Sensing her anger rising, Atheia tried to smooth it over withreason once more.The return of lunar magic will chase away the stain of the Eclipse,she said.Don’t you wish to see your friend, your brother, and your father saved from the Shadow’s taint? We will turn them all to the light.
And how will you do that exactly?Romie asked.By bleeding them all until they die? Look at her—you’re killing her.
Just think of all the lunar mages who will have magic because of her sacrifice. This is so much bigger than Emory. The world will be saved by the eradication of Eclipse magic, and it will be because of us—because ofyou,Romie. You’ll be like one of the heroes from those books, the white knight who saves the day, who casts away all the darkness.
This isn’t what I want.
Nor would it be what Aspen and Tol and Orfeyi would have wanted. This wasn’t the way to avenge them.
Romie took a lurching step through the pool toward Emory, the first step she’d taken as herself in a long time. But her movements were stilted as Atheia fought back for control. Romie raged at her inability to operate her own body and fought all the harder to get to Emory, who was slipping away, seconds from becoming unconscious. Would Atheia let her go under, let her drown here?
Romie wrested control the second Emory’s head went underwater. She pulled her friend up, desperation making her heart pound wildly. “Please, Em,” she cried. “Stay with me. Just hold on.”
Those stormy blue eyes opened to slits to look at her, and for a miraculous moment, it felt like they were just the two of them, those same girls they’d always been peeking through who they’d become.
“Ro,” Emory whispered.
“I’m here. I’m—”
Atheia flung Romie’s consciousness back, seizing control again. The deity sensed a slight unease running through the crowd now,but most of them were too preoccupied with the Selenics’ display of magic to care about the scene that had unfolded. Still, Atheia pulled Emory out of the fountain, holding her weakened body against hers.
“There now,” she cooed, brushing wet strands of hair from Emory’s face as she sent a healing wave to close her wound. “You’re all right.”
She couldn’t appear cruel to those watching, had to be the benevolent and just Tides they all wanted her to be. Atheia motioned to a pair of Regulators to grab Emory; one of them even wrapped his jacket over her trembling shoulders, silently Glamoured by Atheia to do so.
Dripping with blood and water, Atheia stood tall as she addressed everyone in the quad. “This is how magic will be reclaimed and the world saved from the Shadow of Ruin. Drop by drop, what the Tidethief took will be restored to lunar mages, starting with those most faithful to the Tides.”
The Selenic Order and Tidelore members who had been reveling in their newfound magic bowed to Atheia, a powerful sight to behold in their Bruma and Anima and Aestas and Quies masks. A reflection of Atheia’s own might. She smiled at them dotingly, sensing a shift in the crowd—the vicious hunger of those who wanted to know this kind of power too. Yet there were still too many who doubted her, who were not swayed to her side in the slightest.
“Bring the Tidecaller and the Shadow to the Institute,” Atheia instructed the Regulators.
“And what shall we do with them?” one of the Regulators asked, motioning to the captive lunar mages who’d helped Emory.
Virgil, Ife, Javier, and Nisha.
NISHA.
The feral, desperate scream inside her mind made Atheia stamp down on her vessel with more force than before. Compulsion hadkept the captives quiet and docile while Atheia bled Emory in the fountain, though the four of them glared at her and the masked Selenic Order members—their former fellows—with admirable intensity.
Atheia was most intrigued by the fifth captive, the young woman who’d emerged from the Reaper tree with Emory and Sidraeus. Emory’s mother, it seemed. Something about her called to Atheia, as if a distant echo of her own power flowed through her. Curiosity piqued, she looked through the woman’s memories and realized why.
She’d been the key before Romie. The blood Atheia had sung to before her.
“Please.”
The plea slipped from Emory’s lips, barely above a whisper. Atheia had half a mind to cut down the captives where they stood to hurt Emory some more—and to warn others of what siding with the Tidecaller would bring.
But these were lunar mages, born with a sliver ofhermagic. They had been led astray and should be given a chance to see the error of their ways.
“We’ll hold them in the prison wing with the rest of the lunar mages who’ve voiced their support for Eclipse-born,” Atheia declared. She approached Nisha, tipping the girl’s chin up to look at her, all while making sure Romie was aware of what was happening—that she saw the fear in Nisha’s eyes. “I think they need to be made to atone for their treachery. Bled of their magic so that they know what it feels like to have their power stolen from them.”
To Romie, she said,Perhaps this will keep you quiet and pliant. I’m in charge of this body now, Romie, and if you don’t agree with my methods, there is nothing you can do about it. It’s for your own good. For the good of this whole world.
Atheia’s gaze swept over the Shadow-masked protesters. “Letthis be an example for anyone who stands with the Tidecaller and the Shadow. Your lack of faith in the Tides will drive the world to further destruction and bring about your own inevitable end. Choose to stand with the Tides, or we will send you to the Deep along with the Shadow and his ilk.”
It mattered not that the real person to blame for this pandemonium was Clover. In Atheia’s mind, he was still a Tidecaller, a product of Sidraeus, only now with the power of a god who’d rearranged the entire universe.
Clover, Emory, Sidraeus—she would destroy them all and hope it would not be too late for the worlds she loved.
