Seasons of the Storm, page 1
Dedication
For Sarah Davies, my fearless Handler,
who always sees the way and always has my back
CONTENT WARNINGS:
This book contains references to suicide and self-harm.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
1. Out Like a Lamb
2. Fifty-Five Days Later
3. Hounds of Winter
4. May Flowers
5. Lions and Smazes
6. Ash to Ash
7. Legends and Fables
8. Proofs and Theories
9. Close and Secret
10. Choice and Consequence
11. Through the Ley Lines
12. About Alaska
13. The Path of Low Resistance
14. As the Crow Flies
15. One Final Hunt
16. Our Waking Souls
17. Special Delivery
18. Summers
19. Scratch the Surface
20. A Thin Ray of Light
Part Two
21. Adrift
22. None Shall Slacken
23. Anywhere
24. Landfall
25. Downwind
26. The Lives We Buried
27. Safe House
28. Winter’s Kiss
29. Teeth for Battle
30. Distance Between Us
31. The Lion’s Den
32. And So We Remained
33. Cold Awakening
34. The Calm
35. A Kiss and All Was Said
36. Chaos and Opportunity
Part Three
37. But Fire, but Thunder
38. Claws and Teeth
39. The Lion’s Heart
40. However Measured or Far
41. Light in the Canyon
42. Those Who Will Listen
43. To Weather the Storm
44. Of Fate, Kings, and Desperate Men
45. Border Crossing
46. Dust to Dust
47. When All Seems Lost
48. Thin Ice
49. Our Best Men With Thee
50. How This Ends
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Elle Cosimano
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Wintergreen, Virginia
December 21, 1988
JACK
There’s something inherently wrong with any home that’s easy to get into and hard to break out of. The Winter Ridge Academy for Boys is both. I’ve cleared four of the five pins in the lock already, and I can practically taste the air outside, cold and sweet, seeping through the crack under the door.
My hallmates roughhouse behind me, their blood buzzing on cheap contraband rum, all of us high on the promise of one night outside these walls and the risk of getting caught.
We won’t. I’ve been planning this for a month—timing the shift changes of the security guards, mapping their patrol routes every night after lights out, figuring out how to get us all back inside before morning head count. If anyone deserves a few hours of freedom, it’s us.
We’re the ones left behind—the worst of the screwups, whose parents didn’t want us home for the holidays. The last bed check of the night was an hour ago. The teachers have all taken off for Christmas, and security’s been whittled down to a skeleton crew. If I can get us out past the reach of the security lights, no one should come looking for us.
“Hurry up, Sullivan. What’s taking so long?”
“Keep it down. I’m almost done.”
They’re like puppies, all quiet barks and rough whispers and stifled laughs as they scuffle in their puffy coats behind me. One of them knocks into me and I swear. But as I pitch forward into the door, the last pin slides home.
The lock opens.
The boys untangle themselves and huddle over my shoulder, their breath ripe with booze as the door creaks open, carving an angel’s wing in the snow. I hold them back, craning my neck out. The hushed woods absorb every sound.
The exits in this place are equipped with cameras and alarms, except this one. Half hidden in the back of an old boiler room layered in dust, the dimpled door and rusted padlock hardly put up a fight. Tucked close to the woods, this corner of the dormitory isn’t visible from the rest of campus. During the summers, it’s overgrown with weeds, the patchy, neglected grass shaded by the dense, low limbs of the towering oaks and chestnut trees that surround the school, as if the staff’s forgotten this door exists. The security guards don’t even bother patrolling it. In the mornings, when we’re released for outside recreation, it’s the only pristine stretch of snow on the grounds.
“Go,” I whisper, holding the door open for the others. I drag on my ski jacket and cap. The snow’s thick, making it easy to follow their moonlit tracks. I run after them, the cold stinging my cheeks, a grin splitting my face so wide it’s almost painful, as the lights of the school fade behind me.
My lungs burn and my heart’s on fire. It feels like the first full breath I’ve tasted in years, since I first got dumped here. I’m tempted to turn away from the rest of the group and just keep running, but I’ve only got six months left in this place to satisfy the terms of my probation.
And then what? After graduation, where the hell will I go?
I dig in my pocket for the smuggled whiskey I brought, but it’s gone. Ahead, the empty bottle catches the moonlight, dangling from someone’s glove.
My roommate tosses me a can of cheap beer and I catch it against the front of my coat. It’s still warm from whoever’s dorm room it was hidden in, and now it’s completely shaken up.
“Happy birthday, Jack,” I mutter.
I crack it open and pound it before the froth spills out. It’s been hours since dinner. The beer goes straight to my head, and my stomach still feels hollow, even after I knock back a second one.
We walk until my face is numb. Until we reach the high chain-link perimeter fence separating us from the ski resort on the other side.
