“How else would I have dreamed of you when I’ve never even met you?” She’d seen him around campus a few times, had heard of him sure enough, but this went beyond that.
“You know what they say,” Kai said in a wry way that reminded her a bit of Virgil. “Dreams are manifestations of our unconscious desires.” He gave her a disinterested once-over. “I’m flattered, though you’re not exactly my type.”
Did she imagine the way his eyes cut to Baz? Baz was frowning between them, looking completely oblivious to the insinuation. “I think I saw you too,” he said to Kai. “After I came to visit you. I had the nightmare again…”
He trailed off. A loaded look passed between him and Kai, and Emory felt like she was intruding on something deeply personal.
“I thought I was seeing things,” Baz breathed, “but you were really there, weren’t you?”
Kai watched Baz for a beat, and something changed in him, as if having Baz admit that he’d also seen him in his sleep had settled something. Whatever pretense he’d been assuming vanished. He spoke in a sinister undertone: “Told you they were doing weird shit to us.”
“Wait—what weird shit?” Emory asked, feeling completely out of the loop.
“The night I visited Kai,” Baz explained grimly, “the Regulators did something to one of the Eclipse-born here. There were screams and weird power surges. That’s the night I saw Kai in my sleep.” He frowned at the U on Kai’s hand. “But it doesn’t make sense. How can you access the sleepscape if your magic is sealed?”
“Fuck if I know,” Kai groaned. “The first time it happened, I thought I was going crazy. I tried doing it again, but it never worked unless the Regulators were making someone scream. Then I’d find myself pulled into the sleepscape, like whatever they did messed with the seal on my magic, and it managed to slip through the cracks somehow. Last time it happened was on the fall equinox.”
“That’s the night I saw you,” Emory said. It felt a tad violating to have had him in her head, even if he had snapped her out of that twisted dream. “Why me, though?”
“No idea. I have no control over it. Usually it’s the nightmares of those closest to me that call. Or those of other Dreamers.” He tilted his head to peer at her New Moon sigil. “But you’re no Dreamer.”
Baz shot Emory a sidelong glance. “That’s the thing,” he said slowly. “She kind of… is?”
At Kai’s dubious expression, Emory explained, “I’m a Dreamer, and a Healer, a Lightkeeper, a Sower, an Illusionist… I’m all of that and more, or can be if I choose to, because I’m a Tidecaller.”
It felt strangely empowering to say it aloud—until Kai snickered at her, full of disbelief.
“Sure you are. And I’m the Shadow himself.” He looked at Baz. “Don’t tell me you believe this nonsense.”
“I’ve seen her use Tidecaller magic myself.”
“And I’ve seen nightmares that would make you both gouge your eyes out—doesn’t make them real.”
“You just admitted to using magic even though you have the seal,” Emory shot back. “You might want to reevaluate what can be real or not.”
“Trust me, I think I have a fairly decent ability to tell reality from fantasy.”
Kai’s gaze pierced her soul, and for a delirious moment, she wondered if that cold sense of foreboding she felt was his magic, still alive somehow despite the brand that sealed it off. Baz took a step forward. He spoke Kai’s name in warning, as if he, too, wondered if his power might not be as slumbering as it should be.
The feeling subsided as Kai settled back against the bench. He gave her a thin smile. “All right, say you’re a Tidecaller. What is it you’re here for? I’d throw you a welcome party, but seeing as I’ve been basically kicked out of House Eclipse myself… what does this have to do with me?”
“I need your help understanding how the sleepscape works. How to reach someone in their dreams.”
Kai huffed a laugh. “Walking through the sleepscape isn’t exactly a quaint little stroll down the beach. Navigating it takes years of practice, and even the best Dreamers can get lost, trapped, or worse.” He cut a disbelieving look at Baz. “What’s so important that you’d risk all that?”
“Romie’s alive,” Baz said quietly.
Something shifted in Kai’s eyes, a softness that was there and gone again before Emory could make sense of it. “I thought we went over this already. She’s gone, Brysden.”
“She might not be.”
“Romie used Dreamer magic to speak to me,” Emory asserted. “You were there in the dream. Didn’t you see her?”
Kai said nothing, his expression undecipherable.
“Please, Kai,” Baz pleaded. “We need your help.”
Again, something passed between them, a silent conversation Emory wasn’t privy to. Kai heaved a sigh and threw an arm on the back of the bench. “Fine. I’ll walk you through it.”
Emory wondered if Baz saw it, this devotion the Nightmare Weaver seemed to have for him.
The corner of Kai’s mouth lifted. “But Brysden’s got to do something for me in return.”
Baz looked like he was about ready to disappear. “What?”
“I know which room the Regulators bring us to when they do whatever the fuck it is they’re doing to us. I can’t get to it without eyes on me. But you can.”
“How do you know which room it is?”
Kai hesitated just a moment, and then: “Your dad told me.”
Baz blanched. “You saw him?”
“They usually keep him in a different wing, but they transferred him just the other day. He told me the Regulators took him to this room and did something to him, though he can’t remember what.” At the devastation on Baz’s face, Kai added, “He seemed fine, Brysden. But I need to know what’s in that room. Jae hasn’t been back, as far as I know, so it’s on us now to look into it.”
Baz shuffled uneasily on his feet, blinking away what looked like tears. “I’ll go look around.”
“Good.” Kai’s attention turned to Emory. “Then listen carefully, Tidecaller. Sleepscape 101 starts now.”
* * *
“So what’s the deal with you and Brysden?” Kai asked as she sat next to him on the bench.
She met his penetrating stare with a raise of her brow. “What’s the deal with you and him?”
Neither of them answered the other.
Theirs was an odd friendship, Emory thought. She’d always considered Baz a recluse, more at ease with fictional characters than with real people, so his evident closeness with Kai took her by surprise. She couldn’t imagine what they might possibly have in common. Kai with his sharpness, Baz with his softness. The master of nightmares and the boy plagued by too many fears. From what little she’d gleaned of their dynamic, Kai seemed to like tormenting Baz, pushing his buttons in a way she would have thought would scare him off, make him shut down around himself. But it seemed to have the opposite effect—like Kai coaxed him out of his shell a bit.
Maybe she didn’t know Baz as well as she’d thought.
She drew her legs up under her and eyed the Unhallowed Seal on Kai’s hand. “Do you miss it, your magic?”
“Every damn day.” He motioned to her New Moon sigil. “Scared they’ll take yours away next? Maybe they’ll throw you in a cell next to mine and you can tell me all about how this curious magic of yours came about.”
“No one’s going to find out.”
“You’re putting an awful lot of trust in someone who has literally nothing to lose in here.”
The thought should have unnerved her, yet she felt certain her secret was safe with Kai. “You won’t say anything.”
“And now she pretends to know me enough to predict my actions.”
“I know you wouldn’t betray Baz. He’s involved in this. Surely they wouldn’t be too kind to him for harboring such a secret if word got out.”
It was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Kai pinned her with a glare, and it felt like falling through ice into a cold, dark lake.
“If anything happens to him,” he said, a dangerous bite to his voice, “I’ll make your life a walking nightmare.”