When the four of them stepped out of the secret room, Baz slipped, nearly going down before Kai reached out a steadying hand.
“What the—”
The floor at their feet was wet. In front of the Vault’s archway, four bodies in sopping-wet clothes were laid out in a neat row, limbs unnaturally straight and hands folded on their bellies. Their pallid faces stared unseeing toward the ceiling.
Kai recognized Wulfrid among them, glassy-eyed and blue-lipped. As if he’d drowned on dry land, drained of all blood, and the wards had finally spat him and his friends back up again.
47ROMIE
ROMIE WAS USED TO SEEINGthe most absurd things in dreams, but none of them came close to riding on the back of an actual, real-life, fire-breathingdragon.
They flew away from the Chasm and Heartstone, the red-hued barrens beneath them moving at a dizzying speed. The dragon landed in the middle of a crop of odd rock formations that looked like teeth, jagged in parts and smooth in others, forming dark crevices that would be hard to get through if they were on foot. A few shrubs grew between them, as well as those odd, spindly-looking trees. But otherwise, it was as barren as the rest of the land.
The sun was setting, casting the world in soft purples and blues. Gwenhael perched itself at the top of the rocks, spreading its wings wide as it lavished in its freedom.
The Golden Helm will come, it said to them.They will have been alerted to our presence by now. They have eyes everywhere.
The words were said in a placating way, but only succeeded in putting everyone on edge. Tol sat atop a rock opposite the dragon,sword balanced on his knee as he kept an eye on the horizon. His draconic wings were unfurled after Virgil had rusted off the metal band around his neck that prevented him from shifting. Romie saw Aspen eyeing the wings with pure wonder, and maybe something else too.
As everyone settled around a fire that Gwenhael generously lit for them, Romie heard Virgil asking Emory where in the Deep she’d disappeared to back there. Emory had the good sense to look remorseful, even if she made no apology.
“You went after the demon, didn’t you?” Romie guessed.
The way Emory avoided her gaze confirmed it well enough.
“He’s not exactly a demon,” Emory said. “He’s the Shadow.”
The world tilted beneath Romie’s feet and didn’t stop as Emory recounted what she’d learned. The Tides-damned Shadow himself was after them, and Emory wasn’t the key they thought her to be, and Romie and Aspen and Tol apparently each carried a piece of the Tides, the Sculptress, the Forger—the singular deity found across worlds—inside them.
“If you’re not our world’s key,” Romie said, “then that means the Hourglass didn’t open withyourblood but mine.”
Emory nodded. “He said my Tidecaller blood is what’s needed to fit each key into their lock. That’s why the door in the Wychwood didn’t immediately open with Aspen’s bone. It needed my blood to activate it.”
“Then how were you able to open the Hourglass a second time when I was in the sleepscape?” Romie asked. “And each time the door opened to let Travers and Lia and Jordyn through. You would have neededmyblood as key.”
Emory seemed at a loss. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe once a door is unlocked, Emory can open it at will,” Nisha suggested.
“Hold on,” Virgil said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How dowe even know for sure that Romie’s our world’s key?” He pointed to Aspen and Tol. “They have a spiral mark. But so do all of us.” He pointed between himself, Romie, Emory, and Nisha. “Does that mean anyone who survived the Selenic Order ritual can be a key?”
“Romie’s the only Selenic who hears the song,” Emory pointed out. “And there’s the connection she shares with Aspen and Tol.”
It would explain why Romie heard an echo of that song in the witch and the warrior. The Tides, the Sculptress, the Forger—whoever she was, she was pulling on the three of them, trying to bring the pieces of her back together. Romie’s blood, Aspen’s bones, Tol’s heart.
Still, Virgil’s question stuck with her. She couldn’t make sense of why, in their world, the entire Selenic Order was marked with the spiral, yet onlysheappeared to be the key. While in the Wychwood, only one witch per generation was meant to bear the Sculptress’s mark and the title of High Matriarch that came with it—which meant Aspen must have something that Bryony and Mrs. Amberyl did not possess, if she alone was her world’s key.
And Tol… Romie looked at the spiral mark burned on his breastbone, visible beneath the jacket Virgil had graciously lent him. Like a brand that had healed over time.
“How did you get that?” Romie asked him.
“It’s the Sun Forger’s mark. At least, that’s what the Knight Commander had me believing. The mark appeared when I was remade into a draconic.”
Death and rebirth. Just like Romie had nearly drowned in Dovermere. Just like Aspen had survived being buried alive. Even Emory, though she may not be a key, had lived through a near-death experience to unlock her Tidecaller abilities—and maybe with that came the ability to turn keys in locked doors.
Romie studied her friend. “Did the Shadow have anything to say about what happened on the ley line?”
Emory couldn’t meet her gaze.
