Henry opened the door wider, and as Baz stepped in from the cold, his eyes fell on Theodore and Anise Brysden. His parents both paused in setting the small kitchen table. There was a happy yelp, a clang of silverware, and then Baz was being smothered in a big hug and a familiar scent.
“Hi, Mom,” he breathed into Anise’s hair, his heart soaring to see her so full of life.
“Oh, I’m so glad you made it,” she said, squeezing him tight before holding him at arm’s length, her big eyes—so much like Romie’s—taking him in. “Was there any trouble? Are you well?”
“I’m fine, Mom.” He smiled to see Theodore and Jae clasping each other affectionately on the shoulder. “All thanks to Jae.”
Jae made a nonchalant motion before Anise smothered them with a kiss on the cheek, thanking them profusely. Baz’s father took the opportunity to wrap his son in a hug that rivaled Anise’s, and Baz closed his eyes, savoring the moment, still in disbelief that his father was here. A wanted man, but free of the hellhole that was the Institute, at least.
Baz looked into his father’s smiling face and noticed all the ways it had changed since he last saw him, after the horrors ofyears spent at the Institute had all but hollowed him out. Life had returned to Theodore’s eyes, and he no longer looked frail and broken, but healthy and whole. The Unhallowed Seal on his hand had been taken off, thanks to Baz’s magic, because even though Theodore had never actually Collapsed, he’d still had his magic put to sleep by the Regulators. All because of Baz, whom Theodore had wanted to protect.
Baz, who’d been the one to Collapse that day in his father’s printing press, the blast of his unbridled power killing three people in the process.
A familiar guilt reared its ugly head up inside him. And though there was no blame in Theodore’s eyes, Baz felt an aching pressure to apologize, a desperate need to make things right between them. To make up for all those years Theodore had suffered in his place. He opened his mouth, willing the words to come. They wouldn’t.
A voice like midnight, one he would recognize anywhere, came to his rescue.
“?’Bout time you showed up.”
Kai hovered on the last step of a steep, narrow staircase, dark eyes fixed on Baz. His mouth was turned up as if they were sharing a private joke, and the whole world seemed to disappear around them, taking all of Baz’s worries with it.
“Hi,” Baz breathed, feeling silly for not having a better reply. He was distantly aware of the others busying themselves in the kitchen, but his focus remained on Kai—on the casual way he flitted toward him, hair still damp from the shower he had clearly just taken. On the faint smell of pine that followed him, and the way his eyes sparked with unguarded joy, a slip of that sharp stoicism he usually wore like armor.
For a split second, Baz didn’t know how to react. Were they supposed to shake hands? Hug? Kai saved him the mortification of having to decide: he gave Baz a playful nudge on the shoulder, likeit was the most normal thing in the world, completely oblivious to the strange fluttering in Baz’s stomach that this small touch elicited.
“Welcome home, Brysden.”
And Baz realized hewashome, in all the ways that mattered.
2EMORY
EMORY NEVER BELIEVED IN FAIRYtales until she found herself living in one.
Amberyl House could have been pulled out of a storybook. Every time Emory thought she’d seen the entirety of the witches’ sprawling estate, she discovered some new curio to puzzle over. Sculpted marble busts and vases adorned with strange beasts and collections of gemstones the likes of which she had never seen before. Lifelike statues of armored knights and fair maidens that made her wonder at the hands that had carved them. Glass jars filled with peculiar-shaped mushrooms and even odder-looking bones, all of which Emory was forbidden to touch because of whatever mystical properties they held.
There was the sunlit room on the first floor where dried herbs and plants and flowers hung in carefully tied bunches from the rafters on the ceiling, left there to dry until they were ready to be crushed up with mortar and pestle and used for purposes unknown. There was the lilac-painted room on the second floorthat felt colder than even the cellar, empty save for a massive clump of amethyst atop a marble altar, and the outside gardens full of fountains and parterres and shady nooks hidden among the hedges.
Even the massive library next to the herbarium was a marvel, containing titles in languages Emory didn’t know, in alphabets she’d never seen. Other titles were written in her own tongue. Some of them she vaguely recognized, certain she’d read them before. She wasn’t a big enough bookworm to tell if the author names were the same as those half-remembered stories. If Baz were here, he would know. She had perused a few of the books to keep herself busy, but whatever sense of déjà vu she’d had vanished as she read, the stories wholly unfamiliar to her.
It was difficult to grasp what was real and what was not. Was she trapped in a dream? Was this the Deep, masquerading as a lush land full of green things and the kind of rich, earthy smells that filled your lungs and made you feel alive, all to detract from the fact that you were actually dead?
You’re alive, and this is the Wychwood, Emory reminded herself, for that was what the witches who had found her and Romie called it, and this was what she must believe. Even if the idea of being in one of the worlds Cornus Clover had written in his book made her want to laugh, or cry, or both all at once.
She felt trapped in this endless loop of questioning her very reality. And Amberyl House, despite its beauty and the generosity of their hosts, was very much starting to feel like a prison.
Romie joked about them being like maidens locked away in a tower by some evil witch, awaiting their prince. Except no prince was coming to save them, and the witches who’d taken them in weren’t exactly evil—though they would not allow them to leave, either. Emory and Romie could wander the sprawling sunlit grounds of the estate but never go beyond its limits. Never intothe woods that grew at the edge of the gardens, dark and old and mysterious.
They had tried it once, meaning to return to the spot where they’d been found half-drowned in a ravine. But whatever magic lived here barred their way, a thicket of impenetrable vines growing across the garden gate that would have taken them into the woods proper.
“There are things happening in the woods that cannot be interfered with,” Mrs. Amberyl had told them when they’d brought it up. “Magic that could easily be disrupted by a stranger’s presence. Until the ascension, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here at the house.”
The ascension, Mrs. Amberyl had explained, was a ritual sacred to the witches, though she wouldn’t divulge the specifics of what it entailed. “It is a very private affair,” she’d said in that stern way of hers that left no room for debate. “But afterward, I assure you, you will be able to leave if you wish to.”
“We just want to go home,” Emory had said.
Except none of them knew how they might do so. Neither Emory nor Romie had any memory of how they got here. The last thing Emory remembered was pushing open the marble door in the sleepscape. One second, she was reaching for the knotted vines that formed the doorknob, and the next, she was lying in the mud, looking up at Mrs. Amberyl and her daughter Aspen.
In a daze, they’d searched their surroundings for any trace of a door. Remembering the water sloshing at her feet in the sleepscape, Emory had been convinced the waterfall might be their way back home. That perhaps the water flowing down the star-lined path of the sleepscape had spilled into this world, along with them. But whatever door they’d come through was gone, leaving them without a clue as to how they might return home.
