“You’re lying.” I don’t want to believe it. Refuse to believe it. If Gaia was dead, I would know. Wouldn’t I? If Gaia was dead, this place—the world and every creature in it—would be gone right along with her. My watering eyes catch on a deep, jagged crack in the stone above me. A thin film of clay dust coats the lid of the chamber, as if the earth’s been rocked, its contents shaken loose. “I want to speak with Chronos.”

“I am Chronos,” the voice says.

“You’re full of shit!”

“And you’re locked in a very tiny prison.”

“I demand to speak with Daniel Lyon! Where is he?” The answering silence is loud enough to shatter my soul. “Who are you? What have you done?”

The disembodied voice is barely more than a whisper. “I think you know.”

Goose bumps rise over my skin. I stare through the dome, thrown suddenly back to an abandoned building, tied to a chair in a dimly lit room. Doug Lausks’s iron-and-copper breath is hot on my face, the blood I’ve drawn dripping from his nose.

“I warned you once to be careful with me, Fleur Attwell.”

“Where’s Jack?” Those Guards were in our house. In our bedroom. The power was out, our security system shut down. The Guards outnumbered us. Without his magic—without me—Jack was defenseless against them.

“The world is ending, Fleur. Mother Earth and Father Time are dead, and all you care about is Sommers? I thought you were better than that.” The locks beside my head snap open. I flinch back from the sudden sharp sound as cold air rushes through the broken seal.

I don’t move. Don’t breathe as the static dies in the speaker and the lights inside the stasis chamber flicker and go dark.

“Doug?” I smack the inside of the dome. The lid rises on its hinges. “Doug, answer me!” A minute ago, I would have given anything to be free of the chamber, but now I’d give anything just to know what’s happened to Jack. I kick the lid open the rest of the way, dizzy and cold as I sit up and take in the high walls of the cell. My skin prickles. I hunch in on myself, arms crossed to conceal my bare breasts from the camera perched in the corner of the room. A single faded blanket and a pair of coveralls rest on a metal bunk on the far wall. I launch off the edge of the chamber, nearly falling on my face as my knees buckle and stasis sickness washes over me. My injuries must not have been bad—the queasiness is only mildly unpleasant—but whatever time I spent recovering in the chamber has left me drained and clumsy.