“Head back to the Institute,” Atheia barked at them. “Grab as many Tidecaller synths as you can and get the Regulators to come help these people erect more wards.”
She didn’t wait for their reply, only stormed off down an alley. She needed a reprieve from all this attention; needed to gather her thoughts and emotions before she succumbed beneath the weight of their disappointment.
She turned a corner and came to a vista overlooking thesprawling Wychwood below, the distant Aldersea where it had been pushed back, the skies split open by constant lightning storms and patches of starry darkness that should not have been there.
Atheia wanted to cry at the mess of it all, for once at a loss about how she would fix this.
From behind her came a voice. “Excuse me, miss? Are you the one they’re calling the Tides?”
Atheia shut her eyes. “I am,” she bit out without turning. She didn’t want anyone to see her in such a state, and wasn’t sure she could stand another villager’s ire. “Did you lose people here today?”
“No. I’m not from here. I came up from the Wychwood looking to understand what’s happening. If you’re the Tides, I wondered… well, I’ve heard stories of you before, and I thought perhaps you could help. My daughter, you see, she’s been in a coma for weeks now, after being possessed by a demon.”
Demon.This girl must be a hellwraith, then, a witch sullied by the mark Sidraeus had left on the Wychwood. A perversion of the magic Atheia herself had created there. This girl was one ofhis, just like the Eclipse-born were. The idea crossed her mind to follow the witch to her estate, if only to snatch up her daughter and bring her to the Institute to torment as she had the Night Bringer’s beasts.
Atheia finally turned to the witch. The woman was middle-aged, and her manner of dress was different from that of the residents of Cadence, pulled from a different world. Her eyes widened at the sight of Atheia, something desperate and wild and hopeful on her face.
“Romie?” the witch breathed.
Atheia froze, trying to search Romie’s memories to determine who this was. There was magic to the woman. It smelled of verdantthings, of damp soil and ancient trees. The name came to her in a flurry of memories.
Hazel Amberyl.The High Matriarch of the Wychwood.
Something inside her fought to the surface with surprising rigor. It was Romie but not. It was an echo of the bone key, the witch whose name had been Aspen. Atheia could feel memories surge behind her eyes: a bond between two sisters and their authoritative mother, a sense of fierce protectiveness she had rarely felt before. It rooted her in place, made her vessel’s consciousness slip between the cracks enough for her to shout a warning.
“RUN, MRS. AMBERYL. I’M POSSESSED BY—”
Atheia fought to control the reins again, but the damage was done, the witch stumbling back from her as if she’d seen a ghost. Atheia tried to move in her direction, but Romie took over once more, making it impossible to take a single step.
The witchran. By the time Atheia stomped her vessel deep down and was about to follow, going after the witch didn’t matter anymore. Because a voice that felt like the moon itself, quiet and mercurial, rose from behind Atheia, so impossible that it knocked her entire world off its axis.
“Hello, daughter.”
Atheia turned, thinking she must have imagined it, because there was no way that the being that voice belonged to was here, and no way she would call Atheiadaughterdespite her somewhat motherly inclination toward her.
Indeed, it was not the goddess of the moon who stood before her but a young man, a boy really, with blond curls and a fair complexion. There was a Waning Moon tattoo on his hand, marking him as a lunar mage. His eyes were like quicksilver, flashing too unnaturally to go unnoticed. And paired with the lilt of his voice, the words he’d used…
The goddess of the moon, wearing the face of a vessel much likeAtheia was, smiled knowingly at her quiet realization. “We are so pleased to see you.”
She pulled Atheia in for an embrace, and when Atheia breathed her in, she could smell the moon itself, feel the goddess as she remembered her, as if the goddess’s very essence had erased every bit of the vessel until it was only her, despite the unrecognizable features. Atheia couldn’t help but fold into her embrace, realizing just how starved for affection she had become since being put back together in this body.
When the goddess pulled away, her eyes shifted, her essence changed, so that in quick succession the vessel became each of the other three gods of the living. The goddess of the earth smiling fondly at her; the god of the sun giving her a stoic nod; the god of the air winking at her as if they shared a secret. And then it was as if all four of them shared space at once in this vessel of theirs, his eyes bright with power, his features an amalgamation of these presences inside him.
“How can this be?” Atheia breathed. “I thought Clover had destroyed you all.”
“He took our godly might from us, yes,” they said in a voice that was layered and beautiful, a mixture of all their voices. “But even he could not kill immortal gods. And yet we find ourselves not quite immortal anymore, either.”
Atheia gaped at them. “Not immortal—what does that mean?”
“The false god took our immortality when he stole our power. So long as we were confined in the abyss, we remained invulnerable, but here in the mortal realms? We could very well meet our end if we’re not careful—which is why we have our emissary here to act as our vessel until we find a way to stop the false god for good.”
They gently touched Atheia’s cheek. “Will you help us, daughter?”
There was such genuine affection in that gesture, such hope shining in their shifting eyes, that Atheia could almost believe it tobe sincere. Shewantedit to be. This was what she had craved all her life, she realized. To be loved by these gods who had created her instead of being a mere instrument through which they ruled over their realms.
But the sincerity behind their words and expressions turned foul. Atheia knew they did not love her. They simply needed her, just like they’d needed her to splinter herself into pieces back then to save them all.
Atheia guarded her heart against this gutting realization. “How would you propose I help you?”
