Emory tried to shut out the small voice inside her that was begging her to use more magic. Keiran’s ghost began to fade into the shadows, denied its only tether to this plane. When he disappeared at last, the pressure in Emory’s veins returned like clockwork. Her blood singing for more more more moremore.
“You know, every time I see Aspen, I’m more convinced she’s the witch from the story.”
Emory didn’t know how to feel about Romie’s continued obsession withSong of the Drowned Gods. Yes, they were in a world that seemed plucked from the book’s very pages, but while Romie was convinced their purpose was to play outClover’s story to the end—and hopefully change its outcome—Emory had her doubts.
“There’s just something about her,” Romie continued, eyes unfocused and bright as stars. “I keep finding myself in her dreams, even when I’m not trying to. It’s like there’s this tug between us. A tether that keeps bringing me to her. And it’s the strangest thing, but whenever Aspen is near, I swear I hear an echo of that damn song, like a phantom impression of it ringing in my ears.”
“Could mean anything,” Emory said lightly.
“Or it could mean Aspen hears the song too. The call to other worlds. Maybe she’d be willing to help us get to the sea of ash, if only she could get out from under her mother’s claws for a second.”
Emory said nothing at that. Ever since Romie had found the lost epilogue in the sleepscape, which centered on two characters who were clearly a Dreamer and a Nightmare Weaver, her belief in the story had doubled. She saw herself in the girl of dreams, more certain than ever that she had a grand part to play in this story. That her being here was fate.
But if that was the case, if Romie really was the girl of dreams and Emory the scholar on the shores and Aspen the witch in the woods, and they were all connected by this song woven between worlds, why then did Emory not feel the same tug between them, the same urgency to chase after this destiny and see the story through?
All she had were her ghosts and her guilt and her desire to go home. To see her father again. See Baz again. Laugh with him and Romie like they once did as children.
She’d done what she set out to do: she’d found Romie, alive and well. There was no need to keep going. No benefit to them seeking out the Tides in the Deep, to waking them as Keiran had wanted. Especially not if it meant Emory would become theirvessel.
“Look,” Romie said, twisting around to peer out the window. “I think it’s starting.”
Emory joined her to see a dozen witches slipping into the woods, the setting sun elongating the shadows they cast in an eerie way. Two figures stood out in stark recognition: Mrs. Amberyl and Aspen.
Romie turned to Emory with a mischievous smile. “If no one’s here, what’s stopping us from going after them?”
The answer to that wasnothing—except, of course, for the thicket of vines that barricaded the garden gate. But without the watchful presence of Mrs. Amberyl, it was easy enough to get through, with a little help from Emory’s Sower magic. The vines parted for them, and as they slipped into the woods proper, Emory tried to ignore the unsettling shadows that followed them.
The woods were thick with damp, smelling faintly of rot. They found the coven gathered before an ancient yew tree. At its foot was a grave being dug up as the witches chanted a low, humming tune. All of them wore flowing, diaphanous gowns and billowing shirts with ample sleeves, garments that were unseasonable and much folksier than their usual stiff skirts and suits and high-necked blouses. They were barefoot and wore bones around their necks and atop their heads like crowns—everything from massive antlers to tiny bones so fine they must have come from something no larger than a mouse.
The forest seemed to have quieted around them, so that the only sound was the strange hissing and murmuring of the witches’ song. The sun disappeared, shadowing the clearing in the cold hues of twilight, and the chanting came to a sudden stop.
A weighted, anticipatory sort of silence settled over the witches. A shiver ran up Emory’s spine, making the hairs on her arms rise.
And then a hand emerged from the earth, seeking purchase on the edge of the grave.
The corpse of a girl rose from it. She wore a once-white dress that clung in tatters over her small frame. Beneath the dirt streaked across her face, the warm tone of her skin held no trace of death. She was not a corpse at all but a girl very much alive.
“The earth has received you and sculpted you anew,” Mrs. Amberyl intoned. “Arise, Bryony Amberyl, for now you are a witch.”
Bryony was helped out of the grave by Aspen. It was then that Emory noticed the strange marking on Bryony’s exposed rib cage, the skin visible through a tear in her dress. It looked as if the earth itself had torn her open and stitched her back up again, leaving a slightly raised pink scar on her skin.
Aspiralscar.
Exactly like the one both Emory and Romie bore on their wrists.
“The Sculptress’s mark,” an old witch gasped, pointing at the scar.
“Another Amberyl daughter blessed with the Sculptress’s favor!” someone else exclaimed, drawing a spiral over his forehead.
Bryony smiled up at her sister, her face mirroring the coven’s apparent elation. And then her eyes went black, as if her pupils had been blown out.
She took a sharp intake of breath, opened her mouth, and let out a guttural sound.
For a terrible moment, Emory saw herself on Dovermere Cove, seeing Travers’s would-be corpse spewing up water before he withered away, and Lia as she screamed and clawed at her throat, mouth burnt to a crisp by some invisible magic. It felt like déjà vu, like she was reliving those nightmares that haunted her sleep.
But the sea was not here. Dovermere could not touch them. And Bryony did not appear to be disintegrating into dust or clawing at her throat. In fact, she let out a strangled laugh that had Aspen jerking back from her and then began to speak in a strange tongue, her voice too deep to belong to a teenage girl.
Romie gripped Emory’s wrist tight. A twig snapped, and Bryony whipped her head in their direction. There was no way she could see them hiding behind these bushes, yet it felt to Emory like those impossible black eyes were boring into her own. An odd sense of recognition settled in her bones—a kinship to the bloodthirsty wickedness that blazed in the dark depths of those eyes.
