Baz cleared his throat, trying not to sound too desperate as he asked, “Could you try reaching Emory in the sleepscape again?”
A pause. A thousand emotions winking in and out of Kai’s eyes. Then: “I’ll try.”
Baz looked up at the night sky, reminded of the time he’d watched shooting stars with Emory in the greenhouse.
The memory conjured strange feelings in him now. He thought suddenly how much like a shooting star Emory was. Brilliant and awe-inspiring when it raced through his life, but momentary. A fleeting thing that could never truly be known in full. Even when they’d shared this massive secret between them—the knowledge of her being a Tidecaller and everything it entailed—it had never really felt to him like they were on the same team. She’d shared this one secret with him, sure, but how many more had she kept from him? How many half lies and veiled truths had she spoken, knowing his feelings for her would push him to believe whatever tapestry she weaved?
The stars above him were still. Baz preferred them this way. They were reliable in their stillness, just like the boy sitting beside him.
Baz studied Kai’s reflection in the moonlight. How different he was from Emory. Here in the uncertainty of their predicament, he felt like he and Kai were on the same page. That they were in this together, secrets and all. And he realized it had always been this way between them. Sure, Kai might have kept things from him, but it was always toprotecthim, whereas Emory had always had ulterior motives.
Kai caught his gaze and arched a brow. “What?”
“Nothing,” Baz whispered. When he looked up at the stars again, all he could see in them was the pattern of Kai’s eyes.
36ROMIE
ROMIE FOUND TOL IN DREAMS.
It was an easy thing to follow the vibration of that song, pulling her right to him. She knew instinctively that it was the key in him calling to her soul. Why she felt that connection to him, to Aspen, and yet not to Emory, was beyond her, and not something she wanted to ponder here in the sleepscape.
Tol’s dream was warmth and sunlight, the feeling of hugging someone you love. He was sitting around a large meal with people Romie assumed were his family. A mother, a father, three sisters. There was laughter and love so deep it made her miss her own family with a sudden excruciating pang.
Tol turned to Romie. She recognized him as the young man she’d seen when she’d found Aspen scrying in the sleepscape. His face was like the golden glow of dawn on those sandstone formations they had traveled through, and the eyes that met hers were a striking shade of topaz. Where before he’d had shoulder-length, dark hair, his head was shorn now, as she imagined all prisoners’ must be.
And the muscles on him—he truly looked the part of the warrior, a weapon forged by this fiery world.
“Anatolius?”
Something flared in his molten eyes. “No one but the draconic masters calls me that.”
“Tol, then?” Romie took a tentative step toward him, not wanting the dream to get away from them. “I’m Romie. I’m a friend of Aspen’s. She sent me here to give you a message.”
He frowned. “Aspen?”
Right—Aspen could see throughhiseyes, but he wouldn’t have felt her presence in his mind. He wouldn’t know her name.
“A friend of Caius’s.”
“Caius,” Tol repeated with recognition.
“We need you to hang on, all right? We’re getting you out of there.”
Confusion grew thick around him. “I don’t understand.” The dream shifted in a way that told Romie this was too much for him, that reality was seeping in again and he would soon be pulled out of sleep.
As the dream began to dissolve, the only words Romie could think of were those ofSong of the Drowned Gods. “Patience,” she called out to him. “Take heart.”
And then she was in a different dream, in a mind she would recognize anywhere.
Emory’s dream was more of a memory: three kids running barefoot through fields of gold, laughing their way to the shore, dancing with a flock of gulls. Romie watched as the younger version of herself pulled a young Emory up from where she sat with Baz, and the two of them ran into the water, laughing and shrieking as waves crashed around them.
There was nothing sad about the memory. But Romie was hit with a sense of melancholy so poignant she wanted to cry. She metEmory’s eyes—the real Emory suddenly standing next to her, not the dream one—to see them wet with unshed tears.
“Do you think we can get back to that?” Romie asked.
Emory didn’t reply, only rested her head on Romie’s shoulder. In silence, they watched the dream together, letting the gulls carry their burdens for a time.
Suddenly Emory lifted her head, brows knit together in confusion as she peered at something in the distance. “Is that…?”
