Romie gave Aspen a pointed look. “You’re apparently not allowed to talk to us, either, yet here you are.”
Something like amusement danced in Aspen’s eyes, though her statuesque features remained unruffled. Emory and Romie had overheard Mrs. Amberyl telling Aspen to keep her distance whenthey’d first gotten here. In fact, they were pretty sure Mrs. Amberyl had given the same directive to every single witch in the vicinity, which would explain why everyone gave Emory and Romie such a wide berth.
Once, when a young witch came to Amberyl House complaining of a sickness, Emory had offered to help with her healing magic—because here, in this foreign world, she’d gone back to pretending she was only a Healer, which seemed safer than admitting she was a Tidecaller. But the witch had vehemently opposed her using any kind of magic on or around him, treating her as if she had the plague.
The witch community as a whole was clearly wary of Emory and Romie, even though they’d generously offered them shelter. But Aspen seemed drawn to the two girls all the same, always finding excuses to bump into them despite her mother’s wishes, clearly as curious about them as they were about her.
“What do you wish to know?” Aspen asked, giving in to that curiosity.
“For starters, what is it?”
“I should think it’s pretty self-explanatory. The ascension is when a witchling ascends into their power. Tonight, if the Sculptress wills it, our coven will gain a witch.”
The Sculptress, they’d learned, was the goddess the witches owed their magic to—much like the Tides in their own world.
“And if this Sculptress of yoursdoesn’twill it?”
Romie had taken the words right out of Emory’s mouth. The pause that followed was unsettling, to say the least. Something flashed in Aspen’s eyes that Emory thought looked familiar—grief, fear, chased away by a fierce denial of both, as if she didn’t want to evenconsiderwhat might happen if the witchling did not ascend.
Whatever it was must not be pleasant.
“Is the ascending witchling someone you know?” Emory asked.
Aspen blinked at her as if just realizing she was there. Probably not used to hearing Emory do the talking; that was typically reserved for Romie.
Such had been the way of things since they got here: Romie taking the lead, and Emory letting her. They’d gone back to the way things were before they’d been separated by a mythical door, and in some ways Emory didn’t mind. It meant things were normal between them, even after all this time, even in this strange new place. Romie wasback, and Emory wouldn’t trade that for anything. Even if it meant shrinking back to her old self, the Emory who’d let Romie take charge because Romie knew best.
Besides, Emory didn’t exactly trust herself to make the right decisions at the moment. Not after everything that had happened. Not after putting all her trust in Keiran, only for him to betray her—unmasking himself as someone willing to do anything to wake the Tides, including letting his friends die and Emory become a vessel for drowned gods.
Romie, she knew, would never have gotten played by Keiran.
Before Aspen could answer her question, a voice made them all jump. “You two. What are you doing here?”
Mrs. Amberyl was staring at Emory and Romie, looking displeased. She was an austere woman, from her manner of speaking down to her very appearance. Her words were as sharp and precise as her cheekbones, her quiet authority as depthless as her dark eyes. She commanded respect throughout her household, and though nothing about her felt particularly motherly—as far as Emory’s understanding of such a word went—the care and generosity she’d shown Emory and Romie since their arrival couldn’t be overstated.
“Speak,” Mrs. Amberyl pressed.
“They got turned around looking for tincture for Romie,” Aspen explained. “I told them they’d find it in the herbarium.”
Mrs. Amberyl looked between them with an air of suspicion. “Quite so.”
Emory noticed the way the woman’s gaze caught on her hand—more specifically, her right wrist. This wasn’t the first time Mrs. Amberyl peered at the spiral scar that marked Emory and Romie as being part of the Selenic Order, the secret society that Keiran had led. Both Mrs. Amberyl and Aspen shared a strange curiosity for it, though they’d never outright asked about it.
“Run along to the herbarium, then,” Mrs. Amberyl told them. “Mr. Ametrine is there; he can fetch you the tincture.”
As she and Romie retreated down the corridor, Emory could sense the two witches watching them quietly, no doubt waiting for them to be gone before Mrs. Amberyl tore into her daughter for fraternizing with the strangers.
A spark of inspiration struck her. With the Lightkeeper magic she’d been practicing in secret, Emory could refract light and render herself invisible—or as invisible as she could with how little time she’d had to perfect the skill. She’d gotten the idea from Keiran, a trick of the light that would allow her to fade against the backdrop of the corridor, hidden enough that she could tiptoe back around the corner and eavesdrop on the Amberyls.
Emory gripped Romie’s arm, pointed behind them, then tapped her ear, mouthing,Stay here. She almost expected Romie to argue, but Romie only gave a terse nod as she caught her meaning. Her eyes, though, were rife with worry—and something else Emory didn’t want to consider.
Using their magic in this world proved more taxing than it normally would, but not so much that they couldn’t do it. It was as if being in this strange place with a different moon altered the rules that governed their lunar magic. Romie could access her Dreamer abilities only through bloodletting, even under her ruling waning moon, and doing so always brought on a great fatigue.
Emory, on the other hand, could still access her Tidecaller abilities without bloodletting or having to rely on the current moon phase. And the kind of post-magic fatigue she experienced was notquitethe same. In fact, she wouldn’t describe it as fatigue at all but as a haunting. One she was fully prepared for now as she succumbed to her magic’s pull.
Doing so was easy—too easy.In her mind, she heard Baz warning her about the dangers of Eclipse magic.
“Control is crucial because our magic isn’t like the other lunar houses’,” he’d said to her what felt like forever ago. “It’s not exactly something you call on.Itcalls toyou, and you have to learn how to resist that pull while at the same time succumbing to it just enough that the pressure doesn’t become too much.”
