Emory mustered whatever strength she had left to pull Romie up, shouldering her weight, and together they started stumbling toward the song.
Their feet sloshed in the water that traveled down the same direction, guiding them farther and farther. Emory’s pulse beat quicker as she began to make out the shape of a door in the distance, a tear in the swirling stars, still out of reach yet growing closer with every step. The music grew louder as they neared. The door was dark marble, veins like the roots of a tree, with vines that twined in its middle to form a knotted knob. The cloying smell of earth and moss and wetness seeped from its seams, calling to mind the greenhouse that Romie had always felt so at home in.
And this might lead to the Deep or to another world entirely, but it did not matter because this was where they were meant to go—she was sure of it, felt it in her bones, a thrum of magic like none she’d ever known.
A bridge, a door, a song that beckoned to something more.
Emory’s hand closed over the knotted vines, certainty sweeping in her soul in time to the music reaching its crescendo. She took a deep breath, pushed the door open.
Water spilled over the threshold. Only then did Emory hesitate, wondering what would happen to them.
“No turning back now,” Romie said at her side, starlight dancing in her eyes.
The song of the stars followed them past the doorsill.
Wherever it led, whatever shores waited for them next, they would face them together.
42 BAZ
BAZ SLUMPED ON THE FLOOR. From Keiran’s lifeless hand a curious compass slipped, and Baz reached for it mindlessly, his gaze catching on the Hourglass—on the tear in the rock that nulled its magic, barred the door shut.
“Brysden,” Kai said. “We have to go.”
The others were huddled together near the time-still wave, a wary look in their eyes at the sound of the tide battering against Baz’s magic on the other side.
More rocks and dust fell from the ceiling. The crack in the Hourglass deepened.
Baz pocketed the compass and took a step toward the rock. He couldn’t use his power to right every wrong, but he could use it to mend what was in front of him. If he could untangle the complicated threads that bound the door to time itself…
A dark, familiar thing brushed against his magic.
Dovermere, this presence that called to him and repulsed him in equal measure. It whispered lovingly, urging him to wield its strange power.
Your magic is ours and our magic is yours and we are the same because time runs through our veins like rivers to the sea and blood through arteries.
Baz reached for it. He pulled on Dovermere’s magic, no longer afraid of this place because he recognized its power, the same as his.
Time time time time time time time time time
Their heartbeats echoed in synch like the ticking of perfectly tuned clocks. Their magic combined, and Baz pulled back time, made it so that the Hourglass was never cracked. The crumbling cave mended itself, rock shooting back up to the ceiling it had rained down from, and the Hourglass stood tall and unmarred once more. A door repaired.
Baz didn’t stop there. He pushed against the tide, reversed it so that it flowed back out into the sea until it was low tide again, and the way out was clear, giving them all a fighting chance to leave Dovermere unscathed.
When he finally let go of the magic, he felt Dovermere sigh around him, contented by its power being used to its full potential at last, perhaps for the very first time, by someone who understood time the same way it did.
Thank you, each of them said to the other.
* * *
Waves crashed loudly around Baz, the taste of salt bitter in his mouth as he sputtered, dragging himself out of the water.
Exhaustion made his muscles heavy. The others lay sprawled beside him, equally spent—but alive, all of them. Kai was closest, his chest rising and falling to the same rapid rhythm that pounded in Baz’s ears.
They’d brought the two bodies back with them. Keiran and Lizaveta. Virgil Dade watched over them, face grim, eyes hollow.
Baz crumbled on the sand and tilted his face up to the skies. The storm had passed, and the unveiled sun was just starting to dip toward the horizon. It was somewhat crescent-shaped, Baz noted—partly covered by the moon.
An eclipse.
He laughed. And then a shadow blocked out the entirety of the sky as Kai stood over him, offering him a hand.
Baz took it.
They stood panting at the water’s edge, looking out at Dovermere. The tide was low now, though it seemed to rebel against this reversal of fates that Baz had forced upon it, inching determinedly across the sand.
Emory might have gone where Baz could not follow, to answer a call that was beyond his hearing, but he still had a part to play. She was the sea, moving in and out of his life, between this world and the next. But what was the sea if it had no shore to return to?
The door to the Deep needed guarding. Dovermere needed a keeper. And if there was even the slightest chance that Emory might make it back, then Baz would ensure the door still stood. He would make sure it was safe for her and Romie to return.
He traced the upward slant of the stairs hidden in the cliffside. Light shone through the window at the top, and if he squinted hard enough, he thought he could make out Dusk’s shadow, tail flicking as he waited for Baz to find him in the Eclipse commons. His heart yearned for that room, the illusioned field beyond. At his side, Kai looked up at the same spot, full of longing for the place they’d shared that had become theirs.
“Let’s go home,” Baz said.
To Aldryn, to Obscura Hall. To the world that still needed them, the truths that needed sharing to protect their own.
The school had always been Baz’s world, more real to him than anything else. It was his home, and his to protect now.
He had glimpsed the stars to other worlds and the darkness that cradled them.
He was no longer scared of reaching for them.
EPILOGUE
IN THE MORNING, BAZ STOOD beneath the illusion of a brilliant sunrise.
A gentle breeze made the tall grasses around him sing. Behind the swaying mane of a willow tree, in the Eclipse commons he called home, Kai slept. Dreamed. Soon they would have to head into town, where they were to meet with Jae, Theodore, Vera, Alya, and Professor Selandyn to make sense of this mess and figure out what to do next. They had evidence of what Keiran and Artem had done, how they’d been harnessing magic from Eclipse-born and meant to use Emory to destroy them, but exposing such injustice would require patience, a tactful approach. And then there was the matter of their Collapsing, this earth-shattering truth the world wasn’t yet ready to hear.
The road ahead wouldn’t be easy. But for now the world was quiet, and nothing could ruin it.
Baz didn’t hear Kai until he was breathing at his side, his shoulder brushing his. He looked at Kai, and his heart soared to see the Nightmare Weaver back where he belonged.
“Did you get it?” Baz asked.
Kai handed him a single page that, if fitted into the spine of the manuscript it was once ripped out from, would change the story’s outcome.
The epilogue, lost and found again.
Tell Kai I left it for him to find.
Baz had to wonder if this might all be a dream, if he was still asleep and Kai was playing tricks on him for old times’ sake. But there was no deception in Kai’s eyes, and the epilogue felt entirely real in his hands.
“I don’t think Emory’s the only one who can cross through worlds unscathed,” Kai said at last.
Baz read the words once, twice, thrice, and when they finally sank in, he looked at Kai through tears, unburdened by fear as he thought, The story has only just begun.
SONG OF THE DROWNED GODS
EPILOGUE:
THE SLEEPERS AMONG THE STARS