But then Bryony blinked, and whatever twisted spell she’d been under stopped. Her eyes were normal again, the whites flashing plainly in the moonlight. With a whimper, she fell limply into her sister’s waiting arms.
An unsettling quiet fell over the witches until one of them hissed, “Hellwraith.”
The word slithered from tongue to tongue, somber and chilling. Aspen’s grip on her sister turned protective at the fear and violence radiating from the witches.
“You know what must be done, Hazel,” said a sour-faced matriarch who stared down her prim nose at Mrs. Amberyl. “She will have to be exorcised.”
Mrs. Amberyl stepped in front of her daughters. “Don’t be foolish, Hyacinth. You all saw Bryony’s mark. The Sculptress has blessed her.”
“Then how do you explain this demonic possession?”
The High Matriarch swept a hand over the woods. “We’ve all noticed the changes in the air of late. The trees are rotting. Streams are running black. Leaves are festering and roots are moldering and branches droop as if they are too weak to hold up their thinning canopies. Putrefying animal carcasses are found in droves. The woods that are sacred to us, the very source of the magic we wield, are dying. There is a sickness running beneath the earth, spreading through roots like poison through veins. And all of it started whentheyarrived. Those who falsely bear our Sculptress’s mark.”
Romie’s nails dug into Emory. There could be no question as to whom Mrs. Amberyl meant.
“We have seen this before,” the High Matriarch continued. “The netherdemons finding their way out from their realm beneath the earth. And just like before, evilwillbe purged.” Steel laced her every word. “I will see to it myself on the black moon.”
Above, a pale waning crescent shone. Emory and Romie stared wide-eyed at each other, their hearts beating in tandem as cold, bone-deep fear set in.
This was no fairy tale.
It was a waking nightmare—and one with no escape.
3BAZ
THE LIGHTHOUSE IN HAREBELL COVEhad not been Baz’s first choice for a secret hideout, but it turned out to be the perfect spot, somewhere the Regulators wouldn’t immediately think to look for their two most wanted fugitives. Though if they did, Jae had concocted an illusion that would conceal Theodore and Kai, so long as no one looked too close.
For a time, right after their escape from the Institute, Theodore and Kai had hidden under everyone’s noses in Cadence, under the protection of the Veiled Atlas. Alya Kazan and her niece Vera Ingers had taken them in, hiding them away in the small apartment above the taproom they managed. It had been the perfect location, a place where all of them could gather to share information and start building their case against the Institute and the Selenic Order.
But after the case got thrown out, the Institute’s search for Theodore and Kai seemed to intensify. The Regulators sowed the seedsof fear in Cadence and its surroundings, plastering the escapees’ faces everywhere, painting them as dangerous, unstable convicts. The safest course of action for Theodore and Kai was to leave before someone discovered them.
The list of alternative hiding places had been a short one with no good options. Alya suggested they sail toward the Constellation Isles, even as far as the Outerlands. Kai thought it best if they stayed under the Regulators’ noses at Aldryn College, in the Eclipse commons that only Eclipse-born could access. Theodore wanted nothing more than to see his wife again, though they all knew the Regulators had eyes on their house in Threnody—which also made Jae’s offer of housing them with the other Collapsed Eclipse-born they were training unwise.
It was Baz who’d suggested Henry Ainsleif’s lighthouse.
Baz had gone to visit Emory’s father shortly after the events at Dovermere, when he knew rumors of Emory’s supposed drowning would have reached him. Baz couldn’t bear the idea of keeping the truth of Emory’s fate from her father. He didn’t think it fair for Henry to believe she was dead when she was decidedly not—especially not after telling his own parents the truth about Romie and seeing all their grief replaced with careful optimism.
“Telling them the truth will only give them false hope,” Kai had warned Baz at the time. “What if Emory and Romiearedead?”
“They’re not,” Baz had countered, refusing to believe anything else.
And if they never came back… Baz didn’t want to think ofthat, either. But he certainly didn’t agree about the truth giving his parents false hope. If someone had done the same for him when he’d thought Romie had drowned—if they’d told him there was still a chance for her to make it out of Dovermere alive—it would have saved him an ocean of hurt and grief and doubt. It would have given him the hope he’d so desperately needed then.
So he gave that to Henry. He told him everything, making it as clear as he could that Emory was not dead but simplygone.
To Henry’s credit, he’d taken the news about doors to other worlds and the fact that Emory was a Tidecaller rather well. It seemed Emory had previously written to him about having odd magic and suspecting her mother might have lied about her birth, and so all the pieces came together to form a coherent picture in Henry’s mind.
It had felt good to talk to Emory’s dad. To voice all these things to someone from outside of their little group. Baz had found himself saying more than he’d intended, venturing into the Eclipse situation of it all, their failed quest for justice against the Selenic Order and the Institute at large. He had certainly not anticipated it enticing Henry to their side.
“If my daughter is Eclipse-born, I don’t want that to ever happen to her. I want to help. However I can.”
And so Baz had taken Henry up on his offer, sending Kai and Theodore to hide away in Henry’s secluded lighthouse in the tiny hamlet that was Harebell Cove. Emory’s ties to the Selenic Order raised some concerns over this decision, because while the rest of the world might know Emory Ainsleif as a Healer, the Selenic Order knew she was a Tidecaller—and that might put a target on Henry’s back.
But the Regulators had no reason to believe Henry Ainsleif might be involved in the harboring of two Collapsed Eclipse-born fugitives. To them, he was but a humble lighthouse keeper with little to no magic, a reclusive man who didn’t overly concern himself with the outside world, the grieving father of a girl who, despite having ties to Baz, was believed to be dead. Another victim of Dovermere’s dark whims.
It was a risk nonetheless.Especiallythe part where they’d let Anise Brysden in on the truth. Theodore had insisted on it, andBaz couldn’t deny the good it had done both his parents. He’d never seen his mother this happy. It was like she had shed all those years of loss like a second skin, making herself shiny and new again. But Baz feared it was the sort of precarious happiness that would make her spiral into despair again if it was ripped away from her—which was a very real possibility, if they were ever to be found out. Or if Romie never came back.
But as all of them drank mulled cider and exchanged gifts, their bellies full of savory chowder and fresh brown bread, music scratching away on the gramophone and laughter ringing in their ears, Baz couldn’t help but think it was worth it. All his worries had slipped away, as if here in the lighthouse at the edge of the world, nothing bad could reach him. Not Artem or Drutten. Not the stress of figuring out the extent of his Collapsed magic or the burden of seeking justice for his fellow Eclipse-born.
