Buddy-sleeps.Kai had heard of the practice—Dreamers bringing non-Dreamers along with them in the sleepscape, guiding their sleeping consciousness to follow theirs. It was banned back in his time, too many non-Dreamers having been lost that way and becoming eternal sleepers.
As if reading his concern, Luce added, “I’m quite talented, I assure you.”
Kai didn’t doubt it. He was more concerned about the promise he’d made Emory last time. About Baz finding out he’d spoken to her and kept it from him. “I think it’s best if only the two of us go.”
Luce’s smile was eager. “All right, then, nightmare boy. Let’s set sail through the dark.”
They found Emory more easily than Kai had on his own.
Perhaps it was Luce’s presence that made it so easy to navigate the stars and the darkness, amplifying this bond between him and Emory.
“It’s you again,” Emory breathed when she saw him. There was no struggling with reality this time; she knew, as he did, that this was real. She only frowned in confusion as she caught sight of Luce hovering behind him. “Who’s she?”
“A Dreamer,” Kai said. “I needed the boost to find you again.”
He kept his promise not to divulge anything more, though judging by Emory’s lingering gaze on Luce—and Luce making no attempt to hide the emotions on her face, lips parted in awe, unshed tears glistening like stars in her eyes—he suspected the truth was plain enough to see.
“Did you tell Baz about this?” Emory asked.
Kai’s jaw tightened. “No. And he’d have my head if he knew I was here now.” He really needed to stop making all these promises. He was the Nightmare Weaver, not the Tides-damned Keeper of Everyone’s Secrets.
“Thank you.”
Kai studied her pale features, the sallowness of her face. “Are you okay?”
Emory turned her face up to the stars above. “Things are really bad, Kai.” Her voice broke. “I keep hurting everyone around me, and I’m scared that I don’t know how to stop. Romie’s right: I really am a Tidethief. And if I keep going like this, I’ll lose her all over again.”
Kai met Luce’s eye. How the hell were they supposed to tell her now? And what good would it do, really, if Clover succeeded at changing history?
“Just… hang in there, all right?” He only now noticed the darkness gathering at the edges of the sleepscape, the tendrils of it flitting to Emory, as if called by her turmoil. “You’re not alone in this.”
She huffed a sad laugh at that. “I am, though. I have to be. Otherwise, I’ll end up hurting them all, one way or another. I always do.”
The darkness around them rearranged itself so that they were in the Belly of the Beast, surrounded by all the students who’d flung accusations at her the last time they were in this same nightmare together. Except now the students were cadavers, a pile of them laid out at Emory’s feet. Rotting lunar flowers grew from their empty eye sockets and between their blue-tinged lips. And then there was Romie, turning white as a sheet and withered as a leaf as all the blood left her veins. Beside her, a girl Kai didn’t know, her bones breaking at gruesome angles until she was a heap of nothing on the floor, and a boy who clutched at his heart and fell to his knees as the light left his eyes.
“See?” Emory said, watching as everyone around her turned to dust. “They’ll all die because of me. I’m cursed.” She made a strangled sound, a feverish look in her eye. “Maybe I’m Shadow-cursed.”
“Shadow-cursed?” Kai echoed. “Emory, did you Collapse?”
“Kai…”
He spun at Luce’s voice to see a horde of umbrae had found their way in—and one of them had its claws around Luce’s throat.
Looking to take the Dreamer’s soul.
“No!” Kai reached for Luce, hoping he wasn’t too late as he absorbed the umbrae into him. “We need to wake up now.”
Luce clung to him weakly, face drawn, but she was still here, still herself. She glanced back at Emory, who stared at them wide-eyed, tears running down her cheeks. The umbrae steered clear of her, as if she were one of them.
“Wake up,” Kai growled.
And she must have, because suddenly he and Luce were back in the library—along with the darkness that Kai had brought back with him.
51EMORY
STARS FOLLOWED EMORY INTO WAKING. Above her, the desert sky was a tapestry of fiercely burning constellations, but its beauty did nothing to chase away the stain of the nightmare she’d emerged from. The corpses. The lunar flowers. The keys becoming ash. The umbra sinking its claws into a Dreamer whose face was all too familiar and entirely impossible.
Enough of this. She needed to face this darkness inside of her—confront it at the root.
