In the end, it wasn’t the Reaper magic that dealt the final blow, but death found Travers all the same. Yet no one spoke of it now because none of them had seen it. And it seemed Emory had Baz Brysden to thank for that.
It had been the oddest thing. One second she could feel death bursting from her fingertips, weaving itself between the ribbons of light and dark, the algae that pulsed to life around Travers’s body. She’d tried to wrench free of Lizaveta’s amplifying touch, to put distance between her and Travers, incapable of stopping these inexplicable, impossible magics coursing through her veins.
Then time paused, held its breath, wound backward. These powers she’d unwittingly unleashed flooded into her like a tide called back to the ocean, a wave in reverse smoothing into the calm waters it had emerged from.
When time resumed, those around Emory kept looking at Travers as if nothing had happened, because nothing had. Baz had prevented it. Baz, whom she hadn’t seen use his Timespinner magic since prep school.
He’d stopped time for her, saved her from herself.
His gaze had not left her since. It burned through her, followed her every movement as if he thought she were a ticking clock set to unleash death upon the beach after all. She avoided him, avoided Keiran and his friends, too, who were as quiet and grim and unsuspecting as everyone else.
Students started to leave only when the authorities took Travers’s body away. Emory couldn’t help but look when it was carried past her on its stretcher. She caught a glimpse of his lifeless upturned hand, where that Tides-damned spiral had bled black on his pale wrist. His eyes were closed, but she could still see how they had looked at her as he convulsed on the sand.
Your fault.
She turned from his sallow form, cheeks burning with the weight of that lingering accusation and the phantom feel of Reaper magic bursting from her fingertips. A horrible conclusion pressed against her mind as she gripped her wrist, pressing a thumb to the spiral mark, but the thought was so unbearable she shut it out, cast a glance about for anything that might keep her from unraveling. There was a slight crease between Keiran’s brows as he watched Travers’s body be carried away. Nisha’s face was tearstained, her head resting against Ife’s shoulder. Lizaveta stood with her arms wrapped around her middle like it was all that was keeping her from falling apart.
And Virgil… Gone was that bright smile, the amusement in his eyes. There was such profound sorrow on his face, as if everything he’d said earlier about the allure of death was a lie he told himself, as perhaps all Reapers did. He caught Emory’s gaze, and the look of understanding he gave her made her wonder if he had seen what she’d done, or almost done. But then Lizaveta touched his arm, drawing his attention to her.
“Come on,” she said quietly. “Let’s get out of here.”
Keiran hung back as his friends retreated down the beach, watching Emory carefully. “Are you all right?”
She wasn’t, but all she could say was, “I will be.” She nodded toward Keiran’s friends. “You go ahead. I’m fine, really.”
His attention caught on a spot behind her where she knew Baz was burning holes in her skull. He hesitated like he might say something, decide to stay with her. But at last, he murmured a quiet See you around, Ainsleif, and left.
Emory turned to Baz, knowing she would have to face him eventually. But he was no longer there. She frowned, searching the few faces left on the beach until she spotted him striding farther down, shoulders hunched against the wind, feet furiously kicking up sand.
She moved without thinking. “Baz, wait!”
He did no such thing, his pace quickening at her voice.
“Baz.” She caught up to him, watched his stern profile, but he refused to look at her, only kept walking in those infuriatingly long strides.
Emory huffed a disbelieving laugh. “That’s it? You’re not even going to ask me what that was back there?”
“I know what I saw.”
“Then enlighten me, please.”
He scoffed. “Like you don’t know.”
“I don’t.” She tried to block his path, to make him stop and look at her, but he brushed her off, yanking away from her touch as if burned. She flinched, hurt and angry and on the verge of breaking like the waves did against the shore. “Would you please just stop for a—”
Baz whipped around, nearly colliding with her. “Come on, Emory.” He looked at her like he’d never seen her before. Like he didn’t know her at all, and all those years of him pining over her at prep school were a nightmare he was just now emerging from. “You’re a Tidecaller.”
She took a step back. “What?”
“It makes no damn sense, and it was so stupid of me to help you hide it, but somehow, you’re a Tidecaller.”
Her ears rang. The night seemed to pause around them, its curiosity piqued at that mythical word. Because that was all Tidecallers were—a thing of myth, the fabled first followers of the Shadow who could still call on all the Tides’ magics when the rest of the world no longer could.
All of it a myth, so why did the skin on the back of her neck prickle? She cast a look around to see if any students were in earshot, but they were the only ones left on the beach.
“Tidecallers aren’t real, Baz.”
He laughed, a bitter, half-crazed sound. “Trust me, I know that. But how else would you be able to call on all those magics? On Reaper magic, for Tides’ sake? There’s only one house that could produce a Tidecaller.” His next words cut through her like a brand, a curse. “You’re Eclipse-born.”
Emory shook her head. “No. No, I’m a Healer.”
“Not if you weren’t actually born on a new moon.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying maybe your mother lied about when you were born.”
Emory flinched. She had told him of her mother only once, right after Baz’s father Collapsed. At least your dad’s still here. She’d given him a sad smile as she healed the wounds a particularly vile senior had inflicted on him. I never even got to know my mother.
She was surprised he remembered at all, and though what he was insinuating was impossible, she couldn’t help but wonder… Was there any way to know for certain, if the woman who’d brought her into the world—the only person who’d actually been there at her birth—had left Emory on her father’s doorstep when she was a baby, then disappeared forever?
All Emory knew of Luce Meraude was what little information her father had of her: she was a sailor who’d made harbor near Henry Ainsleif’s lighthouse when her boat nearly capsized during a violent storm. She’d stayed with him while working on repairs, and because the lighthouse was in such a desolate place and Henry such a gentle, lonely soul, they took a liking to each other.
It didn’t last. Once her boat was mended, Luce returned to the open seas, only to find herself at Henry’s doorstep again nearly a year later to leave their child in his care—a child Luce said was born under a new moon, and even had the birth certificate to prove it.
Emory was House New Moon; it was the incontestable truth.
And even if her birth certificate were falsified, everything else proved she was a Healer. Like every young child, she’d had her blood tested, had undergone all the Regulation Tests to confirm her tidal alignment, had met every criterion needed to warrant a formal education—a requirement for those who were deemed magically gifted enough for such schooling, a way to ensure no one abused their power or lost control of it. Her lunar tattoo had been given to her when she graduated prep school, like all the others who’d go on to Aldryn College and similar establishments around the world. It was a mark of one’s potential, a way to keep each of them accountable for the power they wielded. A clear indicator that said, This is the magic I have, and these are the rules that govern it.
Emory had worn it like a badge of honor, but now the sigil seemed to burn on the back of her hand, as if willing her to see past this damnable lie inked on her skin.