Keiran?
Baz scanned the beach. There was no one here but them. Emory still had that distant look, all color leeched from her skin. He shook her lightly, his mind racing. She blinked. Swore. Finally, she came back to herself, her eyes clearing to focus on him.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s over,” she said as if still in a daze.
“Emory, what—”
“The dean found out I’m a Tidecaller.” She wrenched herself away from Baz, wiping furiously at her face. “She knows you’ve been helping me train. She’s on her way here to deal with us right now.” Her lip trembled. “I’m so sorry, Baz.”
“Emory, slow down.” What the fuck had just happened? “Fulton can’t possibly have found out. I’m the only one who knows…”
He eyed the mark on her wrist again, no longer faintly glowing. His shoulders fell as he put the pieces together. “You were talking to Keiran through the mark.”
Just like she’d tried with Romie the night Lia reappeared.
“Does he know you’re Eclipse-born?”
“Baz…”
The remorse in her eyes was all the answer he needed. And it was a knife twisting in his gut, this realization that he wasn’t the only one to bear her secret, to have earned her trust. That she would share such a thing with Keiran Dunhall Thornby, of all people…
Horror and anger and hurt rose in his throat. “He’s part of this, isn’t he?”
Dovermere, the drownings, those marks on everyone’s Tides-damned wrists…
Baz had known from the start that Emory was keeping things from him, and all along he’d been too blinded by his feelings for her, too scared of losing the fragile, rekindled bond between them to dig deeper.
But this—this, he couldn’t overlook.
“Is Keiran the reason Romie’s gone?”
“Of course not. He’s trying to help me save her.”
Baz huffed a cold laugh. “You can’t trust him, Emory. Whatever he’s told you, whatever it is you’re involved in… There’s no way he would ever work alongside an Eclipse-born unless he had some ulterior motive. He doesn’t care about saving Romie. He clearly doesn’t care about you if he betrayed you to the dean.”
“It wasn’t him,” Emory asserted. “And you’ve got him all wrong.”
“His parents were killed in a Collapsing incident.”
“I know. He told me everything.”
Baz flinched. “And did he also tell you who their killer was?”
She looked away, and it was confirmation enough.
“My father took his family away from him. Ever since, he’s had it out for me, for Romie, for the entire Brysden family and every single Eclipse-born there is. Tides, he even broke up Kai and his former lover because he couldn’t stand the idea of his friend being with some lowly Eclipse-born.”
This seemed to startle her, but she quickly composed herself. “It’s not like that. He’s not like that.” She drew herself up angrily, a defensive gleam in her eyes. “He sees the value in my power and has never once been afraid of it. Unlike you.”
“Then he must be a damn good liar, and you must be more of a fool than I thought. Tides, it makes me the even bigger fool, because despite everything in me screaming that I couldn’t trust you, I did. I took a chance on you, and I—”
He bit back his words, shaking his head, trying to make sense of this emotional whiplash. A moment ago, he was kissing her, thinking nothing had ever felt so right in his life. For the first time, he’d put himself out there, laid bare his heart, and dared to hope she might feel something of the same toward him.
How very wrong he’d been.
“Were you just using me?”
The words came out as broken as he felt.
Emory opened her mouth but caught herself as her eyes landed on something behind him. Baz whipped around. Dean Fulton was making her way toward them on the path that led down to the beach. She wore a grave expression and a long trench coat that fluttered in the wind.
The dean of Aldryn jerked her chin at them. “Come with me, both of you.”
She turned on her heel, and Baz started after her. Emory reached for him with a desperate plea. “Baz—”
He brushed past her, dutifully following the dean back up to the school to face whatever fate awaited him.
33 EMORY
THE DULL RINGING IN EMORY’S ears was the only sound in the reception room outside Dean Fulton’s office. It kept her company as she sat alone on an upholstered bench, staring at the tapestried wall in front of her without really seeing it. At some point, someone had taken a sample of her blood, the sting of the needle now a dull throbbing in the crook of her arm. Her clothes were still damp, but she’d been offered a rough blanket to keep warm, at least.
Baz had been in and out of the dean’s office without so much as a passing glance at Emory. The rupture between them was deafening, tearing wider with every step he took away from her.
That kiss still lingered in her mind, on her mouth.
It had taken her aback, though it really shouldn’t have. She’d done this—had known how Baz felt about her and used it to her advantage, pushing at it like a bruise, leading him on without a care for the pain it might bring him.
She’d never meant for it to go this far—for him to actually kiss her.
And yet.
She recalled the fluttering of her heart, her body’s treacherous response. She had liked kissing him, and she had to wonder if a part of her had wanted it to go that far, if the feelings she felt for him—this fearless, heroic version of him—were real.
Emory flinched as the office door opened, and there stood Dean Fulton, looking as put together as ever. The tightness around her eyes and mouth was the only thing that betrayed the direness of the situation as she wordlessly beckoned Emory inside.
Emory had been here once before, on another new moon. She was more alert now than she was last spring, noting the dark, gleaming wood, the silver and brass trinkets that adorned every corner, the impressive collection of carefully labeled water vials, the leather-bound tomes that looked as old as the school itself.
Dean Fulton sat behind her large desk. “Have a seat, Ms. Ainsleif.”
The ringing in Emory’s ears grew louder under the dean’s scrutiny. Fulton drew a hand over her closely shaven salt-and-pepper head, leaning back in her chair. A heavy silence cloaked the room, punctuated only by the ticking of a clock, the faint metallic whirr of an instrument on the dean’s desk, the sizzling of embers in the chimney. The window was closed, yet Emory thought she heard that voice again, calling to her, mocking her.
Emory, Emory.
“I’ve tested your blood.” Fulton motioned to the selenograph on her desk, a much newer model than the one Emory had used in the library with Baz. “It clearly marks you as Eclipse-born.” She fixed her with a piercing gaze. “This is the part where you explain yourself.”
Emory stared at the hands folded in her lap, at the New Moon sigil she had once been so proud to wear, the dark moon and silver narcissus she couldn’t stand to look at now.
She told the dean as much of the truth as she could. That she’d uncovered her new Tidecaller powers after Dovermere. That she’d since been training with Baz, too scared to come forward for fear of being administered the Unhallowed Seal. It was no use lying about it now; if what Keiran had told her through the mark was true, Tides-damned Penelope had already told the dean everything, including Baz’s involvement.