“Yes, him.”
Emory’s heart dropped. If Baz had seen his classmate Collapse after everything that had happened with his father and so soon after Romie’s death…
No wonder he was so reticent to help her.
Louis leaned forward on his elbows. “Apparently, it happened right here on campus, in the middle of the quad.”
Lizaveta rolled her eyes. “You really need to stop believing everything you hear, Louis. It happened at Dovermere Cove.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was the one who found him.”
“What?”
“I was with Artem down the beach when we saw the blast. Thankfully, Artem had damper cuffs on him. He put them on the Eclipse-born as soon as it was safe to do so and brought him straight to the Institute.” She shrugged. “Perks of having a Regulator brother, I guess.”
“Well. You know what this means, don’t you? With the Nightmare Weaver gone and no new Eclipse students enrolled this year, the Timespinner’s the only one left at Aldryn.”
“Can you imagine being the only one in your hall?” Virgil sneered. “The parties must be a total bore.”
“Their numbers are dwindling, I’m telling you,” Louis said.
“Not this again,” Nisha grumbled, going back to her book.
“I’m serious. Some scholars have been writing about it. There are fewer and fewer ecliptic events, so naturally there’s less of them, too.”
Emory didn’t hear what Lizaveta muttered in response to that, though it looked an awful lot like Good.
“Tides, I hate them,” Penelope muttered. She watched the group’s table with a seething look. “They act like they’re above everyone else at this school. I heard they throw these exclusive parties where they do all sorts of weird magic they’re not supposed to.”
Gooseflesh rose on Emory’s arms. Exclusive parties with weird magic, the kind of thing a certain secret society would do. If Keiran was part of this Selenic Order, it would stand to reason his group of friends might be too. Anger rose in her throat. She glared at Nisha, who looked so innocent reading her book. She’d likely been the one to introduce Romie to the Selenic Order, and Romie, so infatuated with her new friend, had wanted nothing more than to join up.
“Like what kind of weird magic?” she asked Penelope.
“No idea. But whatever it is… I know for a fact Lia and Dania started acting weird last year after they started going to the same parties as them. I’m sure you noticed the same happening with Romie, right?”
Emory blinked at Penelope. It hit her then that while she had lost a best friend in Romie, Penelope had lost the same in Lia and Dania, the Wordsmith twins. The three of them had been inseparable, just like Emory had been with Romie. At least, before they’d all gotten involved with the Selenic Order.
Tides, no wonder Penelope was so eager for Emory’s companionship—it wasn’t out of pity at all, she realized, but a sense of understanding. A shared pain.
Shame roiled in her stomach. She’d been so caught up in her own grief, the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind that others had lost friends last spring too.
“Yeah, I did notice.” Emory pushed her plate away, feeling nauseous. She’d never seen Romie with anyone from that group other than Nisha, but it would track.
Penelope worried her lip. “Can I ask… Why were you all at the caves that night? Was it really just some drunken dare?”
Lying to her left a sour taste in her mouth, but she did all the same. “It was.” She hated this. “I went along with it and I shouldn’t have, but… I was worried. About Romie. And I figured if I went with her…”
Penelope’s hand reached across the table to grab hers. “Hey. I get it. I wasn’t suggesting—this wasn’t your fault, Em. I’m glad you’re here.”
The food she’d managed to swallow suddenly turned to lead in her stomach. She didn’t deserve Penelope’s kindness.
Penelope gave her hand a squeeze and drew herself up. “So. Selenography makeup exam study session. How about it?”
* * *
Emory had no choice but to indulge her. And it felt… nice, to do something so normal. To forget for an hour about the horrors that followed her like a shadow. By the time she was heading back to her own room a floor below Penelope’s, she felt lighter than she had in months. But when she opened her door, the pit inside her yawned open again.
Nothing was normal, nothing would ever be normal again, because Romie was no longer here.
Emory darted out of the dorms and sought the only place that might ease this ache inside her.
The Waxing Moon library took up the entire first and second floors of Crescens Hall, with a few classrooms down in the lower level of the building. It looked like a giant greenhouse more than anything, bright and airy and full of plants and flowers growing among the books and sprouting from the pale-wood floorboards. Amber light came in through the domed glass ceiling and enormous windows, hitting the vine-covered shelves just so.
Emory always thought that Crescens Hall didn’t take itself as seriously as the other ones. Students gathered on long wooden tables in the open-concept space, chatting and debating while the Aldersea glimmered in the distance, the sun setting on its horizon. There was always music playing, delicate strings and notes that spilled from the plants themselves and changed depending on the weather—some kind of Wordsmith magic woven into the fabric of the place.
Romie had loved it. She’d always had an inexplicable fascination for all things House Waxing Moon, the opposite of her own lunar house in every way: where waxing moon magics were all about growth and amplification, manifestation and influence, waning moon magics were darker, more mysterious. Dreams and memories and secrets and death, things coming to an inevitable end.
Emory imagined that in another life, Romie might have been born under a waxing moon instead of a waning moon. A Sower instead of a Dreamer, since she loved plants so much. But maybe it was just part of Romie’s nature to want to dabble in everything, understand how every small facet of life worked.
Emory slipped out the back door that led to the courtyard beyond the hall. The path to the greenhouses was lined with lampposts all aglow with magicked everlight as the sun set, making the hundreds of windows gleam gold. She wound her way through the cluster of glass buildings until she found the small, ramshackle greenhouse Romie used to always disappear to. She still knew her way around the rickety doorknob, the wooden door with its chipped paint, unsteady on its hinges as she pushed it open. An earthy smell wrapped around her, so familiar it nearly brought her to tears.
The feeling was short-lived, for underneath the familiar smell was that of decay and rot. Emory paused, taking in the dreary sight. Though Romie’s greenhouse had always stood in a state of neglect—too small and old and weathered for the Waxing Moon Sowers to bother with, with its broken windowpanes and crooked door that let in too much of a draft—it had always been teeming with lush life, kept that way by Romie’s careful tending.
Everywhere Emory looked were dead things, once-lush plants and vines now riddled with wilted leaves, clay pots carelessly tipped over and void of life. Empty husks and withered ghosts.
But in a corner of the greenhouse was a pile of objects Emory recognized, curiously untouched by the neglect the rest of the place had fallen prey to. There was Romie’s favorite school sweater, the blanket and pillows she’d arranged on the floor, a pile of books she’d likely borrowed from the library and never had the chance to return.
Behind her, the door creaked loudly on its hinges. Emory whirled to find Baz standing on the threshold, looking as surprised as she felt.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t think anyone would be here.”