They found a quiet corner of the illusioned gardens to sit in, making sure neither Polina nor Thames was around before they finally spoke.
“We just met Cornus Clover,” Baz said. “The scholar on the shores himself.”
“Do you think he’s started writing it yet?” Kai asked, equally awed.
“I don’t know.” He’d been wondering the same thing. Clover was meant to have writtenSong of the Drowned Godsduring his time at Aldryn College, so surely he must have started if he was in his last year of undergrad.
Baz took out Clover’s journal, completely ruined and illegible after Dovermere spat him in the Aldersea with it in his pocket. The epilogue tucked into its pages was equally spoiled. Baz knew he could save both journal and epilogue, turn back time to before they were waterlogged, but he hadn’t dared use his magic yet.
“Just try it,” Kai said, as if reading his mind. “If we’re pulled through time again, at least we can say we met Cornus Tides-damned Clover in the flesh.”
“I don’t know…”
But Baz had to admit his earlier trepidation felt unwarranted. If they were stuck here, he’d likely have to rely on his magic at some point. And there was no safer place to test it out than Obscura Hall.
He pulled on the threads of time, bracing for the worst. But time was as it always was here, nothing like the complicated tapestry he’d encountered in the sleepscape. In a blink, the pages in his hand became legible again.
Still, the journal’s cryptic pages sparked no answers about the situation they were in. Not a clue on how to get back to their time nor how to access other worlds.
But if what Alya and Vera believed was true—that Clover had actually lived through the events of his own book, the scholar in the story—then perhaps Clover could lead them to a door, since the one they knew of did not yet exist. Maybe his being a Tidecaller meant he would somehowcreatethe door they so very much needed to get home. Maybe the door didn’t exist before he first opened it—and if that was the case, they needed to be there when he did.
Baz’s plan to find out more information about Timespinner magic seemed somewhat pointless now. What they needed was to find out more aboutClover. It felt too serendipitous a thing for them to have traveled to this time specifically, as if fate wanted them to come face-to-face with the man who started it all.
Clover was the answer.
29EMORY
EMORY AND VIRGIL DUCKED OUTof the way with seconds to spare, sharp talons just barely missing them. They scurried behind a spindly bush as shrieks and shouts assailed their ears, both human and otherwise.
They were under attack.
The sky was blotted out by what looked like giant ravens with feathers so black they appeared blue, beaks and talons that could rip them apart in a second, and big eyes that were entirely too alert and intelligent. But while the top half of their bodies was ravenlike, the tail end resembled that of a snake, feathers giving way to gleaming black and blue scales, the point of the tail scored with viciously sharp, slightly hooked spikes.
One such tail arced downward through the air above Emory. She barely avoided getting impaled, the tail landing between her and Virgil and making dust cloud up between them. Their wide eyes landed on each other for a fraction of a second before the beast lunged for them again, great wings flapping to keep it hoveringabove them. Its tail came down once more, but this time Emory had the good sense to call on her magic, an easy thing to do with the ley line crackling beneath her.
Whips of light and shadow and spindly vines extended from her hands, lashing at the beast’s tail as it tried to fly higher. The threads curled around the tail, and shepulled, forcing the beast toward the ground. It shrieked in frustration, beating its wings harder to get free.
Angry now, it lunged right at Emory.
“Look out!” Virgil shouted.
Emory fell back, her magic sputtering uselessly as the beast’s beak came for her neck.
Keiran-not-Keiran’s words rang in her ears. She was going to die here.
But the beak stopped inches from her face. There was a squelching sound and a spray of bluish-black blood as a blade pierced through the monster’s head, right between the eyes.
The beast fell limply at Emory’s feet. In its place stood a woman in golden armor pulling an actualswordout of the beast.
Awarrior. Just like in Clover’s story.
Others similarly armed fought the remaining beasts, golden armor and golden swords and golden wings glinting in the sun.
Emory thought surely she must be imagining things, but as the woman who’d saved her shot into the sky after one of the beasts, there was no denying what she was seeing. The warriors hadwings. Great wings like that of a mythical dragon, nearly as big as the ravenlike creatures’. They sprouted from their backs, accommodated by holes in their armor. The muscles and tendons and veins seemed made of the same solid gold as their armor, but the membrane was ethereal, shining like spun sunlight.
Emory watched in awe as the woman circled one of the beasts in the sky, a dance of black feathers and golden armor, talons andswords. The woman’s eyes flashed golden like they were the sun itself as she plunged her blade through the beast’s open beak, then sliced its head clean off, baring her teeth in a feral snarl that made her seem more beast than human herself.
A shriek pulled Emory’s attention away from the slain raven beast plummeting toward the ground, just as Nisha was pulled into the sky by another one of the monsters.
