“It’s not all good, though,” Emory said, putting a damper on Romie’s excitement.
Kai raised a brow. “You’re traipsing around in Clover’s worlds. How bad can it be?”
The girls exchanged a look. It was Romie who answered: “Things here are a bit more dire than what Clover’s book portrays. The worlds are dying. We’re going to the sea of ash to heal them.”
Dying worlds—just like Professor Selandyn had read about in Clover’s journal.
“It gets worse.” Emory peered at the darkness. “Something escaped the sleepscape and tried to kill the key from the Wychwood.”
The crowned umbra who’d gone into Keiran’s reanimated corpse. Kai looked for it in the folds of darkness around them, but again couldn’t feel it anywhere.
What hedidfeel were the umbrae pressing in. Romie seemed to notice it too, this sense of foreboding that permeated the sleepscape. She swore, face blanching, no doubt at the thought of beingmade an eternal sleeper. “We need to wake up.” She squeezed Kai’s hand. “Tell my brother I miss him, okay?”
The Dreamer winked out like a star, and then Kai and Emory were alone in the dark.
Emory turned pleading eyes on him. “Don’t tell Baz about this.”
Kai wanted tostrangleher for suggesting such a thing. “I warned you I’d make your life a living nightmare if you fucked him over, do you remember that?” At least she had the decency to look ashamed. “Unlike you, I don’t spend my time hiding things from him and using him for my own gain.”
“This isn’t—look, you and I both know he’ll worry himself to death.”
“He’s stronger than you give him credit for.”
“You’re right. But—shit.”
The darkness was suffocating now. It became harder for Kai to hold on to the connection.
“Wake up,” he gritted out. “Now.”
“You’ll come back?” Emory asked, full of hope. “Whatever this is, we can—”
Kai opened his eyes. He pushed the bedcovers back, his first thought being of barging into Baz’s room to tell him what just happened.
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob as Emory’s words slid against the walls of his mind.
The games were starting tomorrow. Baz needed to stay sharp. Focused.
And maybe Emory was right. Maybe it was best Baz didn’t know, at least not until Kai could make sense of things.
You’re just protecting him, he told himself.He’ll understand.
Kai went back to bed, the sting of his own betrayal churning in his gut.
38BAZ
BAZ HADN’T QUITE REALIZED JUSThow far back in time he’d gone until confronted with the library classification system of the period. The cataloging of titles felt confusing and impractical; had it not been for Clover, he would never have found what they were looking for.
“A Brief and (Mostly) True Historie of Elegyan Hauntingsby Porpentious Stockenbach,” Baz read with a raised brow as Clover pulled the title off the shelf. “How are ghost stories supposed to help us with the wards?”
Clover looked just as dubious as he thumbed through the large book, which didn’t seem very brief at all. “Perhaps the next clue is in here?” He read from the table of contents. “?‘Life Beyond Death’… ‘Damnation, Purgatory, and the Eternal Soul’… Ah yes, surely ‘The Phantom Animals of Stonehaven Farms’ will help us solve this mystery.”
Baz grinned at Clover’s sarcastic tone. “Definitely.”
Each team had been given a single clue to start the scavengerhunt: the name Porpentious Stockenbach, which had led them to the Noviluna library after Clover determined that the late author had been a Shadowguide. From the looks of it, they were the first team to have solved it.
Baz peered over the wrought iron railing of the second-story gallery that overlooked the main floor of the library, where a few students studied quietly at the long tables. A chill ran through him. He’d never liked the foreboding gloom of the Noviluna library, with its austere black marble and dark-stained wood that mimicked the cold of a winter’s night. He liked it even less as he spotted Wulfrid and his teammate—a tall, burly boy from Fröns College, judging by his white frock and flowery badge—making their way up to the second level. The two boys who always followed Wulfrid around like helpless pups were not far behind, they too having signed up for the games.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones who figured it out,” Baz said in warning.
