Baz felt the panic from earlier crawl over his skin again, his lungs constricting as he fought to remember how to breathe. “What in the Deep are we going to do?”
Kai met his gaze, the glow of flames from the fireplace dancing in his eyes. “We’ll figure it out, Brysden.”
The panic receded, as if the Nightmare Weaver were leeching away all his fears. That was what Kai’s presence did to Baz. What it had always done, he realized. A soothing balm, a confidence booster. Someone to keep him grounded.
“I’m glad we’re together, at least,” Baz offered.
“Me too.”
Kai looked unguarded, as if all the sharp edges he liked to arm himself with had suddenly been filed away. But the moment disappeared as Kai turned to the window, the cove beyond. “Let’s just hope we don’t get tangled in this mess any more than we already are.”
24KAI
AT LOW TIDE, THEY WENTout to face the caves once more, only to find that Dovermere, too, was different in this time.
Kai and Baz wove through the network of tunnels and caverns without incident, though with each step closer to the Hourglass, Kai grew more and more uncertain. He could tell Baz was unnerved too. He’d gone completely quiet, his breathing coming in shallow bursts as he no doubt assessed the risks of opening the door again.
Before they could even reach the Belly of the Beast, they found themselves stopped by a solid wall of rock.
“What the fuck?” Kai muttered.
Where the tunnel should have opened wider into the grotto that housed the Hourglass, it simply came to a dead end. He and Baz pushed and prodded at the wall with no luck. But if there was no Belly of the Beast…
“Maybe the Hourglass doesn’t exist yet?” Baz said, puzzled.
Kai’s mind raced with possibilities. None of them made sense. “We can’t have appeared here out of thin air. There has to be a door.”
“I don’t feel it,” Baz said, frowning at the wall.
“Feel what?”
“The magic of Dovermere. Of the door. It… it used to whisper to me. Like it recognized my own magic. Like they were one and the same.”
Kai realized he didn’t feel anything either. He heard no song. Felt no pull.
There wasnothing.
Baz swore, looking at Kai with wide eyes. “What if we’re truly stuck here?”
If there was no Belly of the Beast, there could be no Hourglass. No door to the Deep.
No way for them to return to their time.
Kai refused to believe it. “Can’t you just bring the door back?”
Baz gulped down on the fear he was clearly trying to keep leashed. In a quiet, broken voice, he said, “I don’t trust myself to try.”
“Brysden…”
“No, listen. I don’t know if I alone did this or if it’s Dovermere itself that brought us here. Either way, we don’t know what my magic might do. Even if I were to make the door reappear, I don’t know the first thing about how take us back to the present.”
Kai had to admit he was right. “So what do you suggest?”
“Maybe I can find answers here. Another Timespinner who might have studied time travel? I don’t know.”
Of course Baz’s answer to their problem would be Tides-damnedresearch.
“This isn’t a time we want to be stuck in, Brysden,” Kai cautioned, thinking of Wulfrid. The encounter still slithered unpleasantly along his spine—how much Wulfrid reminded him of Artem, and all the bullies like him. “We’ll need to be careful.”
