“Strange, for someone so tight-lipped to suddenly be so forthcoming.”
“Maybe this someone was simply trying to be kind.”
“Why?” She searched his face for a trace of something real. “You don’t owe me anything. You’re clearly part of this secret society and either don’t want to or can’t tell me anything about it since you keep answering my questions in circles. So why help?”
Keiran’s smile turned wistful then as he said, “Let’s just say I know what it’s like to lose a friend to Dovermere. To want answers so badly you risk losing yourself.”
Emory blinked back her surprise. She saw in him the haunted look of someone who was well acquainted with grief. A raw sort of understanding passed between them. She had the sudden urge to reach for his hand.
“Farran Kaine,” she murmured, thinking of the photograph she’d seen in the paper, the cropped-out person standing next to Farran. Now that Keiran was in front of her, it was painfully obvious it had been him. “Is that who you lost?”
His throat bobbed almost imperceptibly at the name, but it was all Emory needed to know she was right.
“He was the closest thing I had to a brother,” Keiran said quietly. “We grew up together in Trevel, went to the same prep school, came to Aldryn hoping to achieve greatness together. We were nearing the end of our freshman year when he…”
“When you went to Dovermere together, trying to get into the Selenic Order?” Emory finished for him. “And he drowned just like the others did last spring.”
Keiran didn’t deny it.
Anger suddenly sparked in her—anger at the Selenic Order, at anyone who thought risking their lives in such a way was a worthy cause. Still, she couldn’t help but feel for him. They’d both lost a friend in Dovermere, had survived what Romie and Farran had not. The difference was, Keiran knew why. He was privy to that information while she was kept in the dark, wondering why anyone would let the same deadly ritual happen year after year, evidenced by the long list of names at the Tides’ feet.
“So why do it? Why risk your lives for this?” She clutched her marked wrist to her chest, nails digging into that blasted spiral. “Having these other magics running through our veins… It’s wrong.”
He contemplated her before saying, “Some might say we should be allowed to know more than just a fraction of the moon’s might, the way it was before magic was splintered into lunar houses and tidal alignments. It certainly wasn’t wrong then. Why should it be now?”
Emory thought back to the Darkbearer magic she’d wielded in the library and couldn’t deny the appeal. This power—having all magics at her fingertips—she would give it all up in a second if it meant getting Romie back. But maybe embracing it was the only way forward, the only way to get the answers she so desperately needed to understand what, exactly, Romie and the others had died for. To know why she’d been spared too.
And the only way to do that was from within.
“If that’s what the Selenic Order believes, then I want in.” At Keiran’s cocked brow, she pressed, “I survived whatever fucked-up initiation Dovermere was. I did the ritual just like the others and have the mark to prove it. Haven’t I earned my way in by now?”
She thought he would deny everything, tell her she’d gotten it all wrong, spin some lie or other to keep the secrecy going. But he seemed to genuinely be thinking her question over. At last, he said, “You being marked is a moot point because the Order didn’t invite you. You weren’t an official candidate, weren’t supposed to be in the caves that night, so it doesn’t count.”
“Seriously? They’d deny me on some technicality? I was there and I survived, that should be enough.”
“Not to the Order. Its leaders are old and set in their ways. Rules are sacred to them.”
“Then how else do I prove myself worthy of their oh so sacred ranks? Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said darkly. “What you’d be getting yourself into.”
“I don’t care. I’m sure I’ve survived much worse already.” She looked at him pleadingly. “You said you know what it’s like to lose someone to Dovermere? Try looking for answers and coming up short at every turn. It’s killing me, being kept in the dark. I need to know what they died for. Please. It’s the only thing that will make this grief bearable.”
Understanding rippled between them again. Finally, Keiran leaned back with a resigned sigh. “You heard of the meteor shower happening tomorrow night? The Order’s hosting an exclusive soiree for the occasion. They’ll let you in if you show your mark, and I can introduce you to those you need to convince, but… the rest will be up to you.”
He dropped his gaze to her marked wrist. His fingers alighted on the spiral scar, making her breath hitch. “If you want answers, if you really want in on this… you’ll need to earn your place. Make them see what you can offer.”
She would have to convince them with magic, she realized. Show them the kind of power the mark had given her.
Keiran leaned closer. “Just be sure you want to do this, Ainsleif. Once they let you in, there’s no turning back.”
A shiver ran up her spine at the underlying danger in his words. It hit her fully then, that people had died to join this Order—and here she was, contemplating diving headfirst anyway.
She swallowed past the dryness in her mouth and asked, more confidently than she felt, “Where’s this soiree, then?”
Something sparked in his hazel eyes. “The old lighthouse.”
10 BAZ
BASIL BRYSDEN’S LIFE WAS SPLIT into two distinct categories: everything that came before his father’s Collapsing, and all that came after. In the library of his mind, they were catalogued under sections aptly labeled The Peace Years and The Aftermath. The former held a collection of colorful books stacked haphazardly among happy memorabilia both material and not: his favorite Song of the Drowned Gods figurines and artwork; the preciously bottled scent of his mother’s baking; an old pocket watch he and Romie had spent hours tinkering with when they were younger; the sound of machinery in his father’s printing press; the smell of ink; the warmth of sunlight and the sway of wild grasses in the breeze and the fervent cries of gulls joining the melody of a young girl’s laugh.
The Peace Years were gold-hued and joyful. Void of fear and hurt.
The Aftermath was a more austere section, every scar archived in neatly displayed tomes that each looked drabber than the last. His father receiving the Unhallowed Seal. His mother’s subsequent depression. Baz’s own isolation from the world as he realized what it truly meant to be Eclipse-born. Romie’s drowning and Kai’s Collapsing.
Moments of joy were few and far between here, and most of them could be attributed to a single book. Indeed, there was a copy of Song of the Drowned Gods wedged on every shelf, in between every other dreadful volume of his life after the incident. It was Baz’s only constant, this book. The one bit of solace that carried him through both peace and aftermath.