The Shadow’s eyes bore into her. Then he stuck out his hand, chains clinking together with the restricted movement. Emory hesitated for a breath before she shook it. She stifled a gasp as the Shadow gripped her tighter and pulled her close to him. They stood a hairsbreadth apart. She couldn’t move, pinned as she was by his stare. For the first time she realized she wasn’t looking at a demon, or even Keiran. This wasthe Shadow, the first Eclipse-born, the one she owed all her power to. A god in his own right, and one who was believed across realms to be the bringer of evil.
“If you betray me,” he said, breath teasing her face, “I will not hesitate to kill your friends.”
Emory found it difficult to swallow, her mouth going dry at the solemnity of his threat. She was certain she would never have the upper hand here, but still she said, “And if you betray me, I’ll make sure you die in this corpse of a vessel.”
Slowly, the corner of the Shadow’s mouth lifted. “You make a fine adversary, Emory Ainsleif.” His thumb stroked the spiral on her wrist. “You’ll make an even finer ally, I’m sure.”
Emory pulled away from him, disgust roiling in her stomach. “We’re not allies.”
“What, then?”
She had no answer. Instead, she simply used Virgil’s trick with the Reaper magic and rusted off his chains and the metal band around his neck. “Let’s go.”
They made it out of the encampment without being seen thanks to Emory’s Lightkeeper magic. It felt bizarre to her, to use it on the very body that had come up with the invisibility trick to begin with. When they were far enough, Emory let go of the magic and waited for ghosts to appear and visions of flowers choking her to swarm her mind. But the darkness was kept at bay, as she suspected it would be in the Shadow’s presence.
“What are you doing?” he asked her as she suddenly stopped and sat down on a ridge.
“You’re going to start by telling me what you really want with me and the keys. No more veiled stories. The truth.”
“Fair enough.” He sat down across from her. “Where do you wish me to start?”
“How about why you were imprisoned in the sleepscape and the Tides were splintered into pieces.”
“The Tides,” he said, forcing the word out between his teeth, “is not her real name. That is only what your world knew her as: the four-faced deity consisting of Bruma, Anima, Aestas, Quies. Herrealname is Atheia.”
Atheia.The name seemed to echo on the wind, as if a part of her lingered in this world.
“And yours?” Emory asked.
He thought it over for a second, as if pulling the name from the deepest recesses of his memory—as if the time he’d spent imprisoned in the dark between stars had made him forget it.
“Your people did not always know me as the Shadow. They called me Phoebus, once. The bright one. Associated with the sunbecause I appeared to them on an eclipse. Both were apt names, if not entirely accurate. My real name means he who dwells among the stars.” When he finally spoke his name, it poured out of him like a prayer. “Sidraeus.”
Emory tried to ignore how right the name sounded, how everything in her grew calm upon hearing it. “And what happened to them, Sidraeus and Atheia?”
“To understand that, I have to start at the beginning.”
57BAZ
“ICAN’T BELIEVE YOU GOTmy sister involved,” Clover muttered.
“I can’t believeyouwere planning to leave me here alone while you go traipsing off into the Deep without so much as a goodbye,” Cordie snapped back.
Baz, Kai, and Luce exchanged a pointed look at the tension simmering between the two siblings. It was the middle of the night. They’d snuck into the Decrescens library, ready to face the perils of the wards. Clover, understandably, wasn’t happy about his sister joining them—about Baz telling her in the first place.
Baz didn’t regret it. And Cordie’s mind seemed made up. Fueled by her sorrow over Louka and her anger at her brother, there was no convincing her to stay out of it now.
Thames was glaringly absent. They’d looked all over for him, knowing he’d want to be here. Polina’s earlier worry troubled Baz. They’d talked about delaying things until they found him, but with the games drawing to their end and other students gettingcloser to figuring out the wards, they had to act now.
“Are we sure about this?”
Baz’s question broke the resounding quiet. The five of them stood before the archway to the Vault, staring at the silver door. If they’d gotten it wrong, Clover would be exsanguinated by the wards—unless Baz stopped it in time, as he’d done for the Trevelyan student. The Tidecaller seemed unfazed as he said, “As sure as we’ll ever be.”
They all stepped back to give Clover space to perform what would be a complex sequence of magic that had to be done in the exact order of the founders’ deaths. And so it started with Hilda Dunhall, founder of the Noviluna library.
Clover closed his eyes to call upon Hilda’s Shadowguide magic. “Spirits of the four founders,” he said, “with the dark of a new moon at my fingertips and the power of Shadowguides in my blood, I call on you from beyond the veil.”
His voice had the cadence of an entrancing performer, brimming with gravitas. He looked like a supplicant at the altar of a great god. Yet nothing happened.
