“What do you want?” Sidraeus seethed.
Clover raised a brow. “The same thing you do: to bring Atheia back. Is that not how you’ll be able to regain your true form? The gods and their sense of humor, ensuring balance would always be kept.”
Emory frowned, trying to make sense of Clover’s words. “What is he talking about?”
Sidraeus avoided her eye.
Clover looked between the two of them. “He didn’t tell you? The only way Sidraeus can regain his true form is if the pieces of Atheia are brought back together again. Of course, the gods failed to imagine the doors would ever be reopened, so they never thought you would get this close to being truly freed from your prison in the sleeping realm.”
“How do you know all this?” Sidraeus asked.
“I’ve been in a cage of my own for these past centuries. But the godsworld proved fruitful at least. An opportunity to gain both knowledge and power through the fountain of divine magic that flows there. Well,flowed.”
Replenish the fountain, he’d said. Meaning it had dried up. All its magic depleted.
Emory’s thoughts raced as she watched the power rippling from Clover in odd bursts and clouds. Power, she realized, that echoed each of the living realms.
Power he might have drawn from the keys and kept for himself.
Emory took a step backward. “You’re the one at the root of all this sickness spreading through worlds, aren’t you? The reason the ley lines are corrupted. Because you took all the magic from the fountain and corrupted it for the rest of us.”
Clover squared his shoulders. “I did what Sidraeus and Atheiafailed to do. I took power from the gods and made myself into divinity.”
It hadn’t made sense to her, why the rot would have set in so quickly when she opened the doors, if these same doors had been previously opened by Clover in the past. The doors being sealed by the gods might have limited magic, made it slowly die, but that didn’t explain why the ley lines felt corrupt. Though if Clover had tainted it somehow… if whatever meager power trickled from the fountain was not divine but monstrous…
“That power was never yours to take,” Sidraeus growled.
“You’re right. I suppose it was yours first, wasn’t it? And you would have oh so generously shared this power with mortals, or so you claim.”
“I wouldn’t have stolen it all for myself like you did.”
Clover dipped his chin in what looked like remorse. “I can admit I made a mistake there. That’s why the power of the gods is festering in my body. Why I need to replenish the fountain. I was foolish when I first traveled through worlds and didn’t know how to control myself on the ley line. I took and took every last drop of power from the keys, unable to stop. Constantly craving more.” He eyed Emory. “You’re a Tidecaller. You’ve felt it, haven’t you, this unquenchable thirst inside you, the constant pull of Atheia’s power?”
Emory stared at him, horrified. Was this what would have become of her if she’d kept hurting her friends by gorging herself on their magic?
“With the power of Atheia that I imbibed and the magic of Sidraeus coursing through my blood,” Clover continued, “I tapped into the fountain itself, using up all of the power of the gods until there was nothing left.”
That must be why he’d been able to tap into the fountain without burning out completely like Sidraeus’s Tidecallers had: if he’d leeched the magic from the original keys he’d traveled with, thenhe’d had both the power of life and death inside him. Just like Emory did earlier when she blew the door open. Power to rival gods.
“Butwhy?” Romie asked. “What do you want with that kind of power?”
Clover seemed to think about it. “You know, it started off as wanting to help my fellow Eclipse-born. To create more Tidecallers, so that everyone could know the kind of limitless power that we have access to. I believed the only way to do that was to bring back the Tides and the Shadow. To combine the magic of death and nightmares with that of creation and dreams. But as I crossed through worlds, I discovered they were both to blame for the closure of doors. That they’d been willing to sacrifice the Tidecallers to the gods. Why would I bring back deities who could just as well decide I was not worth it? Instead, I decided to take power for myself. To take away the gods’ power for what they did to the Tidecallers. I thought I could do a better job at ruling the worlds and keeping our kind safe than the gods ever did.
“But that kind of power… I’ve realized I am not limitless, as much as I would like to be. Neither are the gods, clearly, if their fountain can be so easily diminished. But Sidraeus and Atheia? Why do you think the gods kept them apart, confining one to the realm of the dead and the other to the realms of the living? They knew that together they had power to rival their own.” Clover’s gaze darkened. “And with it, I can finally make myself into a true god and ensure that this sickness that runs through the worlds is cured and never happens again.”
“If you think I’m going to let you use me to make yourself into a god,” Sidraeus said, “you’ve got me all wrong.”
Clover smiled indulgently at him, motioning to his neck. “I don’t believe you’re in a position to stop me.”
The magic damper around his neck.
Sidraeus met Emory’s gaze just as the idea formed in her mind. She drew on her Reaper magic and rusted the metal right off as she’d done before.
Sidraeus wasted no time. He lunged at Clover, more beast than man, and so lethally quick that Clover didn’t stand a chance against such a force.
But then, Clover was not exactly a man himself.
Before Sidraeus could reach him, Clover disappeared behind his strangely swirling clouds again. He clasped his hands together, and a great blast of power—lightning and water and fire and roots combined—hit Sidraeus with such a force, it sounded like an earsplitting, earth-shattering thunderclap.
