Emory hid a smile. She caught Keiran’s eye from across the room, and nothing else mattered as he made his way toward them. Virgil excused himself, saying he’d better go check on Lizaveta—I’ll put in a good word for you—making Emory wonder if there might be something between the two of them.
She hoped he was right, and that this animosity Lizaveta had for her would dissipate.
“I hope we didn’t overwhelm you,” Keiran said as he sidled up to her.
She laughed, the wine and tension of the evening going to her head. “Oh, not at all. This is just a regular weekday night for me.”
He smiled that dimpled smile at her, full of genuine mirth. It was disarming.
“Ask me again tomorrow,” she amended, “when all this doesn’t feel so much like a fever dream.”
“Fair enough. Shall I walk you back to your dorm, then?”
There was so much she wanted to ask him still, but her mind went blank under his stare, and all she could do was duck her head to hide her blush. “Sure.”
As they reached her room, it felt to Emory like she was dancing upon a precipice, heart racing to a wild tune in anticipation of the drop. They lingered in front of her door. In the quiet corridor, Keiran’s features were shadowed, edges limned in faint light. His eyes slowly traveled down to her lips, making her stomach go taut at the intensity in them.
“Now that you’ve sworn your oath,” he said, voice lowered to a husky tone, “I can show you what the Selenic Mark actually does, if you want.” A nod at her door. “Can we…?”
Emory opened the door, heart beating so fast she thought it might burst. Keiran brushed past her into the room, and she leaned back against the door, unsure of what to say or how to act now that they were here. Her room felt too small; she couldn’t quite make sense of his presence in it as he strode over to her desk, his hands reaching for the bloodletting instruments she kept there: a shallow bowl, a vial of salt water, a knife. Things every magical adept kept close, but that she didn’t need anymore, she supposed, now that she was Eclipse-born.
Emory watched with growing anticipation as Keiran poured a bit of salt water into the bowl, every movement precise, loaded. His tattooed hand hovered over the bowl. His eyes didn’t leave hers as he slowly dipped his hand in the water, all the way past his wrist. Something changed in the air between them, and when he lifted his dripping hand, Emory could plainly see the symbol on his wrist, glowing faintly silver. A prickling sensation drew her attention to her own wrist, an echo of the burning that had birthed the mark on her skin—which was now glowing just like Keiran’s.
“This is what the mark does,” he said in her ear, making the fine hairs on her neck stand to attention.
Emory drew a sharp inhale, expecting to see him beside her, so clear had been his voice, the murmur of breath against her skin. But he still stood across the room from her, casually leaning against her desk.
“How…”
“It’s a calling card of sorts. With it, you can call on anyone else who bears the mark, no matter how far away you are.”
She saw his lips move, but again his voice sounded right beside her, as if he stood there whispering in her ear. There was something oddly intimate to it, with his gaze so intent on her; it made her glad to be standing so far away, while at the same time yearning to be closer.
She glanced at her own marked wrist. “Show me how to do it.”
Keiran motioned to the bowl. “Salt water activates it.”
Emory pushed off the door and came to stand beside him. He looked at her in a way that made her pulse quicken as her hand tentatively grazed the surface of the water.
“It’s all about intention,” he said over her shoulder, both through the mark and not. She shivered at his nearness. “You have to really think about who you wish to call on, let their essence wash over you. Focus on the act of calling out to them itself.”
Emory conjured his face in her mind. It wasn’t hard to do, with his breath on her neck and his faint aftershave in her nose. I want to speak to Keiran Dunhall Thornby, she thought. She sensed something at the edge of her vision, felt a prickle on her wrist. When she lifted her hand from the water, the symbol was bright silver.
“Like this?” Her voice sounded normal to her ears, but she felt it, somehow—the way it traveled to him through whatever magic, sending a jolt through her spine.
His voice caressed the back of her neck. “Exactly like that.”
Emory turned to find him standing inches from her, his face so beautiful it hurt to look at.
“You truly believe it, don’t you?” she asked, marveling at the way his throat undulated as he stared at her lips. “That we can bring the Tides back.”
His hand brushed hers, twin spirals glowing in question and answer to each other. “I believe there’s power in intention. It’s what makes the magic in our Selenic Mark come alive, what lets us call on each other, a gift we have no explanation for because whatever its original purpose might have been is lost to us now. Intention is how people of old were able to touch all magics, because so long as they honored the Tides, power flowed freely through their veins. Magic from all moons and all tides. Like yours.”
He looked at her from beneath thick lashes. “I think if we truly set our minds to it, if we set out with intention and use your magic for this one great purpose… why shouldn’t we be able to call upon such a force as the Tides themselves?”
Emory supposed it was possible. Up until tonight, she didn’t know such a thing as synthetic magic existed. Before that, she didn’t think her own magic was possible, still couldn’t believe how she could go her entire life thinking she was a Healer and suddenly be something as fabled as a Tidecaller, her blood running with the dark power of the Eclipse. And until moments ago, she never let herself hope—dream—that she might see Romie again.
Nothing was impossible.
“It’s late,” Keiran whispered. “I should go.”
Emory swallowed down her disappointment as he pulled away. What had she hoped for? That he would stay and—Tides. She needed to keep her head straight.
Keiran lingered by the door. “Do you see now why I was so adamant to back you at the lighthouse? Why I asked you to trust me? If this works… it’ll change everything, Ains.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“It will.”
“How can you be so sure?”
His mouth lifted in that boyish grin, though his eyes—his eyes darkened in a way that made her knees weak.
“You underestimate how tireless I can be when I chase after something I want.”
* * *
Dovermere finds her again in sleep. Dream, memory, memory dream—the lines too blurred to know one from the other.
Around her, the cave walls drip with not water but tiny stars that plummet slowly to the ground, fading as they reach the growing darkness at her feet. Romie stands alone before the great hourglass with its shifting black sands and wilting flowers trapped inside. A silver spiral burns on the surface where her hand touches the glass.
“I read that there are symbols like this everywhere, strewn about in the deepest, darkest places in the world.”
Romie’s voice echoes strangely around them. Her hair is a wet mess, her skin bloated and wrong. “Some say they were put there by naiads and sirens as a way to contact each other. A bridge between the world’s many bodies of water.”
Her lightless eyes find Emory’s. Behind her, the spiral unfurls into a golden sunflower that burns through the glass and the flowers and the sand. The remaining ash spills from inside, and it is not ash at all but claws of shadow that slither over Romie’s arms and neck.
Her lips are blue with cold death. Water trickles from the sides of her mouth as she tries to speak, but no sound comes out. Her distorted voice echoes ghostlike in Emory’s ears instead: “The water guides us all, even when it claims us.”
“I don’t understand,” says Emory.
Tendrils of darkness crawl into Romie’s eyes, her blackened throat. Her voice sounds all around and nowhere at all. “There are tides that drown and tides that bind, tides with voices not all kind…”
The breath is squeezed from Romie’s throat. She points a single finger to something behind Emory. A great beast of shadow erupts.
It is darkness
fear