Emory shook her head. “But if I called them back to the world of the living, why did they die?”
This seemed to throw him for a loop. He stared into the middle distance. “The Deep demands payment,” he said quietly. His gaze sharpened, focused on her. “Think about it. No one has crossed through those doors and lived to tell the tale because such a crossing demands payment. Because no one can step into the Deep and return to the living without first paying the price. If Travers and Lia had one foot in the underworld before crossing back into the world of the living… it might explain their strange deaths.”
Emory’s heart raced. “They both lost their magic in some strange reversal of their power.” A Healer withering away to bones. A Wordsmith losing the ability to speak things into being. “You think that was the payment demanded by the Deep?”
Keiran nodded grimly. “Their magic—their very lifeblood—in exchange for the act of crossing into the underworld. Maybe Brysden’s theory about the lost epilogue isn’t too far off. This idea of holding a key to cross through worlds… it makes sense. Take Reapers and Shadowguides, for example. The veil to the Deep is thinner for them than it is for anyone else. They have the countenance for it, have been blessed by the Tides with gifts that have them closely intertwined with death. But even they can’t physically find themselves in the Deep. They’d need some kind of protection to survive it.”
“You mean the epilogue?”
“Maybe. Or something the epilogue might have hinted at. If Romie was researching such a possibility, she might know how we can go through that door and come back from the Deep unscathed. It’s the missing piece to what we’ve been trying to achieve.”
“Romie’s the key to all of it,” Emory breathed.
“And she found a way to contact you in a dream.” Keiran’s eyes glistened. “With your power… you could wield Dreamer magic too. Reach her in the sleepscape, find out what we need to wake the Tides. To save her too.”
Emory shied away from the intensity in his expression. The kind of magic he was asking her to do was far beyond her reach. After last night’s ritual, she wasn’t even sure how this Tidecaller thing worked anymore. Would she need to come into contact with a Dreamer first to mirror their magic, or could she call on it through her own power? It was too much to think of.
“Hey.” Keiran pressed his forehead to hers, fingers weaving through her hair. “We’re so close, Ains. I know you can do this.”
His words—this utter faith in her he seemed to have—thrilled and scared her in equal measure. “If this fails, I’m blaming you,” she said lightly, forcing the corners of her mouth up.
“There it is,” Keiran whispered. “That smile.”
A featherlight brush of his lips against hers had her eyes fluttering shut. Warmth rushed to her face as he trailed delicate kisses down her jaw. She was burning and nothing mattered—until Lia’s incinerated mouth flashed in her mind.
Emory pulled away with a start, fresh horror on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just… with everything that’s happened…”
“No, of course.” Keiran kissed her forehead. “I’ll go.”
She pressed a hand to his arm as he started to get up. “Wait.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go further with him—because Tides, she did. And it wasn’t that she’d never gone further than kissing before, either. Her first time had been a fumbling experience with a boy at Threnody Prep; her second, a drunken romp with another New Moon student during her first week at Aldryn. Both instances had been disappointing and fleeting, fueled by mindless attraction and this nagging sense that she needed to catch up. It was silly, really, but all she could do then was compare herself to bold, experienced Romie, whose generous curves and aura of confidence turned heads wherever she went. Meanwhile, Emory was always overlooked, for who would spare a glance at her, the timid, reserved, bland girl, when they were blinded by the blazing sun that was Romie?
But this thing with Keiran, whatever it was… It felt different. Suddenly she was the sun, and he looked at her like she was everything he’d ever wanted. She’d never known this kind of rush—this kind of budding intimacy. And she wanted so desperately to see it flourish.
“Stay with me?”
She flushed as the words left her mouth. A part of her didn’t think it was her place to ask such a thing of him, but the thought of being alone—of falling asleep and possibly dreaming of Romie again, or not dreaming of her at all—was unbearable.
Understanding lit Keiran’s eyes. He settled back against the headboard and drew her into the crook of his arm. They stayed like that for a while in comfortable silence.
Thinking of Lia, Emory asked, “Did Farran… Was he lost to Dovermere, or did his body…”
“We got to bury him,” Keiran murmured.
“What was he like?”
“He was the kindest person I knew. He saw only the good in everyone, in the world itself. He was a hopeless romantic that way.” His hand drew slow circles on her arm. “It ate away at his heart to see anyone in pain. Back in prep school, he was dating someone in secret. An Eclipse-born. He thought none of us knew, but we did. It was so painfully obvious how smitten he was. We never brought it up, though, thinking he’d tell us on his own terms. But after what happened with our parents… I think he thought he had to choose. That staying with an Eclipse-born would be an affront to us and the memory of our parents. He was different after that, wanted so desperately to ease our hurt that he threw himself into this endeavor to wake the Tides, and nothing else mattered.”
Then, so soft she might not have heard him: “He shouldn’t have felt like he had to choose. I always regretted not telling him that.”
Emory supposed she understood better now why he was so quick to accept her being Eclipse-born. He thought he’d failed his friend by making him feel like he couldn’t be with who he wanted to be, simply because they were from House Eclipse.
But the mistake of a single Eclipse-born wasn’t all of theirs to shoulder.
When she finally drifted to sleep, she wished with all her being to be carried back to Romie. But her dreams were void, her friend nowhere in them.
24 BAZ
EMORY FOUND BAZ IN THE Decrescens library first thing the next morning.
“What do you know of the sleepscape?” she asked without preamble.
He shot her a skeptical look. “Why?”
She spread her hands on the table. “I want to try reaching Romie in dreams. And before you say anything, I know this is complex magic that’s far bigger than anything else I’ve wielded, and I know you think I’m reckless and not ready to start training yet, but unless you thought of something better, this really is the only option we have.”
For Tides’ sake. His coffee hadn’t even properly kicked in yet.
Before Baz could object, Emory angled her body toward him, leaning in close. “Let me at least try. For Romie’s sake.”
There was a hitch in his breath at her sudden proximity, the softness of her plea. His eyes caught on her lips. Images from the other night tugged at his memory: the way she’d held on to him as waves crashed around them, how close they’d been before spotting Lia in the water.
His throat bobbed. He tried to come up with an argument against her plan but couldn’t. She was right: it was their only recourse. “All right.”
She pulled back in shock. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“All right, then.” Emory sank in the chair across from him. “The problem is I don’t know the first thing about accessing the sleepscape.”
“Neither do I.” A field of purple-black poppies glared at him from the stained-glass window above. Baz sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But I know someone who does.”
Emory lifted a brow. “No one else knows about me being a Tidecaller, Baz. We can’t exactly waltz up to any Dreamer and have them show me how it works.”
“Not a Dreamer,” he said darkly. “A Nightmare Weaver.”
SONG OF THE DROWNED GODS
PART IV:
THE GUARDIAN AT THE GATE