“This is it,” I tell them. A month ago, I sketched a map to this spot. My roommate’s older brother works at the ski rental counter during his college breaks, and someone said he’d been saving money to buy a car. I convinced the boys in my hall to chip in for a bribe, wrote all our boot sizes on a slip of paper, and passed it to the guy’s brother along with the money and the map when he was here during Sunday visitation two weeks ago. The opportunity to ski these slopes—slopes some of us can see from our dorm room windows but never get the chance to touch—was too good to pass up.
The boulder’s tucked tightly against a copse of pine, its nose poking out of the snow, exactly where I marked it on the map.
We drop to our knees around it, groping under the snow. Whoops and hell yeahs rise up as I pull out six sets of skis and poles. We fish out a pile of buried trash bags and tear them open, counting out a set of boots for each of us.
“Jack, you’re a motherfucking genius!” One of my hallmates gives me a drunken kiss on the forehead and shoves me backward into the snow. The metal fence rattles as we feed our gear through the opening, the sharp edges of the chain link snapping back over and over until the last of us clears the “No Trespassing” sign.
We lug our gear through a swath of trees and pause on the other side, an awed silence falling over us.
The slopes are dusted with windswept powder. It glitters like stars against the dark, disappearing into a night that feels suddenly infinite and ours.
I step into my skis. They hover over the crest where the slope meets the trail and I watch as, one by one, the others take off down the mountain with wild howls, their skis cutting left and right, polishing the edges of the roughest black diamond on the mountain.
The slope falls away when I try to look at it straight on. But out of the corner of my eye, I catch movement. A shadow, like a swirl of dark fog, weaving around the base of the trees.
“You okay, Jack?” my roommate asks.
“Yeah, I’m great,” I say, hoarse from the cold and the laughter. I tear my gaze from the trees, kicking myself for slugging those two beers on an empty stomach. “Never felt so alive.”
“Too bad we only get one run,” he says.
One run. That’s all we get. The slopes are closed. The lifts are down. By the time we make the trek back up the mountain to school, it will be nearly morning, and I’ll be a prisoner in that place for the next six months. All I want is one perfect run, a few fleeting moments when nothing’s holding me back.
“Hit it hard, Jack. No second chances.” There’s a reckless shine in his eyes as he shoves off. “Meet you at the bottom.” His skis make a soft swish as they fade from sight. My eyes drift to the woods and I drag them back, ignoring the doubt creeping through my mind.
This is the one night you’re not leashed to that place. The one night you don’t have to answer to anyone. Don’t lose your nerve.
I tug my hat low over my ears and follow him. The wind sears my face, stealing my breath. The night rushes by faster than I can see ahead of me. I take the first few turns cautiously—too cautiously—avoiding the first two moguls altogether.
We only get one run . . . no second chances.
I loosen my knees and lean into the turns, catching wind as I hit the next mogul straight on. Suddenly, I’m flying. My heart soars in my chest. My
The slope disappears. Exhilaration turns to panic as the trees rush at me.
With a snap, my insides shatter, wood pummeling bone. The impact tears me from my skis and throws me backward into the snow.
I lie there, eyes closed, a deafening ring in my ears. The stars shimmer as I blink myself conscious, my warm breath curling like smoke from the wreckage.
There’s no pain. Not at first. Just a low groan. The unsettling sense that something is broken. My hat’s gone, and the back of my head is drenched and cold. The last of my friends’ shouts fade downhill.
I have to catch up to them. I have to get up.
I move my . . .
My legs don’t respond. No pain, no cold, nothing. . . . I feel nothing below my waist. Nothing but fear as it seizes me.
Shit, Jack. What the hell have you done?
I open my mouth to shout for help but the words won’t come. I can’t get enough air. Pain sharpens against my ribs. It swells until there’s no room for breath or thought or anything else.
Please, no! Don’t leave me here!
The night slips in and out of focus, the pain gripping me in waves. Snow seeps into the neck of my coat. Into my gloves. My heart slows, my hands shake, and my teeth . . . God, my teeth won’t stop chattering.
You screwed up, Jack. You’re going to die.
“Only if you choose to.”
My breath stills. My eyes peel open at the sound of a woman’s voice. They roll toward the forest, searching, barely able to focus.
Please . . . help me! Please, I can’t . . .
The roots of the trees seem to snake up from the ground, writhing above the snow as if they’re alive. My eyes drift closed again. I’m seeing things. Hallucinating. Must have hit my head. But when I force them open, the roots are still moving, braiding themselves together, forming a raised path above the snow.
A woman appears at the end of it.
Mom? Her name catches painfully in my throat.
“You may call me Gaia,” she says.
No. Not my mother. My mother would never come. Has never come.
The woman’s long white dress glows against the dark, her shape becoming clearer as she approaches. The walkway under her feet grows, extending toward me with each of her steps. The woven roots twist and fold into a set of stairs a moment before she descends them, then unravel behind her, disappearing into the snow.
She kneels beside me, her silver hair falling around her face as it comes slowly into focus. Everything but her eyes. They glimmer like diamonds. Or maybe I’m crying. My breath sputters. I taste blood. Suffocating on the smell of copper and iron, I reach for her in a blind panic.
