It was Cordie.
“I’m sorry,” Clover was saying, rocking his dead sister gently back and forth. “I’m so sorry.”
Kai understood that he was in Clover’s nightmare. His worst fear laid bare: to lose his sister.
Thames watched the scene with heartbreaking empathy. The Fear Eater rested a hand on Clover’s shoulder, murmuring something Kai didn’t hear. Clover broke down in Thames’s arms as the darkness of the nightmare slowly ebbed into Thames.
It reminded Kai of all the timeshehad gone into Baz’s nightmares, sitting quietly with him as the printing press fell to ruins around them. Absorbing that darkness for him.
And suddenly someone else was by Thames and Clover’s side. At first Kai thought it was Cordie, revived—but this girl’s blond hair was a shade different, her eyes darker, and with a pang Kai realized it wasn’t Cordie at all butEmory.
A million questions surged to his lips as faint silver threads appeared between Clover and Thames and Emory. As if the stars themselves had drawn pathways between their souls.
Kai blinked, certain he was seeing things. He must have moved toward them, because Clover’s attention snapped to him with sudden awareness. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.
The nightmare trembled around them. Darkness pressed in. The body that Clover leaned over was no longer his sister’s but a mound of faceless corpses that deteriorated before their eyes. Clover clawed at his face as he, too, started succumbing to whatever dreadful affliction this was, his flesh tearing away from his body like ash billowing on a putrid breeze and dissolving into the growing darkness around them.
An unnatural, ravenous darkness that grew into elongated limbs and sharp claws.
The umbrae were here, ruthless with a hunger unlike Kai had ever seen from them. Emory disappeared, blinking out of the nightmare like a star. Thames braced against the umbrae, absorbingtheir darkness as much as he could while yelling at Clover towake up, that none of this wasreal.
Clover’s veins rippled silver, and though Kai knew this was only a nightmare, he didn’t trust what a Tidecaller’s imagined Collapsing might do in a place like this. Clover wasn’t waking up, and more umbrae were swarming in, too many for one person to fend off.
Kai didn’t think twice as he rushed toward the umbrae. Their attention shifted to him. They flocked to him instantly, yet Kai did nothing, waiting for them to get closer…
“What are you doing?” Thames yelled at him.
“Getting them away from you.”
With the umbrae pressed tight around him, Kai pulled them with him into waking.
He opened his eyes to a dark room that grew darker still with the appearance of the umbrae. Kai struggled against them, willing them to disintegrate as all nightmaresshouldwhen pulled into reality, but they did no such thing. This was not the time for his Collapsed magic to be stubborn.
“Sleep,” he said, throwing the full force of his magic into that one word, like he had back in Dovermere right after Baz had taken the Unhallowed Seal off his hand. The umbrae at last seeped away into the dark, just as Kai’s door burst open, revealing a panting Thames. Wide-eyed, Thames watched the umbrae disappear.
In the silence that followed, they stared at each other.
“How in the Shadow’s name did you do that?” Thames asked.
Kai tried for an unbothered shrug. “I… have a hard time controlling what I bring out of the sleepscape sometimes.”
If Thames suspected Kai was Collapsed, he didn’t say anything except, “I’ve never seen that kind of power before.”
“I’d gladly trade you for it.” Kai smirked. “These umbrae are a pain in my ass.”
“Are they always so ruthless in the nightmares you visit?”
“No. Are they inyours?”
“Never.”
A suspicion formed in Kai’s mind. The umbrae were attracted topower, to new magics especially. Whatever he’d seen between Clover, Thames, and Emory… those silver threads…
There was a bond there. Some kind of link between them. And with both Clover and Emory being Tidecallers, it didn’t surprise Kai that the umbrae would be so intrigued.
“Who was that girl with you?” he asked.
“Girl?” Thames echoed, raising a brow. “There was no girl.”
