Emory’s first thought was that it was an umbra. It didn’t seem to have a material body, though it was still humanoid in shape. She and Romie stumbled back as it stepped out of the darkness. Itwasn’tan umbra, but it wasn’t entirely human, either. It was made up of swirling clouds of shimmering dust, interspersed with the rotten roots of a tree and rivulets of water and dying embers and the faint crackling of energy, like an electric storm brewing in a darkened sky.
The creature stepped into the cave and seemed to tip its head tothe side to study them. Then it shook itself a bit, and the strange magical clouds around it began to dissipate, revealing a young man in a suit of emerald velvet. His face was still handsome despite the black veins that appeared stark against his neck and at his temples. The veins flashed silver and gold every now and then, as if the blood running through them held some odd power, like that of a Collapsing Eclipse-born, but twisted, corrupt. The young man’s blond hair was perfectly coiffed, and though his eyes appeared sunken on his pale, sallow face, they glimmered with life, a shade of turquoise so bright that Emory couldn’t decide if they were beautiful or haunting.
Romie swore under her breath, staring at the man with wide-eyed recognition. “That’s Cornus Clover,” she said.
66BAZ
THE VAULT WAS INDEFINITELY SHUTdown until it could be rebuilt. The wards, it seemed, were forever broken. This came as no surprise for Baz, given the intensity of Thames’s Collapsing and the fact that, two hundred years from now, those wards did not exist. The Vault he knew didn’t have such deadly defenses.
Maybe this would serve to open Aldryn College’s eyes to the dangers of keeping such knowledge locked away, accessible only to those who they deemed the best and brightest. Power had the ability to corrupt anyone and everyone, Baz thought bitterly.
Clover was proof enough of that.
It was a few days since the incident now. Foreign students were starting to leave the college, and by tomorrow Baz would be expected to leave too, having been cleared of any involvement in the Vault’s blast. Except he had nowhere to go.
The Hourglass had rejected him. He’d even gone back and tried to open it again, but it was as if the threads of time around theHourglass were eluding him on purpose. Somewhere beyond it, Kai was in the company of a killer, and Baz could not give him so much as a warning.
With nowhere else to go, he’d asked Cordie to arrange travel to Harebell Cove for him, where he might be able to get the time rift Luce had come through to open. He could find his way back to his time. Professor Selandyn, Jae, his father, the Eclipse-born—they still needed him, after all.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave on the off chance Kai returned.
Baz went to knock on the door to Cordie’s art studio and found it was already open. He pushed his way inside. “Hello?”
“Good, you’re here,” Cordie said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. All her artwork had been packed up.
Baz scrunched up his brow. “Are you leaving?”
She hugged herself. “I have to get away from this place. Start fresh. Away from…”
Away from the stain her brother had left behind.
The school had asked questions about Clover’s sudden disappearance, which Cordie had explained as an unexpected trip to some distant relative having taken ill. Baz supposed it made sense for her to leave before anyone unraveled that lie.
“My brother was my whole world,” she said now. “I would have nothing without him, and he would be no one without me. He wouldn’t—he wouldn’t have done the things he did if it weren’t for me.” She scowled. “Do you know how toxic that is? Hemurderedpeople and told himself it was to save me. But I don’t need saving. I never have. I just want to lead the life I want, free of the burden of his suffocating love.”
“Will you be all right on your own?”
“I have my art and my wits and the Clover fortune to tide me over in Trevel. But I think it’s time I shed that name, leave it to diehere in the rubble of Cornelius’s mess. I’ll take Louka’s name.” She stroked her stomach absentmindedly, her face lighting up at the thought. “Cordie Kazan has a nice ring to it, no?”
Kazan.
Of course. The name was a puzzle piece that finally painted a full picture. The Kazans—Adriana, Alya, Vera, even Emory—they didn’t get their Clover blood from Cornus at all. Their line originated withCordie.
“There’s something I wanted to pick your brain about,” Cordie said, fishing something out of a box full of sketchbooks and paintbrushes. It was Clover’s journal. “I found it in Cornelius’s room. It used to be warded to reveal its contents to his eyes only—he was so paranoid about everything—but look, see?”
She flipped through it to reveal pages full of words and sketches, and for a moment Baz thought it might be the future version of Clover’s journal thathehad. But a quick pat on his person revealed that journal to be in his pocket.
He frowned. “Would the wards have lifted when Clover left?”
“I imagine so. But here, this is what I wanted to show you.”
She flipped to a page that Baz remembered poring over, early passages ofSong of the Drowned Godsthat painted character portraits of the witch, the warrior, the guardian, and their respective worlds.
Cordie looked at Baz oddly. “I told you how my magic works. How it lets me see glimpses of people’s past, things that have emotional resonance and significance. They’re most often the faintest impressions, but these drawings… I’ve seen them so clearly before. In your mind.” She unveiled drawings she’d made of the characters, and Baz realized they were the original illustrations that were included in the first edition of Clover’s work.
“These are the worlds he’s going through, yes?” Cordie asked. “So why am I seeing them in your past?”
Baz explained everything to her—that Clover was supposed to pen a famous book, that these were the images Baz had grown up poring over. Cordie handed him the drawings once he was done.
