She eyed the expensive-looking bottle in Virgil’s hand. “Looks to me like the party’s already started.”
Virgil handed her the bottle with a mischievous smile. “Darling, the party never stops when I’m around.”
Emory took a long sip, willing the bubbles to ease her into this role she’d have to play. Her eyes never left Keiran’s. Was that fear she saw in them? Annoyance? She felt no small amount of satisfaction at that, certain she’d unwittingly wrested the upper hand from him by showing up here just now.
“Well? Are you going to tell us why you invited her?” Lizaveta asked Keiran, arms crossed in displeasure.
Before he could answer, Emory held her wrist up. “It seems I’m going to be part of the Selenic Order too.”
There was a tense silence as they took in her spiral mark, the implication of her words. Virgil gently pried the bottle from her grasp, muttering something about not being drunk enough for this.
Emory met Keiran’s gaze squarely. She had to wonder why he hadn’t told them about her. She didn’t trust him, wouldn’t let herself be played by him. And she was so very tired of being kept in the dark.
Secret society, cult, it didn’t matter. Either way, she would do her damned best to infiltrate the Selenic Order—and find a way to stop them from ever holding another one of their initiations at Dovermere. She would have justice for Romie and Travers and all the others.
No more senseless deaths. It ended here.
Baz thinking she was so quick to move on from Romie’s death had set her aflame. She felt like one of those stars racing across the sky. She wouldn’t stop now even if she was doomed to burn out entirely by the end.
12 BAZ
THOUGHTS OF THE GREENHOUSE—OF Emory’s unguardedness, the way the moonlight had limned her face as they watched the stars—warred with the bitter sting of everything that followed.
She had that Tides-damned mark just like Travers and the Guardian at the Gate and probably Romie, too.
Baz knew she had to be lying to him, had to know something she didn’t want him finding out. And yet… she was right about this, at least: Romie had been hiding things from both of them, it seemed. He knew firsthand how different his sister had been acting during those months leading up to her death. Standoffish and scattered. Secretive about everything and everyone she was suddenly spending time with, like Keiran Dunhall Thornby—whom Emory was now apparently hanging around with too.
Baz caught a glimpse of them in the adjacent building as he left the ramshackle greenhouse. Emory had her head ducked to hide a smile as Virgil Dade whispered something in her ear. There were others there too: Lizaveta Orlov, Nisha Zenara—whom he recognized now as the clerk who’d manned the desk in the Vault—and Keiran. The same group, no doubt, that Romie had fallen in with before her death.
Baz walked away before he could make sense of the tightness in his chest.
Music and laughter and conversation flitted over to him from all around campus, and his heart ached at the lightness of the sounds, the ease and camaraderie that felt so foreign to him. He had never truly realized how disconnected he was until now, in this very moment, when he understood that everyone had a life outside of the classroom, events like the meteor shower they were excited about and people to make plans with, to share things with. They were part of something. A mainland of activity and connection bound by a desire to belong, to experience, to live in all the messy senses of the word.
He was an island that stood wholly apart.
Kai had been there with him for a time, but even then, it’d been as if they both stood on opposite ends, an invisible line drawn between them that they dared not cross, or perhaps didn’t know how.
It was a predicament of his own making, really. Baz had crafted this perfect bubble of solitude, a narrow existence that could be contained between the shelves of the library, the tapestried walls of the Eclipse commons, the pages of a story. For as long as he could remember, he’d only ever needed his books and studies for company, but suddenly the idea of returning to the empty common room felt unbearably lonely.
He paused by the Fountain of Fate. From his pocket he pulled both Romie’s note and the napkin from the tearoom with the address for the Veiled Atlas. Maybe Selandyn and Jae were right about accepting Romie’s death, that he was looking for meaning where there was none. But he knew if the roles were reversed, Romie would have hunted down answers to the ends of the earth—probably had done exactly that, driven to Dovermere by this strange idea that, like a mad dream, would not let her go.
Romie, Kai, even Emory—they were people who acted without fear, and Baz envied their fearlessness. Maybe he could try to be like them.
He cut across the lawn, turning his back on Obscura Hall and the hollowness carved within. For one night, he would do something, and damn the consequences.
* * *
The Veiled Atlas was a private taproom in the poshest part of Cadence. The lighting was brassy, the furnishings dark and moody, and if it weren’t for all the Song of the Drowned Gods–themed baubles and antiques strewn around—a life-size statue of a winged horse, a solid gold heart run through with an equally golden sword, sepia-toned portraits of Cornus Clover smiling attractively in every one, a rusting typewriter said to have belonged to him, and so many framed paintings on the wall that it was a wonder it didn’t collapse—Baz would have felt entirely out of place.
A long claw-footed table sat in the middle of the room he’d been brought to, finely set with silver cutlery and crystal glasses and the remnants of a feast. At the head of the table was an elegant middle-aged woman swathed in gossamer fabrics and pearls, her white-blond hair falling in perfect curls down to her middle.
“I wasn’t aware Jae was back in town,” Alya Kazan said tightly, her wine-red lips downturned in a sour expression.
“I think they’re just passing through.”
A scoff from Alya. “Figures. Always so swift to move on to bigger and brighter things.”
Baz palmed the back of his neck. When he’d mentioned Jae’s name at the door, Alya had laughed and nearly shut the door in his face. “If Jae thinks I’ll do them any favors after they left without so much as a goodbye last time…”
She’d agreed to speak with him only because another girl who’d poked her head in the door convinced her to let him in. Baz had followed them both into this private room upstairs, mortified at the thought that Jae might have sent him to someone they had unresolved history with.
“I don’t think our guest is here to talk about your failed relationships, Alya.”
This came from the other girl, who was closer to Baz in age. She was short and plump, with green eyes, dark hair buzzed close to her head, and a smattering of freckles on her golden-beige skin. Where Alya was all poise and elegance, primly sitting at the head of the table with what looked like a martini in hand, this girl had her feet up on the chair beside her and picked at a cheese platter, dressed in an ensemble of dark slacks, lavender suspenders, and a buttoned-up blouse with a floral-print bow tie.
She winked at Baz. “I’m Vera, by the way,” she said in a lilting accent. “Vera Ingers.”
“You’ll have to excuse my niece’s lack of manners.” Alya swirled her martini around with an olive pick. On her hand glistened the sigil of House New Moon. “I don’t know what exactly they teach over at Trevelyan University, but apparently it’s not that.” A scoff. “And they have the nerve to stare down their noses at schools like Aldryn.”