Then there was the rare and inexplicable, like Timespinners such as himself and Poisoners who rendered any liquid toxic and Reanimators who could quite literally wake the dead. And if they were oddities, then a Tidecaller was an even bigger mystery.
Emory sank deeper into her seat, looking dejected. Baz tried not to take her obvious disdain at the idea of being Eclipse-born too personally. He remembered a time when she’d been intrigued by all things House Eclipse. The awe she’d viewed his magic with… She’d thought it made him special, unique, something he’d clung to well after his father’s Collapsing forced him to bottle everything up.
Clearly, she didn’t feel that same sort of awe now that she had Eclipse magic.
She heaved a frustrated sigh. “So what’s it going to be, then: Are you going to teach me how to use these powers, or are you going to have me bleed myself dry so that I don’t accidentally implode?”
Baz shifted in his seat. Why in the Deep had he thought he could do this when he didn’t know the first thing about teaching magic—much less Tidecaller magic?
“What did it feel like, exactly, when you used those powers?”
Emory pondered the question. “Like I was mirroring the abilities of those around me.” She frowned. “But I can still feel them inside me. It’s like I absorbed them and they’re a part of me now, and if I just reach for them, they’ll bend to my will because they’re mine, not anyone else’s.”
Baz pushed up his glasses, considering her. “And the other night on the beach. Did one ability feel easier to call on than the others? Apart from healing, of course.”
“Why?”
“Well, since you specialized in healing all these years, I think it would make sense for you to have more of an aptness for New Moon magics than the others. Especially with the new moon in position right now, those magics might be easier to wield. Like when you used Darkbearer magic. Was that easier than, say, the Lightkeeper magic?”
Emory looked at her hands, as if picturing the tendrils of darkness and light she’d called upon. “I’m not sure. It all happened too fast.”
“I might be wrong, but I think if you were to reach for it again, you might notice it comes easier than the other lunar magics. And then tomorrow, once the moon starts waxing, you’d have a better affinity for those magics. Clearly you can use all of them regardless of the moon phase, but it’s something to consider.”
Emory turned her palms up in front of her and stared at them as though they held all the answers she was looking for. Her brow scrunched in concentration.
The shadows around them shifted.
Baz froze. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to reach for the darkness.”
“Are you mad—stop!”
Darkness gathered between them, shadowing the window. The soft glow of poppies on the stained glass made purple hues dance in the dark nebula. Baz reached instinctively for his magic. Time paused, and for a second, so did the pattering of rain against the window. He plucked the thread that would unmake the darkness, winding back the clock on its existence. It rushed back into Emory, a thing undone.
“What in the Deep was that?” he snapped. “Someone could have seen, or worse, you could have spun out of control.”
“Oh, come on, it was harmless.”
“There’s no such thing as harmless when it comes to Eclipse magic. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?” Baz sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You can’t just start flaunting these powers you know nothing about. You need to learn the theory behind them first.”
Emory set her hands in her lap. “I wanted to see if I could do it, make sure the other night wasn’t a one-time thing.”
“Well, it works. Don’t do it again.”
Her eyes flitted to the book and its gruesome illustrations on Collapsing. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Mindlessly, Baz took a gulping sip of the coffee she’d brought him, trying to calm his nerves. He winced at the watered-down, almost cardboard-like taste of it before pushing it aside.
Emory watched him carefully. “You know, I’ve never seen anyone exert so much control over their magic as you do. It’s like using it is as easy as breathing for you.”
“Trust me, it’s not.”
“Downplay it all you want, but I’ve seen what you can do. It’s a shame you keep it so bottled up all the time. You could do anything you want with such power.”
The words echoed Romie’s own questioning of his small aspirations. But where Romie’s criticism of him was always dipped in disdain because she wanted more for herself and couldn’t stand the idea of anyone not wanting the same for themselves, Emory’s comment felt different. Flattering. He saw in it that same curiosity and awe she had back at Threnody Prep, reminding him of what his magic could be if he let himself use it without so much fear.
But Baz was no longer the naive boy he’d been back then. In his mind’s eye, he saw Professor Selandyn, the grief she carried at losing her student. Nothing good came from thinking oneself invincible.
“Control is more important than power,” he told Emory.
She looked like she wanted to say more on the matter, but instead she asked, “Where should I start, then?”
Baz rifled through the pile of books between them and handed her An Introduction to Alignments.
She raised a brow. “I read it last term.”
“You studied it through a Healer’s eyes and probably didn’t pay much attention to all the intricacies of the other tidal alignments. If you’re going to use Darkbearer and Lightkeeper magics—Reaper magic, for Tides’ sake—you need to understand how they work just as much as anyone who specializes in those magics.”
Emory thumbed through the thick volume, looking dejected. “There are four alignments for each house. That’s—”
“Sixteen alignments to study.”
“I’ll be reading this until my senior year.”
“Best get started, then.”
Emory made a show of turning to the first page, righting herself on her chair. Baz grabbed for his own book and noticed her looking at her hands again.
A small smile tugged at her lips. “You have to admit, that darkness was kind of… beautiful, wasn’t it?”
Baz was too wary of Eclipse magic to ever call it beautiful, but he thought of the darkness reflected in her eyes, of the way her lips had parted in awe as she wielded this small wonder, and his chest tightened.
“Just read the book.”
9 EMORY
EMORY KEPT DOING BAZ’S IMPOSSIBLE reading assignment well into the next day. She read about Seers on her way to her first class and was seized by how strangely accurate their psychic sense could be. She read in class, too engrossed in the intricacies of Glamour magic—the compulsive power those with this alignment could wield to bend people’s will to their own or influence others’ decisions—to care about her selenography notes or the makeup exam she would have to take soon. She read between bites at lunchtime, her razor focus on the way Soultenders could manipulate emotions drowning out the bits of conversation in the dining hall—which, from what little she gleaned, still revolved around Travers’s grim demise.
She was still reading later that afternoon on a sunlit bench beneath a cloister window, so captivated by a chapter on Memorist magic that she completely forgot about her next class. A thought occurred to her as she read: If Memorists could see people’s memories, could one potentially bring to light the bits and pieces she couldn’t remember from that night in Dovermere?
It would be too much of a risk to ask one—too intrusive and damning to have someone poking around in her head. But if she was a Tidecaller, she might in time learn to do it herself.