It’s early—hours before the sun comes up and the students flood campus—and Colin can hear one of the delivery trucks outside, dropping off supplies at the kitchen. The steady beep as it backs up echoes off the stone buildings and fills the empty quad. “Hey, how’d you two get me up here anyway?”

“That would be Jay. Turns out he’s excellent at distraction and a lot stronger than he looks.”

“How is he?”

“He’s okay,” she says, and he feels her shrug slightly. “I mean, he seems to thrive on this kind of thing. I don’t get it, but I’m glad he’s like that. What he’s doing for us is amazing.”

“I know.”

“I wonder if we’d be able to do it without him. I wonder if I could get you out of the water somehow.” She pauses, watching him. “I wonder if that’s why I’m so strong now.”

Colin is silent in response to that. He’s given this some thought. If the lake is where Lucy was before she found him and where she goes when she disappears, Colin wonders if he could simply go find her there. He’s not exactly sure how they got to the other side because his head is still a bit foggy, but he likes to think if he had to, he could find it alone.

“Tell me what happened,” he says. “It’s true, isn’t it? You got past the gate.”

“You remember that?”

He nods.

She shivers beside him. “Other than finding you, I don’t remember ever feeling so drawn to something. I saw my hand, and it looked alive, Colin. I felt like I needed to be on the other side of the gate.”

“Do you think that’s how it works? We need to get you off campus? Like, unlocking some puzzle?”

“I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think it’s that simple. It can’t be.”

“Maybe you’re overthinking it.”

She doesn’t answer, just presses her cheek into the back of his shirt, reassuring herself that he’s warm and really here.

“It’s where you were before you came back?” he asks.

“I think so. I feel like I’d been pacing inside a cage, looking out through the lake, waiting to come be with you.”

“And you think it’s where you go when you disappear?”

Her arms tighten around him when he says that. “Yeah, but I don’t plan on disappearing again.”

Maybe not, he thinks. But at least I know where to find you. Colin relaxes. This knowledge makes the prospect of the approaching spring much less terrifying.

Chapter 33 HER

THE DEEP PURPLE WATER-SKY TREMBLES ABOVE them, with stars made out of a million of the smallest bubbles. The illusion of earth and lake bottom turns into the soft, inviting blackness. An instinctive burst of energy courses through Lucy’s system, and she pushes forward faster.

“God, I can’t wait to get there,” Colin says, floating behind her. “I hope we can stay longer this time. I want to try the gate again.”

Lucy doesn’t respond, simply kicks her feet through the icy clear water. It’s all she’s been able to think about: how her skin looked like real flesh, that she felt the sting of the cold air on her fingertips, but she’s worried there’s something they haven’t considered yet.

It’s strange to not be able to see but to know exactly where to turn, like the directions are embedded in her muscles. Does he feel it too?

“Can you find it?” she asks, stilling. “What?” He stops next to her, his arm pressed along the length of hers.

“Do you remember how to get there? Could you find it on your own?”

He looks behind them, to where the water has simply emptied into blackness, and then forward again. “Not like this. I can’t see anything. I don’t think this is how we got here before.”

“Never mind,” she says, grabbing his hand to pull him closer. “I guess it’s a feel thing. Maybe after you’ve been here a few more times.”

“Maybe,” he says, though he sounds unsure.

A few seconds later, she instinctively turns. A light in the distance grows brighter and brighter.

It takes a moment for their eyes to adjust, but everything is exactly as they left it. A canopy of crystalline leaves sparkles above them. The sun is a trapezoidal beam of yellow sweeping across the frozen shore. Orange, blue, red, and purple flowers bloom in small pops before they freeze, leaving waves of stained-glass color in their wake. A light snow is falling, and Colin holds out his hand; intricate, lacy snowflakes land in his palm.

She grins at him, watching him look around. It’s everything at once: vibrant color and glistening ice. They can smell the wet earth beneath the snow and hear the water freeze across the lake. It becomes disorienting and overwhelming, and she can see the moment it becomes too much for him when he sits on the bank and covers his eyes.

She sits next to him, resting her hand on his bent knee. “Are you okay?”

“I love you,” he says quietly, slowly blinking up to the sky.

She breaks into a grin so wide it takes her several seconds to respond. “I love you back.”

He picks up her hand and massages her fingers. “I thought I knew what love was before.”

“I didn’t.” She leans down, kisses the back of his hand.

Colin looks over at her, his eyes as hungry as she feels when she pushes him onto his back in the snow.

“Cold?” she asks, moving over him.

He shakes his head, hands running up her sides, lifting her shirt up and off in a single movement. “Not even a little.”

Her hair falls in a curtain around them, and he pushes it back, kissing her like she’s a normal girl he can grip and feel and not worry about breaking.

Lucy wonders if time moves down here at all because before she knows it her clothes are gone and Colin is smiling down at her, snowflakes in his hair and clinging to his lashes, disappearing into the skin of his bare shoulders. He bites his lip as he moves above her, fingers memorizing every inch and finding where they come together.

Frost gathers on their skin and disappears as quickly. Light explodes behind her eyes, and Colin holds her shaking hands with his. He says her name against her mouth, that he loves her, that even having all of her will never be enough. He groans into her neck, and when they still, his heart silent against her chest, she can hear the sound of feathery snow falling around them.

“How’s it possible to feel like I want to be here with you but I shouldn’t be?” he asks. They’re on the trail again, hand in hand as they make their way toward the front of the school. Lucy tried to say no—to distract him—but there wasn’t any conviction behind her words.

“I don’t know,” she says, “but it’s how I feel bringing you here too. It feels selfish.”

“Lucy?” he says, and she watches a cloud of anxiety pass through his eyes. “I think this is what we’ve been missing. Don’t you?”

She looks up, watches how fast the sun seems to move across the snowy sky. She can feel it with every step: the need to keep going, to escape.

They stop with the iron gate in front of them, its hulking mass like a scar blooming out of the pristine snow. Lucy notices Colin rubbing the spot over his sternum. “Jay’s bringing me back. My chest hurts,” he says. “We don’t have much time, Luce.”

He reaches for her then, pulling her to him with a smile that doesn’t completely fill his eyes. His mouth is soft but insistent, wet and warm.

She turns, a sense of longing filling her chest like a warm bath, a tug behind her ribs pushing her toward whatever is on the other side of the fence.

The same feeling of anticipation coats her skin, and she reaches out to lift the latch. The old gate groans, the hinges squeak, and Lucy steps back as it swings open.

She twists her fingers with his, and as if acting on instinct, steps through first.

She hears the gasp before she’s even turned around. He’s smiling. Tear tracks line his face, and he’s looking at her as if she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Your hair,” he says. She looks down. It’s brown, every shade of brown at once. “And your eyes.” He’s laughing now, disbelief etched in every part of his face. “They’re green.”