The soil is rich from decaying flesh and bones and another sort of magic entirely. Trees have roots planted firmly in the underworld and hands that graze the heavens. Everything is tinged in greens and browns and smells of earth and moss as the skies rain down their blessings and marvel at how the world below awakens, stretching its limbs to bask in its own luxuriance.
At the center of this world lies the Wychwood, a forest older and wilder than any other. It is the source of all growth and greenery. Veins run from it, pump magic and other nutrients into the land, and at its helm is the singular witch tasked with protecting it. She is the rib cage that wraps around the heart of the world, her very skin and bones made to keep the Wychwood safe. To ensure each cog in the wheel of life works as intended.
This is not her story, at least not entirely. She is a part of a whole, for where there are flesh and bones surely there must also be a beating heart and flowing blood and a soul to fill the spaces between. The witch knows this, and so she waits for one of these crucial parts to find her, alone in her fortress of roots and rot.
Patience, the trees whisper. Take heart.
The first to find her is the scholar from our shores, with the stories he inhales and the words he exhales, as much sustenance to him as air. (Perhaps it would have been a more fitting metaphor to call him the lungs, but in truth he is much more like a bloodstream, for magic runs in his veins as he runs through worlds like rivers to the sea and blood through arteries.) He knows now that to return to his sea of ash, he must first sail to other shores, other worlds, seek the stories there that might carry him farther than any sailor has gone before.
And here is the first.
Have you come to seek the drowned gods? the witch in the woods asks him, for she, too, has heard their call.
The moon and sun and stars collectively sigh.
They know the story has only just begun.
8 BAZ
“FIRST LESSON IS: TRY NOT to kill anyone.”
Emory glared at him from across the table, clearly not amused by his lame attempt at a very bad joke. Baz could almost hear Kai snickering at him over his shoulder. Smooth, Brysden.
They sat in an alcove between the Dreamer and Memorist sections of the Decrescens library, a wide variety of books strewn open between them on the table. Rain pattered against the small stained-glass window above, creating an illusion of dew on the deep purple poppies it portrayed.
Emory toyed with her disposable coffee cup, picking apart the rim piece by flimsy piece. “You know, in the papers they’re saying Travers’s death was from natural causes. Mysterious drowning incident at Dovermere, they called it.”
Baz snorted. He’d read the newspapers. An inquiry had been made into Travers’s death, and expert Shadowguides, Healers, Reapers, and Unravelers alike had deemed it mysterious, sure enough, but natural all the same, ruling out any kind of foul play. “As if there’s anything natural about Dovermere.”
Emory remained quiet at that. She took a sip of coffee, giving a pointed look at the untouched cup she’d brought him. An offering, even if a tasteless one. “Are you going to drink that?”
“Oh. I, uh, don’t drink coffee, actually.” At least not that sorry excuse for it the campus coffee carts sold.
“There’s a stain of it on your shirt,” Emory pointed out.
Baz eyed the telltale brown patch on his favorite cream-colored sweater and palmed the back of his neck. “I just… prefer to brew my own.”
Tides, did that really sound as pretentious as it felt saying it?
Emory’s mouth thinned. She glanced around the empty library, still picking away at her poor cup.
“So why here and not Obscura Hall?” she asked.
“People might ask questions if they saw you coming and going in Obscura Hall all the time.” His face heated as Emory lifted a brow. “That’s not—I meant they might suspect you’re Eclipse-born, not that…” Why was he so nervous around her? “Never mind.”
The ghost of a smile touched her lips. She drew her legs beneath her, looking at ease in her slacks and fine-knit sweater. “I always liked it here.”
Me too, Baz thought. Decrescens Hall was his favorite of Aldryn’s four libraries, with its old creaking wood and mazelike aisles, the mismatched tables and chairs strewn about under a ceiling of stars. Golden trinkets and elaborate clocks that told everything but time hid in every corner like plundered treasures, their uses long forgotten. It was a place where dreams slumbered, full of the same dark whimsy that permeated everything House Waning Moon touched.
Mostly he loved it because it was said to be the library Cornus Clover frequented the most when he was a student at Aldryn, possibly even where he wrote his book.
And it was usually quiet enough that Baz could remain unnoticed and unperturbed. Perhaps not as secretive a place as the Eclipse commons themselves, but it would have to do for their purposes; he’d be damned if he let Emory into his one sacred space. It felt odd enough as it was to be in such close quarters with her, breathe the same air, refamiliarize himself with all her mannerisms. It didn’t feel real, somehow, and yet it also felt right. Like all those years of not really talking to each other melted away and they were just two teens, bonding over magic the way they had before his father Collapsed.
Baz tracked the shimmer of gold in the strand of hair she tucked behind her ear, images of that golden-hued era stark in his mind. He cleared his throat. “Right. So, the Collapsing.” He pointed to the book in front of him.
Emory leaned over it. “The eclipsing of one’s self,” she read.
They both stared at the horrifying sketch below those words, a young man screaming to the heavens, his face distorted in pain as he erupted in an incendiary blast of power. Silver veins bulged on his arms, his neck, his temples.
Baz tapped the illustration. “This is what happens when Eclipse-born aren’t careful. We slip into something wild and untamable, a state of power so vast it seeks to erase us entirely. Our magic acts as a sort of eclipse of its own then, burning bright and destructive and consuming us from the inside. Then it goes dark. Makes us… evil. It’s known as the Shadow’s curse. The only way to save us from that curse is for Regulators to brand us with the Unhallowed Seal that puts our magic to sleep.”
Emory gave him a sidelong glance. The words she spoke were soft, hesitant. “Like what they did to your dad?”
A tightness in his chest. Silver veins rippling in his memory. A blinding blast of power.
The key is taking carefully measured breaths.
“Yeah,” Baz said. “Like that.”
He could tell by the way she looked at him that she remembered it too, how it had been back then. The kindness she’d shown him while everyone else shunned him—at least for those first few days after the incident, before even she pulled away, no doubt realizing the other students were right to keep their distance. To fear his magic lest he Collapse.
“I heard another Eclipse student Collapsed over the summer,” Emory said slowly. “Were you two friends?”
Baz swallowed with difficulty, trying not to think of Kai’s sharp smile and midnight voice. Had they been friends? Their relationship could be chalked up to circumstance, two people forced to occupy the same space and confront all the ways in which they were different and alike. They were cognitive dissonance. Night and day. By all logic they shouldn’t have worked, yet they’d been something enough for Baz to miss him, to feel his absence every time he read in the commons or walked past Kai’s shuttered room or brewed too much coffee before remembering it was only him now.
They’d been something enough for him to be furious with Kai for what he’d done, to feel such crushing guilt that he hadn’t taken him seriously enough to try to stop him.
The last time Kai had slipped into Baz’s dreaming was right after Romie’s funeral. Something about sleeping in his childhood bed had made his recurring nightmare more unbearable than usual—until the Nightmare Weaver showed up, making the darkness ebb away. He’d sat beside Baz in the rubble of the printing press until the chaos around them calmed and Baz’s dreaming self could breathe easy again.