The Institute was multipurpose: There was the administrative side where magical laws were written and enforced, and the correctional and rehabilitation side where magic gone wrong all but went to die. There was, of course, the Collapsing wing where Eclipse-born who’d received the Unhallowed Seal could adjust to their new magicless existence before being sent out into the world again. There was even a Dreamer wing, where those who’d lost their minds to the sleepscape, leaving behind comatose bodies, were watched over and taken care of by Healers. And then there was the prison wing, where anyone who misused their magic was sent, like Reapers who took lives or Glamours who coerced people into doing unspeakable things or Eclipse-born like Baz’s father whose Collapsing had killed those trapped in the blast.
At the center of it all were the Regulators. Both legislators and law enforcers where magic was concerned, they governed the entirety of the magical population, answering to their own hierarchy within their ranks.
Self-serving bastards, Kai would sneer, rightfully hating the power they wielded.
Baz had visited his father at the Institute only a handful of times shortly after the incident. It never sat right with him, being inside those walls. It was suffocating, and whenever his mother had wanted him to go with her, his answer would always be the same: I can’t. At least Romie had been there to step in, hold their mother’s hand through the pain those visits caused her.
Jae grumbled into their tea. “Last time I went, the Regulators almost didn’t let me through. I had to… persuade them, if you know what I mean.” They winked at Baz. “A little harmless illusion work to get me through the door.”
The corner of Baz’s mouth lifted at that.
“Your dad would love to see you, I’m sure.”
His throat constricted. He suddenly remembered what Kai had said about the nightmares of those who’d Collapsed: an infinite, hollow darkness. If that was the state of their dreaming, Baz could only image what cruel sort of torture their waking hours must consist of.
He tried not to think of how, somewhere in the middle of the city of Threnody, only two hours from here by train, the printing press his father and Jae had worked so hard to build from the ground up was now a pile of rubble. The skeleton of a building no one had bothered tearing down years after the incident that destroyed it. Baz had made the mistake of walking past it once during a Solstice holiday. Vines grew along the solitary piece of brick wall still standing. Snow had blanketed the rest like ash, all that was left of the destruction his father’s Collapsing had wrought.
Memories of that day were frayed. Baz couldn’t recall how his father’s Collapsing came about, only that it did. Only that it killed. None of the employees who worked for him and Jae, but the three clients who’d been in the building at the time. All had been caught in the blast of Theodore’s uncontrollable power.
Jae and Baz had been inexplicably spared. It was nothing short of a miracle they were both still alive—especially Baz, who’d been standing at his father’s side when it happened. He remembered how Theodore’s arms had curved around his small frame, sheltering him from the crumbling building, from the outward blast of his power itself.
Silver veins and light and blood and screams.
“You could come with me if you’d like,” Jae suggested, dark brown eyes roving over Baz’s face. “If it’s too difficult to face alone.”
Baz took a sip of tea. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
At the prolonged silence, Jae set their empty teacup on its saucer and draped an arm over the back of their chair. “So. You called me here because of our mutual love of Clover’s masterpiece.”
Baz was thankful for the change of subject. “Yes. I’m wondering what you can tell me about the missing epilogue.”
Jae vibrated with excitement. “I was wondering if you’d ever come around to asking me about that.” They’d written many papers on Cornus Clover over the years, and were widely considered to be one of the leading experts on all things Song of the Drowned Gods. Their main area of expertise was the epilogue, with all the intrigue and theories surrounding it. “You always seemed so content with how the story ended, never asked yourself what might have been Clover’s intended ending.”
Baz shrugged. “It’s a good ending as it is. Bittersweet, sure, but I can’t see how else it could have gone.”
“Really? It’s all I ever think about.”
“Kai too.”
Jae made a low humming sound. “He did mention something about it when he wrote me, asking me all these questions about the epilogue.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Oh, the usual. Where did it disappear to? Was it lost, stolen, destroyed? What do I think the epilogue might have been about? That sort of thing.”
Baz himself had never wanted to speculate on the matter. If he couldn’t know for certain what Clover had truly intended, then he would content himself with the book’s current ending. And he genuinely liked the bittersweet way it ended. In the last chapter, the four heroes of the story finally made it to the sea of ash to free the drowned gods, only to end up trapped there themselves. Lured by the gods—a thinly veiled analogy for the Tides—to their prison of ash so they could take the gods’ place, free them from their sentence in that bleak world.
Once freed, the gods disappeared, leaving the heroes trapped, alone in the dark. They heard a great rumbling at the center of the sea of ash, a beast unleashed with the gods’ leaving—the Shadow, as some speculated. And now the beast was theirs to watch over, their duty to keep it contained in the sea of ash.
The scholar, the witch, the warrior, and the guardian became the drowned gods, joining forces to face this darkness at the center of all things, as the gods before them had done for centuries. A life for a life. The cycle starting anew. The sea of ash needed its keepers to guard the deadly beast within. Blood and bones and heart and soul, combined to keep chaos and death from spilling across all worlds.
Baz looked at Jae and asked, “What do you think Clover wrote in that epilogue?”
“I think the possibilities are endless.” Jae’s fingers danced against their teacup. “The story we know is a cautionary tale because of how it ends. But it might have been something else entirely with that epilogue. Did the heroes defeat the monster slumbering below the ash? Did they find a way to leave their new prison like the drowned gods before them and return to their respective home worlds? Or did they find contentment in the sea of ash, because these people they’d crossed worlds to find had, in a sense, become their home?”
Many believed the heroes of the story were metaphors for the four lunar houses: the scholar was House New Moon, the witch was Waxing Moon, the warrior, Full Moon, and the guardian, Waning. They imagined the fate reserved for the heroes was Clover’s way of likening the four houses to divinity—to show that, even with the Tides gone, they were mighty enough to rise to the challenge without them.
Jae scoffed at such theories, arguing the ending was proof that Clover, a known Healer, was a fervent criticizer of religious zealots back in his day, a time when the myth of the Tides still held weight, and distrust of the Eclipse-born ran much deeper than it did today. Which Baz had to admit made sense, given the trickery the drowned gods resorted to in order to betray the heroes in the book—those who’d believed in the good of these gods so much, they’d traveled across worlds to find them, only to meet their doom.
Jae took a sip of tea. “Why the sudden interest in the epilogue?”
Baz let the heat from his cup seep through his hands. “Romie, actually. Did she ever ask you about it?”
“Romie? No, never. Didn’t even know she was interested in the book.”
“Me neither. Until just recently.”
Baz told Jae about the manuscript in the Vault, of Romie’s note inside it. He shared his suspicions about the Sacred Spiral, how it represented the descent from the physical world to the Deep—or, as Clover put it, the descent from one world to the next, all the way to the sea of ash at its center.
Jae arched a dark brow. “What are you asking me, exactly?”
Baz shifted uncomfortably, conscious of how he must sound. “I guess I’m wondering if there could be some elements of truth to Clover’s story. If these things could all be linked to Dovermere and the epilogue somehow.” He fidgeted with his cup. “There’s something strange about the drownings there, Jae.”