Am I dead?
Her hand’s warm against my cheek. She smells like flowers. Like the mountains in springtime.
“Not yet. But soon,” she says. “Your spleen is ruptured. A rib has punctured your lung. You will succumb to your injuries before your body can be recovered.”
But my friends—
“They will not come back for you.”
No. I’m imagining this. She can’t possibly know these things. But deep inside, I know this is real. And I know that she’s right. Every word cuts. Every breath tears through me.
“I offer you a choice, Jacob Matthew Sullivan,” she says. “Come home with me and live forever, according to my rules. Or die tonight.”
Home. A wave of pain crests inside me. I grab her wrist as the crushing weight of my last breath pulls me under.
Please, I beg her. Please, don’t let me die.
1
Out Like a Lamb
March 12, 2020
JACK
“Hold still!” Fleur barks. “I might cut you.”
“I thought that was the point.” At least, that’s how we agreed to do it. Fleur wanted a less vicious method than last year. I wanted something quick and clean. After a lengthy debate about the multitude of ways she could kill me, we finally settled on the knife.
My head swims. I stare at the horizon over her shoulder just to keep myself from falling. I’m burning up just standing this close to her, and it’s too hard to look in her eyes. Her pink hair lifts on a breeze, all tangled up in the red light of the transmitter in her ear and the blood-orange glow over the Virginia foothills behind her. Beautiful. Like something out of a fever dream.
“What the hell are you doing, Jack?”
I shake off the voice in my head, so woozy with fever I almost mistake it for my own. Chill knows exactly what I’m doing. I’ll catch hell for it in three months when I wake up, but for now, I don’t have the energy for the lecture he’s spouting in my ear. I let Fleur catch up to me. Let her corner me here, because I was tired of running, and I just wanted more time. Just a few more minutes face-to-face with her before I go. To choose how we say goodbye this time.
Fleur gnaws her lip, the tip of her knife pressing into the skin just below my ribs, jarring me back to the moment. Spring’s here, and my season’s over. Our time’s up, and now it’s her job to send me home.
I feel a little lost just thinking about it. The Observatory won’t ever be home. The second I die, I’ll be completely cut off from her, yanked across the world through the ley lines like a deflated balloon and locked underground, sequestered in hibernation until next winter. I waver, the sharp edge of her blade making me feel a little untethered.
Deep worry lines crease her brow as she adjusts her grip.
I can’t stop staring at her frown, the way she licks her lip when she concentrates.
There’s an arm’s length between us. She’s too far away.
My voice goes gravelly. “My liver’s a little higher.” Chill swears at me. “It’s deep. Between the third and fourth rib. You should probably come closer.” Through my transmitter, I can hear Chill’s head thunk against his desk.
The air thins as Fleur steps forward. Close enough for me to smell the lilies on her breath. To feel the heat of her shaky sigh against my face. I thought this elevation would buy me more time—the ice, the terrain, the trees shading the winding trails of the national forest—but she’s so warm, I can’t—
“Better?” she asks. I wince, light-headed as the point of the knife digs in, and her dark eyes flick to mine.
I nod, unable to form words when she’s standing this close. I study the contours of her mouth, wondering what it would taste like. I can’t imagine any way I’d rather die. “If you’re squeamish, we could try something else.”
She freezes. “Like what?”
“Jack?” Chill’s voice rises. “I don’t like where this is going.”
She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t say no. In a second, it’ll all be over. Just a flash of pain and light and I’ll be gone. But just once, I want to know what it’s like to kiss her before I go. I tip my head closer. Close enough to let her close the gap if she wants to.
Her breath comes out on a tremble. My pulse ratchets up as her mouth slants toward mine. Just before our lips brush, she jerks sharply back. Across the short gap between us, I can hear Poppy screaming in her ear. Fleur’s cheeks flush to match the redwood blooms on the tree behind her—blooms I swear weren’t there a minute ago. “We can’t do that,” she tells me. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“Why?” I snap. “Because Poppy says so?”
“Because we’ll get in trouble. You know the rules.”
Yeah, I know them. A kiss is painful for the weaker Season, a fast-track ticket back to the Observatory, complete with probations and penalties I’d rather not think about. But I would have kissed her anyway. “I guess following the rules has been working for you,” I say with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
She flinches, and I hate myself for it. Chill’s mentioned how Fleur and Poppy have been slipping in the rankings. Probably because she’s far too easy on me.
Idiot. If she only cared about the rules, she would have killed me a week ago.
“Never mind,” I grumble. “You’re right. It’s a stupid way to die.”
“Fine,” she says through her teeth. She tightens her grip on the knife with a precision that says she knew all along exactly where it should go. “On the count of three, then.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Chill warns me.
Too late.
I brace myself. My breath comes fast. In a second, my season will be over. I’ll be locked away, asleep in a plastic cage thirty stories underground for the rest of Fleur’s season. . . .
