“We did. Him, me, Lizaveta, and Artem, we were practically family. Our parents were all part of the Order and remained close after their heyday at Aldryn. The four of us wanted so badly to follow in their footsteps.” A quick, sad smile. “Farran was the one to push this idea of waking the Tides, actually. Back when we were still at prep school. It was his way of getting us to focus on something other than our grief after what happened to our parents. A way for us to continue their legacy, ensure their deaths weren’t in vain.”
Even though she thought she knew the answer already, she asked, “How did you lose them?”
Keiran stared at the papers in his hand. “They were killed in a Collapsing accident.”
He said it tightly, in a way that made Emory uneasy thinking that she might Collapse one day. Yet he was putting all this faith in her anyway.
Before she could say anything, he handed her one of the papers, where an illustration of eight people forming a circle around a fountain had been drawn over the text of some nondescript administrative form.
“What am I looking at?”
“Look closer.”
She realized the lines of the drawing were formed of words—tiny, nearly illegible script, hidden in plain sight.
“It details the archaic rituals that were observed back in the days of the Tides,” Keiran said, “when people called upon them to use their magics. These rituals have been forgotten over time, no longer useful since magic was splintered. But the first Selenics still performed them, believing they might summon the Tides back from the Deep.”
“Clearly, they never succeeded.” She peered at the drawing. “What makes you think we’ll be able to do it now?”
There was a fierce glimmer in his eyes. “I’m sure they never had a Tidecaller in their mix. With you joining our ranks, lending your own abilities to this kind of ritual… our summons will be stronger than theirs ever could be.”
Emory frowned. “Did Romie know about all of this?”
Baz had been closer to the truth than she suspected he knew, with his talk of cults and songs and Dovermere. If Romie had known Keiran meant to summon the Tides back from the Deep, perhaps she’d likened it to the story in Song of the Drowned Gods. Maybe the note she left was her way of hinting at where she was going in case she didn’t make it back. A way for her to say, Romie Brysden is about to do something reckless (again) and here is where you’ll find her.
“No,” Keiran said, shutting that theory down. “The initiates knew about synthetic magics, but not this. We were going to let them in on it after Dovermere. Those who got the Selenic Mark, that is.”
Emory ran a thumb over her wrist. Keiran tracked the motion. “Aside from the fact that it allows us to communicate with one another, we don’t know much else about it. Clearly, the original Selenics knew enough of the power of Dovermere to craft their initiation ritual around the Hourglass. It’s the only ritual we’ve kept since the Order’s inception. Every year is the same: we round up the eight most promising new students, two of each of the four lunar houses, and have them undergo a series of preliminary tests to see who might have the countenance for synthetic magics. Only those who pass, if any, are invited to the final initiation: vanquishing Dovermere.”
“And those who don’t pass these preliminaries?”
“Memorists like Vivianne make them forget. They go about their lives unaware of the Selenic Order.”
Emory made quick calculations in her head. “So last year, every candidate passed the preliminaries, since there were eight of them in Dovermere. What about the rest of you? Were you all the same year?”
“All of us except Virgil. He’s a year younger than us.” He looked away, voice laced with something bitter as he said, “There were only seven of us who went to Dovermere my freshman year. Louis, Ife, Nisha, Lizaveta, Javier, me, and Farran. The other Waning Moon candidate didn’t make it past preliminaries, and Farran, as you know, drowned at Dovermere.”
A shadow fell on his face. “The four of us, Farran, Liza, Artie, and I, we grew up seeing firsthand the prestige that came with being a Selenic. We knew that once we joined, anything we wanted would be ours for the taking: the best postgraduate programs, the most exclusive internship placements, the highest-ranking jobs, access to synthetic magics. Artem was older than us, so he got in first, made sure to tap us for initiation when we got to Aldryn. We were riding a high then. Thought we were unstoppable. But when Farran died… I couldn’t shake this anger, at first. All of that hurt, and for what? Morsels of fabricated magic, the kind of power that wasn’t worth risking our lives for in Dovermere.”
“So why stay?”
“Because Farran had shown us the potential for more. We wanted to honor his memory by steering the Order back to what it used to be. To go beyond the glamorous parties and networking and do the one thing no Selenic before us had done.”
“Waking the Tides.”
“What could be more worthy an endeavor than that? When Artem’s cohort graduated and I took over the reins, we started going through what Farran had found, testing all these rituals and playing around with synths in the hopes of becoming powerful enough to summon the Tides. That first year I was in charge, I also wanted to ensure the preliminaries were harder to pass, hoping it would limit the deaths. Virgil was the only one who made it past his preliminaries; he survived Dovermere all on his own.”
Another Reaper to replace Farran, Emory thought, wondering if it were mere coincidence.
“The year after that,” Keiran continued, “all eight students we tapped for initiation made it to Dovermere. They were just that good.” A bob of his throat. “You know how that worked out.”
Eight names etched on a silver plaque at the Tides’ feet: Quince Travers, Healer. Serena Velan, Darkbearer. The twins, Dania and Lia Azula, Wordsmiths. Daphné Dioré the Wardcrafter and Jordyn Briar Burke the Soultender. Harlow Kerr, Unraveler. And Romie—the fierce, secretive, bright Dreamer.
“It was such a promising group,” Keiran lamented. “The most powerful young mages the Order had seen in years. And with the strides we’d been making developing stronger synths, I thought we might finally have what it took to wake the Tides.” He shook his head angrily. “Their deaths weigh on me still.”
Emory felt a grim kinship with him, to know that he, too, blamed himself for their deaths. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t have done anything to prevent this, that only Dovermere was to blame. It was the lie she told herself every night she woke in cold sweats, plagued by this nightmarish guilt.
“At least their loss wasn’t entirely in vain,” Keiran said quietly. “It brought us you.”
Her cheeks burned furiously at the ardent look he gave her.
“I meant it when I said we’d try to get Romie back,” he asserted. “She and Farran and all the others. And if the Tides won’t grant us this one thing, then I promise we’ll pull them back from the Deep ourselves if it’s the last thing we ever do.”
Emory blinked past the sudden sting in her eyes, looking at the ritual drawn on the page. “And this will bring them back?”
“Not quite. Think of waking the Tides as opening a door. But that door is locked; the Tides barred from our world. So first we need to unlock it.” He rustled the page. “This is how we might do it. It’s a fall equinox ritual, where the first Selenics made offerings of their magic to the Tides. They believed there was power on the fall equinox, since it marks the beginning of the end of the cycle, a bridge between summer and winter. They thought the Tides would hear them and be inclined to answer their call.”
“The fall equinox is in less than a week,” Emory said slowly.