“You can’t be serious,” Virgil said. “Nothingis worth dying for.”
“I won’t have to stay dead.” Tol’s eyes flashed to Emory. “Right?”
Emory shook her head. “This isn’t something I can heal you from like I did Aspen. You can’t survive this.”
Romie looked at Keiran. The Shadow. This dark god wearing the body of a corpse.
A corpse that had been revived.
“What if someone had the power to bring him back?” Romie said.
Emory caught on to her meaning. “I’m not usingReanimatormagic on him. I can barely use other Eclipse magics as it is, and this one… we don’t know how much of Keiran actually came back ashim, before Sidraeus took over.”
Sidraeus. Atheia. That was what Emory had called the Tides and the Shadow when she visited Romie in dreams the other day.
Romie couldn’t help but see the clear divide between them now. Emory, a product of Sidraeus. Herself, a creation of Atheia.
I’m on your side, Ro. That’s never going to change.
Except they weren’t on the same side, were they? They were friends, allies, but opposites by fate’s design. She wanted to believe they could defy these roles destiny had laid out for them, that their friendship could survive it. But it was hard to do with Atheia’s warning still in her mind.
Such thieves could not be trusted.
“So, what, we just give up?” Romie snapped, angry at this wavering conviction inside her. “We didn’t make it this far to turn back now, not with us so close to reaching Atheia.” She looked between Aspen and Tol. “Right?”
Aspen swallowed, looking uncertain. “There has to be another way,” she whispered. “One that doesn’t require Tol’s sacrifice.”
“Thereisanother way,” Emory said, her eyes locked on Sidraeus. “Blasting the door wide open.”
65EMORY
EMORY COULDN’T TELL BY THElook in Sidraeus’s eyes if he was pleased or not that she was willing to do what they’d set out to do in the first place.
She didn’t care. She wasn’t doing this for him.
They couldn’t open this world’s door if it meant Tol had to give up his heart. This wouldn’t be like Aspen’s rib bone—the second they took his heart out, he would die. Emory couldn’t heal what was already dead. And she wasn’t playing around with reanimation magic.
What she could do was break down the door so that Tol’s sacrifice wouldn’t be needed. If she was the only one able to fit keys into locks, she would instead kick this door right off its hinges.
And then she would march up to the sea of ash and confront the gods herself if she had to.
There had to be another way to heal this corruption seeping through the worlds. Emory thought of what Sidraeus had said about the gods having the power to destroy the universe and startover again. That kind of power… she was beginning to see why Sidraeus and Atheia had wanted things to change. Why they’d felt compelled to wrest the gods’ power away from them and share it with the mortals instead.
If the gods had such control over their fates, surely they could save the worlds without them having to sacrifice any of the keys. The gods had wanted Atheia imprisoned, hadn’t they? As punishment for her part in the skewed balance between worlds. And she had evaded such punishment by splintering herself into parts.
Well, maybe they could plead with the gods to heal the worlds if they could guarantee the pieces of Atheia were never put back together—and maybe they’d hand Sidraeus over too. No more messengers. Balance restored.
“And how exactly are you going to blast the door open?” Romie asked.
Emory could see the wheels turning in her mind, the careful hope in her eyes, the wariness that remained all the same. Romie had to know this was their best shot, but she also knew that kind of magic would require power—power Emory would undoubtedly take from the keys.
“We have to try,” Emory said. “I understand the ley line better now. I can—I’ll try to avoid your power as best I can.”
Romie’s mouth thinned as she considered.
Aspen pleaded with her. “Dying isn’t a guarantee for any of us if Emory does this. It is for Tol if he gives up his heart.”
At last Romie relented, but her reluctance was clear.
