“With so many initiates last year, I was certain something would happen. That if there was ever a time for a door to the Deep to be opened, it would be when the circle was so complete. I followed the initiates into the caves, stayed invisible as they stood around the Hourglass. Nothing seemed to be happening at all… until you appeared.
“At first, I thought your presence at Dovermere had messed up the ritual. Then the night Travers returned, I made myself invisible and followed you to the water’s edge, where you and Brysden spoke of your being a Tidecaller. I had to get you to trust me then. I knew if you thought I had the same twisted magic you did, you’d let me in, accept my offer to join the Order, and then our work could begin. So I made sure you saw me using synthetic magic.”
The bird, the roses. She’d thought herself so clever to have caught him in the act, yet it had all been a trick to lure her in.
Emory swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “And my blood? When did you know it was the key?”
“It was Romie who gave me the idea, actually. She was obsessed with this woman called Adriana Kazan, a member of the Veiled Atlas who was believed to have found the missing epilogue. I decided to look into her myself to see if there was any merit to that claim. You might know her by the pseudonym she adopted as she sailed the seas: Luce Meraude.”
A dull ringing started in Emory’s ears. She’d never told Keiran about her mother.
“It’s a nice gift she left you,” Keiran said as he pulled her mother’s useless old compass watch out of his pocket. “I admit, when I retrieved it from your room, I thought it might be the key we were looking for. It’s nothing, really, but it did lead me to the Veiled Atlas and the Kazans. Their family claims to have a shared lineage with Cornus Clover. That’s how I discovered Clover was a Tidecaller himself. Born on the same auspicious eclipse as you. I then looked into others who manifested the same strange gift, and do you know what it led me to find? That by some fault in the design, a curiosity in your tides, those of you born under that rare solar eclipse always manifest Healer magic first. Most of you live your whole lives thinking that’s what you are, children of House New Moon, because only those of you who encounter near deaths reawaken as Tidecallers. As if straddling the line between here and the Deep somehow unlocks your true nature.”
Near deaths…
Emory had almost died last spring, had washed ashore half-drowned and with no memory of ever swimming out of the caves. All her life, her Healing magic had been her only power, until that fateful night at Dovermere.
But why would her mother lie about her birth? Had Luce or Adriana or whoever she was known what her latent abilities truly meant: that she might be able to open the door to the Deep, that she might one day be used as a vessel for the Tides? Emory wondered if her mother had cared about her after all, and in lying about her birth, pretending she was born on a new moon instead of that rare eclipse, she had hoped Emory might never have such a near-death experience and would stay a Healer forever.
Maybe she’d simply wanted to protect her daughter.
Her mother was a sailor and her father a lighthouse keeper, and somewhere in between them, Emory was the sea. Both parents had tended to her in the way that suited them best, and maybe the only thing left to do now was to protect herself and others like her. Maybe the only way to ensure no one else ever sought to wake the Tides was to destroy the door that led to them. To destroy this place for good.
“I meant what I said, Ains. This whole thing might have started out as revenge, but my feelings for you are true. You took this hateful part of me and gave it new purpose. Something to look forward to—a better world, without so many limitations, without this underlying curse that plagues not only Eclipse-born but all of us it touches.”
He offered her his hand again. “Please. Let me prove to you that I meant every word.”
Emory looked at that rift in the dark. It was almost closed now, the world beyond it a distant echo. “I kept a secret from you too,” she said.
Keiran lifted a brow.
“I didn’t tell you everything that happened yesterday when I came to Dovermere with Baz. He warned me how easy it is to slip past that line, but I didn’t believe him until then. One moment, I had control of my magic, and the next, it had control of me. I almost tore the whole cave down with me. Probably would have if Baz hadn’t been there to stop me from Collapsing.”
Slow realization dawned on Keiran’s face. His hand fell at his side.
“You wouldn’t,” he said. “What about Romie?”
“I told you: I can’t feel her. Which means she’s already dead and I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
In truth she refused to believe it—even though her call remained unanswered, even if Romie had followed the song somewhere she couldn’t go without paying a terrible price… She refused to believe Romie was lost for good, but she was no longer here—that much Emory knew. Let Keiran believe she would do it. Call upon all the magics in her arsenal, let the blast of her Collapsing destroy everything. The door, the sleepscape, and them in it.
“If you destroy this place,” Keiran warned, “we’ll never reach the Tides. Whatever hope might be left for Romie, whether she’s dead or gone or still here somewhere, she’ll be lost for good.”
“If we wake the Tides, I will be lost for good. And so will a lot of other people—people I care about.”
Keiran approached her carefully, as if she were a scared animal about to scurry away. “I promise to leave you this one thing,” he said, his hands coming up in a show of good faith. “If you come with me now, I’ll beg the Tides to bring Romie back. I swear it, Ainsleif.”
The same way he’d promised Lizaveta they’d bring Farran back.
Emory shook her head. “I made the mistake of believing you all this time. It stops now.”
Romie, she called again, one last shot through the dark. Please, she begged, letting her magic sweep down the star-lined path. Answer me.
Something did answer her plea then.
But it wasn’t Romie.
It sprang from the darkness beyond the stars. One umbra, then two, with three more on their heels. More of them materialized on the path, and this time Keiran wasn’t as quick reaching for the light. But Emory was. She leapt out of the closest umbra’s reach, wrapping herself in a film of starlight, just as a scream ripped from Keiran’s throat. Claws sank into his flesh with a wet sound. He tried to wrest free, but there were too many of them swarming him, hungry beasts looking to devour his soul.
This was their domain, and somehow Emory knew they were more powerful here, more real.
She watched numbly as Keiran went slack in their grasp, his face bloodless at whatever horrors he saw. Blood pooled from his middle, his shirt in crimson shambles. His eyes found hers from within the shadows that engulfed him, and she heard her name on his lips, a plea to save him.
She hesitated. Keiran hadn’t hesitated when he drove that knife into Lizaveta’s throat. He deserved every bit of this fate. So why couldn’t she stand to watch it? Tears ran down her cheeks, the sight of him being devoured like this stirring up emotions she didn’t want to feel.
So Emory looked away.
She did not move, not as Keiran spoke her name again, nor as his voice grew fainter until it was nothing at all. When she did look up, it was to glimpse the umbrae pulling him over the edge of the path. The last thing she saw of him were his bloodied hands seeking purchase among stars.
And then she was screaming.
A black-tipped hand wrapped around her neck, claws digging into skin. Fear like she’d never known before surged in her as she stared into the fathomless eyes of an umbra, and it was so much worse than last time, every vicious emotion and memory that rose to the surface of her subconscious chipping away at her soul.
Emory was being hollowed out, doomed to become nothing but a husk. Empty and lifeless.
Maybe she deserved it. Maybe she was no better than Keiran. Without her, none of this would have happened. No one would have died.