Here was the connection he’d been craving. The sense of belonging he’d been robbed of at Aldryn College.
There seemed to be an unspoken agreement among them all to keep things light and festive tonight. Tomorrow, they would talk business—and business they did have. But tonight existed in a perfect bubble, and none of them wanted to undo this precarious magic.
As the evening started to wind down, with Theodore and Jae reminiscing about the good old days of the printing press, and Henry and Anise busying themselves with the dishes, Kai wordlessly slipped away from the table while Baz wasn’t looking. Baz felt crestfallen, thinking Kai had gone up to bed without so much as a good night. But then he spotted him near the back door, slipping on his coat. Kai caught his eye and motioned for him to join before disappearing into the night. Without hesitation, Baz grabbed his own coat and went after him.
Snow fell in fat, unhurried flurries against the windless night.Baz followed the foot tracks on the snow-and-pine-needle-covered ground until he found Kai sitting on a tree stump, head tilted up to the sky. The moonlight washed his features in muted silver, leeching all trace of warmth from his skin.
“So, how are all our friends back at school?” Kai asked in a mock singsong voice.
Baz snorted. “You never had any friends at school.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“I have Professor Selandyn. We take tea together every day.”
“Tides, what have you become without me?” Kai uncorked his trusty flask and offered it to Baz with a wink. “Here. Bit stronger than tea, though.”
Maybe it was because of how blessedly normal their exchange felt, or the unexpected warmth that Kai’s wink sent through him, but it had Baz reaching for the flask and taking a small sip. The taste of gin filled his mouth, as unpleasant as he had expected it to be. He coughed as it burned down his throat, the sound of Kai’s laugh flooding his senses.
How he’d missed it, that laugh.
“So,” Baz said haltingly. He cast a furtive glance at Kai. The flurries caught in his dark hair looked like stars in a night sky. “How’ve you been, really, with… everything?”
Kai snickered. “Amazing.” He took back his flask and leaned casually against the tree stump. “I really think I’ve found my calling, you know? Shucking oysters and cleaning out lobster cages with two old men whose idea of fun is playing the same damn card game every night, discussing the same damn boring topics every day, and following this same damn routine of theirs like they’re drowning and it’s their only lifeline. It’s great.” His eyes slid to Baz. “No offense to your dad.”
Baz shrugged the comment off. “Sounds better than feeling like a lonely ghost with no one to talk to.” At least he had his sister’scat to keep him company… most of the time. “I swear even Dusk is growing sick of me.”
Kai arched a brow. “Thought you liked the solitude.”
“Things change, I guess.”
It was funny. Bazhadalways enjoyed solitude, but perhaps it was only because he’d grown so used to missing the people in his life he cared most about. His father being sent to the Institute, his mother checking out, his sister disappearing, Kai Collapsing… They had all shaped this lonely existence of his.
But for the briefest of moments, these people-shaped holes in his life had been filled by Emory, and for a time he was reminded how much he craved connection. To exist in a space with people who knew him, share the burdens and joys of life with them, even in the smallest of ways. Like tonight.
“I can’t stay here, Brysden,” Kai said suddenly. His voice had gone serious, and he looked at Baz with a guarded sort of hope. “I need to go back to Aldryn.”
“You know you can’t.” Baz looked away so as not to see that hope dwindle. “We can’t risk someone discovering you.”
“I’ll stay hidden in Obscura Hall,” Kai pressed. “I’ll go out to the caves under the cover of darkness—”
“Kai…”
“You really want to know how things have been going for me? Ask your dad about all the horrible shit he’s had to see me conjure up from his nightmares. Henry too. It’s getting out of control. I’m pulling things out of nightmares without wanting to—fears I have no intention of bringing to life, things that should stay buried forever. Even when I’m not actively trying to absorb a nightmare’s darkness, it clings to me anyway and follows me back into waking. And the things I bring out are taking longer and longer to disintegrate.”
Like the epilogue, Baz thought. They’d been puzzling it over, why the epilogue Kai had found in the sleepscape hadn’t turnedto dust like all other things he pulled out of nightmares. It was still perfectly intact, perhaps following a different set of rules since it was a physical thing that had been putinthe sleepscape to begin with. But if other horrors were now staying intact in the waking world…
“It’s only a matter of time before I bring a fuckingumbrainto the lighthouse,” Kai said. His jaw tightened. “Or something worse.”
Baz shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold. “I thought you said there were less umbrae, after what happened.”
“For a few days, maybe. But more came. And it’s not just that. There’s this…wrongnessin the sleepscape that’s making the umbrae act bolder than ever. It’s like they’re clamoring for souls. For mine in particular.” Kai fidgeted with the cap on his flask. “And I keep getting these glimpses,” he added, avoiding Baz’s eye. “Of Emory.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell if it’s real or not. And it’s never anything concrete. Just an impression of her, all tangled up in the darkness of the sleepscape. Like she’s drowning in it. Like we both are.”
Baz’s mind raced. He thought of the sleepers who’d woken up shortly after Emory had gone through the door. News of it had spread quickly, how most of the Cadence Institute’s sleeping Dreamers—eternal sleepers whose consciousness had been devoured by the umbrae in the sleepscape, leaving behind comatose bodies in the real world—hadawoken. There was not a doubt in Baz’s mind that it was somehow Emory’s doing. The timing was too odd to be a coincidence.
