“I know.” Baz scratched the back of his head in thought. “We’ll need to be mindful of our actions too. Surely there are rules, ways that our being here might affect the fabric of time. What if we trigger something that changes the future—our present?”
Kai’s mind hurt just thinking about it. “One thing at a time. First, let’s get out of here before the tide traps us in. The rest we’ll figure out together.”
Kai was in the printing press again.
The nightmarish scene was as it always was: it was the printing press one minute, then Dovermere, then the sleepscape. Machinery and rubble. Crumbling stone and crushing waves. Darkness and stars that reached for the one person Kai could not bear to be parted from.
Again the scenes bled into one another. Again Kai called out to Baz, and when Baz twisted toward him, he braced himself to see his friend transform into that towering umbra crowned in obsidian. Braced for the creature he had glimpsed in the sleepscape to speak in that tongue again, beckoning Kai to open the door.
But none of that happened. Baz only stared at him—not the real Baz, but an imagined one plucked from Kai’s own nightmares—his features unchanged. There was no crowned umbra, making Kai wonder if it had left the sleepscape entirely. He hadseenit go into Keiran’s revived body. Maybe that meant it would no longer plague Kai’s nightmares.
What happened next was worse than the umbra:
On Baz’s neck appeared deep bruises, imprints of Kai’s fingers. Behind his glasses, his brown eyes pinned Kai with accusation.
“I wish you were the one to have disappeared,” the nightmare Baz spat, “instead of her.”
Her. Romie, Emory, it didn’t matter who he meant. It was all the same in the end.
Kai moved backward out of the prison of his own fears, scrambling to jump into another nightmare, any nightmare, just not his own.
A different sort of darkness called to him. He stepped into a nightmare that felt inexplicably safe, if nightmares could be called that at all. He felt the same tug as when he’d glimpsed Emory before, as if a glittering ribbon of stars had been pulling him to her.
Someone was there, but it wasn’t Emory. It was a young man, a boy around his age, though Kai couldn’t see his face as he leaned over a body lying in a pool of blood, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.
“Hello?” Kai asked, his voice sounding distorted in his ears.
The boy did not seem to hear him. But another appeared from behind the first. He had fair skin and a wiry frame, with floppy chestnut curls. He stepped in front of the crying boy and looked straight at Kai from behind thick, half-moon glasses.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
There was a shove, hands pushing him out—
Kai awoke with a gasp.
There was no confusion this time. He knew he was awake, knew the young man who’d pushed him out of the nightmare was real, because herecognizedhim. Not his face, but his magic. The way Dreamers could recognize each other in the sleepscape, acting like beacons to one another.
Except this had been no Dreamer.
It was another Nightmare Weaver.
25ROMIE
WHERE THE WYCHWOOD HAD BEENdamp forests and rotting earth, the Wastes were dry and barren. This came as no surprise to Romie, who by now had memorized most ofSong of the Drowned Godsin a way that would make her brother proud.
This world is a forge. Brutal and scorching and full of finely crafted things.
And brutal it was, by the looks of it—though nowhere near as scorching as Romie would have thought. Perhaps the chill that ran through her was only from the residual effects of whatever Emory had done to her back on the ley line. But her strength had returned enough now that she could draw herself to her feet and marvel at the world around her.
They were in a strange red-hued desert full of eroded, domed cliffs and rugged mountains as far as the eye could see. All around them sprouted giant cacti and odd trees with twisted, bristled branches. The winged beasts that had momentarily blotted outthe sun were gone, and so too was the monster who’d worn Keiran’s face. Still, Romie was left with the eerie impression of being watched.
This place was too open, too wide. And if it was anything like Clover’s book, they could expect more beasts where those came from.
Romie swept a gaze over the others, still catching their breath. Nisha was right beside her. Their eyes locked.
“Are you real?” Romie asked, scared to know the answer. Scared that she might still be under the torture of the umbrae.
Nisha cupped Romie’s cheek, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “I’m real.”
