The words took them both by surprise.
Emory inhaled sharply and stepped back, hurt blooming in her eyes. Baz regretted it instantly. “I didn’t mean that,” he mumbled. Shame made the top of his ears redden. “It’s just… Tides, Emory, you didn’t even bother coming to her funeral. I know we’re not exactly friends, but I thought…”
He bit back the words, shook his head. He had no delusions about where the two of them stood. They weren’t close, not anymore. Perhaps they’d never been. They’d met at Threnody Prep when she was ten and he was twelve, and the only time they ever really spent together was when Romie was there, the glue holding together all their disparate parts. Even when they grew older and he’d thought—hoped—there might be a chance of something between the two of them, that Emory might reciprocate the feelings that had started taking root in his heart, his father had Collapsed and everyone around him had pulled away. Even her. And he’d accepted it because it was easier that way. He wouldn’t risk hurting them if he kept to himself.
He’d thought, at the very least, that Emory would have come to the funeral. If not for him, then for Romie. But she hadn’t. It had been him and his mother and a handful of family members who didn’t know Romie, not like he and Emory did. And it had been unbearable.
“She would have wanted you to be there,” he said finally.
Emory’s face was a hardened mask. “Yeah, well. Romie wanted a lot of things. And look where that got her.” A group of students walked past. She lowered her voice, gripping her satchel so tightly her knuckles were white around the strap. “I appreciate what you did for me last night, I do. But I’m not telling the dean.”
“Emory—”
She stormed off toward Noviluna Hall. “You’re off the hook. I’ll manage on my own.”
Baz realized Romie’s note was still in his pocket, and he was no closer to getting any answers.
* * *
Professor Selandyn’s office was a tiny room on the upper floor of Decrescens Hall, with a single large window that overlooked the old lighthouse and the sea below. The aging woman claimed the view up here rivaled that of Obscura Hall, but Baz always thought it was the proximity to the Decrescens library that made her choose this particular office space—her favorite of Aldryn’s libraries, just like his. She spent most of her time here rather than in the small lecture hall she sparsely taught in; she’d always trusted her students to lead much of their studies on their own, encouraging them to practice their magic together within the safety of Obscura Hall.
As Selandyn set a steaming cup for him on the table, Baz toyed with the idea of telling her about Emory. He didn’t feel right keeping such a thing from her, and after their conversation in the quad…
If Emory wasn’t going to do the sensible thing, he would have to do it for her. It was for her own good, he told himself.
Besides, the Eclipse professor might be able to help her far more than he ever could—that is, if she could convince Dean Fulton and the Regulators to hold off on branding Emory with the Unhallowed Seal. To at least give her a chance to learn to control her newfound magic. Surely it was rare enough that they’d want to study it in depth before blindly sealing off her access to it.
Selandyn tightened a frayed-edged shawl over her tiny frame, smoothed the dark, gray-streaked braid that hung over her shoulder. Baz was suddenly gripped with how burdened she looked. Sunlight danced on the deep bronze of her skin, lined with years of laughter and knowledge, but there was something else lining her face now, a profound grief in her countenance.
She reminded Baz of his mother then—of the pit of sadness she’d fallen into after his father Collapsed, and again after Romie drowned.
“Is everything all right?” Baz asked quietly.
Professor Selandyn gave him a wan smile. “One day, when you’re the one sitting in this chair wondering what more you could have done for your students, you’ll understand this sorrow.”
Baz’s heart constricted as he thought of Kai. How she must feel like she’d failed him, despite all her careful teachings. Was this what he was signing up for? A lifetime of hurt and loss and guilt?
His eyes settled on the box of Kai’s things, at the top of which sat his trusty flask, an ornate silver thing with his initials wrought on the embossed surface. The memory came unbidden. They’d been studying quietly in the commons late at night—or at least Baz had been, desperately cramming for a selenography exam while Kai was sprawled in a chair across from him, long legs hooked over the armrest. Baz had been hunched over the coffee table, sitting on the floor with Dusk, who often found himself in the Eclipse commons even before Romie died. How the cat managed to get down there at all was a mystery to everyone.
Baz remembered nodding off when a ball of crumpled-up paper hit him in the face.
Kai had smiled at him wickedly, taking a long sip of his flask before offering it to Baz. “Need some research fuel?”
Baz had taken his glasses off, running a hand over his tired eyes. “That’s not exactly how research works.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Oh? And what are you researching, exactly? How fast you can get to the bottom of whatever poison that is?”
He’d waited for Kai to flip him off, cheeks burning at the boldness of his retort. But the other boy’s lips had merely quirked up.
“Hilarious, Brysden. If you must know, asshole, it’s medicinal.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
“I’m serious. I bribed some Dreamer kid for this experimental thing that’s supposed to prevent you from sleeping.”
“So now you’re trying to drug me? Great.”
“I’m trying to help you study.”
Baz had turned his nose up at the smell.
“And this experimental thing just so happens to smell like gin?”
“I may have added a gin component to it, yes. For safe measure.” Kai had screwed the cap back on and put the flask in his pocket. Dusk, that traitorous bastard, left Baz’s feet to jump onto Kai’s stomach with a loud purr. “You try sleeping like a normal person when you’re constantly getting pulled into people’s nightmares. I doubt you’d last a single night.”
The hair on the back of Baz’s neck had lifted. He forgot, sometimes, how different the Nightmare Weaver’s abilities were to those of Dreamers like Romie. From what Baz understood of it, Kai could slip into the sleepscape just as any Dreamer could, but the darker nature of his power made it harder to navigate. To control. As if fear called to him in the night and pulled him unwittingly into the most terrible of dreams, the darkest corners of this strange realm where the umbrae lay in wait, nightmare given form.
Kai’s gaze bored into him. “You had the nightmare again last night.”
Baz knew exactly which one he meant. Images flashed before his eyes: his father at the center of a blast like that of a dying star, silver veins of power running along his skin. The crumbling building around them and the blood and the screams. The ticking clock through it all that Baz could never stop.
The nightmarish sequence was a recurring one he’d had since his father’s Collapsing. It’d often left him screaming in his sleep, the primal fear he’d felt that day unwilling to leave him after all these years, making his bones heavy and his throat raw. The first time Kai appeared in this nightmare, he’d managed to ease Baz through the worst of it.
It’s not real, Brysden, Kai had said as the blast of power wrought destruction around them, leaving them both untouched. It’s not real.
They’d never discussed it afterward. But every time Baz had that same nightmare, Kai managed to find him in it, his quiet presence acting like a balm. Making everything a little less painful.
“The strangest thing happened after,” Kai had said with a frown, scratching Dusk’s chin. “I think I ended up in another Eclipse-born’s nightmare. Someone who’s Collapsed.”