Whatever she’d done in the sleepscape—whatever power she’d unleashed that had blasted a horde of umbrae out the door along with a dying Keiran Dunhall Thornby—must have woken up the eternal sleepers. Restored their minds.
According to the papers, some of these Dreamers had beenasleep fordecades, tended to at the Institute with little to no hope of ever waking up. And now they were awake and alive and absolutelyfine. None of them remembered anything from their time in the sleepscape, or if they did, they weren’t talking.
That kind of power… If Emory had indeed wielded such magic as to wake the umbrae, undo what had been done to the sleepers whose souls had been lost to these nightmares,surelyshe must have Collapsed. And though Collapsing wouldn’t destroy Emory—Baz, Kai, and Jae were proof enough—Baz couldn’t help but fear for her. A Tidecaller was already limitless enough as it was, but aCollapsedTidecaller?
And now Kai, who was struggling with his own Collapsed magic, was having dreams of herdrowning in darkness.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Kai said quietly, though there was an edge to his voice that Baz didn’t understand. “Anyway, she probably only shows up in my head because of you.”
“Me?”
“You dream of her constantly. And while I’m happy to be rid of that damn printing press scene of yours, I can’t say Dovermere is much better.”
Baz was glad for the darkness hiding the flush that crept up his neck. He’d hoped Kai wouldn’t have noticed the shift in his nightmares, the way the printing press scene now bled into the caves to show him one of the many horrors he’d witnessed inside Dovermere: the umbrae feasting on Baz’s fears, dragging Emory to her death, bending to Kai’s will. Emory going through the door. Keiran dying in his arms. The portal whispering in his mind.
Sometimes, when the nightmare involved Emory—which was more often than he cared to admit—it shifted out of the caves to show Baz other moments with her, all twisted up with the horror of his subconscious. The pain of losing her. Her betrayal of histrust. The moment she’d pulled away from him when they’d kissed that one time, the rejection starker and crueler in the darkness of his mind.
Now he knew Kai had been present for at least a few of those nightmares and had seen how much it ate away at him, this childish pining for someone who wasgone, who might never come back. Of course, Kai had never said anything about it to him. It was like Emory was this unspeakable thing between them, the one subject they never broached.
Until now.
Baz cleared his throat, kicking at the snow. “Sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was apologizing for.
“Not your fault I keep getting pulled into your nightmares.” Kai took a swig from his flask and stared angrily out at the darkness. “If Collapsed magic is supposed to be limitless, you’d think I’d have better control over it. Not whatever the fuck this is.”
Baz’s gaze drifted to the unmarred Eclipse tattoo on Kai’s hand. “I know how you feel about this, but… my offer still stands if you need it.”
Not long after their escape from the Institute, Baz suggested using his time magic to bring back the Unhallowed Seal on Kai’s hand—temporarily, of course, just to give Kai a bit of a reprieve from the uncontrollable nightmares. It had been a thoughtless question, asked in a moment of despair after seeing Kai struggle against invisible demons in his sleep. Kai had told him to fuck off. Baz had apologized. And they’d never spoken of it again.
Kai looked like he might throttle him now that he’d dared bring it up again. “You sound just like your dad. He’s been playing around with his Nullifier magic to try to help me suppress my own magic. Keep the nightmares at bay.”
“That’s great.” Baz beamed. Why hadn’t he thought of this before?
“But it’s not a solution, is it?” Kai bit back darkly. “It means yourdad doesn’t sleep so long as he’s helping me get some nightmare-less rest. It means I have to stay here.”
“If that’s what you need to make this work…”
“What Ineedis to be closer to Dovermere and to try opening the portal again. What was the point of that damn epilogue if I can’t go through the door?”
Kai had gone back to the caves shortly after Emory went through the Hourglass, trying to get it to open again at his touch. If Clover’s epilogue had any truth to it, both Kai and Romie were like Emory in that they, too, had the power to traverse worlds. But the door would not open at Kai’s touch, no matter what he tried.
Baz would never dare admit to it, but the truth was that he would giveanythingto hear the song of Dovermere, the same one that had called to Romie and Emory and Kai. He’d come to terms with not seeing himself reflected inSong of the Drowned Godsthe way they were. He had no role to play in this story; he wasn’t the boy of nightmares or the girl of dreams or the scholar on the shores who went through worlds. He was the reader, doomed to watch his favorite heroes from the sidelines as he’d always done. He could try to put the pieces together, but he would never have the power to push the story forward.
And Baz was okay with that. He had to be.
The magic of the night seemed to have died around them, and Baz didn’t know how to reignite it. The wind picked up suddenly, and he tightened his coat against it. “Want to go inside and play a boring game of cards?”
“Fine.” If Kai minded the abrupt change in subject, he was good at pretending otherwise as he slid off the tree trunk with a mischievous smile. “But we’re making it into a drinking game.”
Baz couldn’t help his own smile or the inexplicable warmth that went through him as they walked quietly back to the lighthouse, their shoulders occasionally brushing. But even this tiny sliver ofnormalcy couldn’t mend the magic for long. Before they reached the door, it burst open to reveal a frantic-looking Henry hurriedly slipping on his coat, an everlight lantern swinging from his hand.
“What’s wrong?” Baz asked.
“The tide’s swallowing everything up!”
As if on cue, Baz realized the night was no longer quiet: earsplitting roars came up from the shoreline, and he thought he heard some sort of siren blaring in the distance. He and Kai hurried after Henry down to the water’s edge, where the sea had already swallowed up half the shore. Large, powerful swells crashed along the smooth rocks, reaching as far as the tree line. The faint light of the lantern cast a sorry picture: lobster cages and fishing gear were being battered by waves and then pulled back into the sea, and Henry’s fishing barge was now beached, caught in the boughs of trees.
Henry was already knee-deep in what must be freezing water, grabbing hold of whatever he could and tossing it farther up the shore. Kai didn’t hesitate to join him. He threw Baz a dire look as he hauled things out of the water. “The time, Brysden!”
