure it out.”

10

Let the Night Be Dark

FLEUR

The soothing notes of an acoustic guitar fill my studio. The recording is a mix Julio made for me after I told him I missed hearing him play: old folk ballads, modern pop songs, a little classic rock. Amber’s clear soprano harmonizes with Julio’s rich tenor, taking me back to a night we all spent sitting on the dusty floor of a rickety cabin, listening to them sing over mugs of canned stew and the crackle of a fire.

I turn my easel away from the window and pick up my brush, letting Julio’s music carry me someplace else as I paint. By the midpoint of the recording, the scene on the canvas has completely changed. The hillside has darkened to a deep midnight green, and the air is dusted with chimney smoke through frost-covered branches.

I pull back to look at it, surprising myself as I recognize the imprecise and crooked outline of a pond. Our pond. The one near Jack’s grandfather’s cabin, where he took me skating under the stars.

With a pang, I wonder what Jack would think of it. If he would want to hang it in the villa, or if it would make him sad to look at it.

I pick a loose hair from the tip of the brush, struggling to remember my life before Gaia gave me my magic. My earth magic is so much a part of me. The thought of having that ripped away is viscerally painful to imagine. I don’t know who I’d be without it. And even though it terrifies me to think of Jack going back to the Observatory—of entrusting him to someone as powerful and cunning as Daniel Lyon—maybe it’s wrong of me to keep him from that.