It was laughable, the way her subconscious wielded her loneliness against her. The way it made her crave the dark nothingness beyond the dream, made her wonder what it would be like to step into its embrace and simply disappear.
“WAKE UP.”
Emory jerked awake but found herself restrained by binds tying her to the gurney. Her own face was leaning over her, hands shaking her gently. Was this a dream, still? Or was she dead,seeing a copy of herself, her soul perhaps, as it left her mortal body behind?
Tears welled in the copy’s eyes. “She’s awake.”
Emory blinked away the grogginess of sleep and realized that this was no copy of herself. This was her mother, her features so similar to her own that it was no wonder she’d mistaken her. But surely this couldn’t be real.
A second face appeared next to Luce’s. Nisha. Another impossibility.
“How did you manage to get free?” Emory croaked, her voice broken from disuse.
“They had a little help,” a third voice piped in.
Vera. Vera was here, but she couldn’t be. Had she been captured that night everything went wrong, along with Jae and the other Eclipse-born?
Emory peered at the door, where her other friends stood. Virgil and Ife and Javier. And—Rusli? The Illusionist gave her a wink. It was hard to reconcile the Eclipse boy she’d come to know at the safe house with this version of him here, wearing a Regulator uniform. Vera, too, wore a similar uniform.
Emory felt the faintest hope blossom as she began to understand what was happening.
Help had come. She wasn’t alone after all.
“How did you get past Atheia?” she asked.
“I got through to Romie,” Nisha said while Vera tried to pick open the metal binds around Emory’s ankles. “She let us go.”
Romie wants you to know she’s fighting Atheia with everything she has, the ghost of Tol had said to her in a dream. Her subconscious trying to find hope to latch on to, however false. But could they really trust Romie’s good intentions if Atheia was still running things? She said as much to Nisha, but Nisha wouldn’t hear it.
“We can trust her,” she said with conviction.
“Damn it,” Vera cried, still trying and failing to pick through the metal restraints. “I can’t—”
“Move over, darling,” came another voice, and suddenly Virgil was at Emory’s side. There was a flash of something like pity in his eyes as he took in the sight of her, the blood vials next to her. Pity turned to fury, his nostrils flaring. And then, without a blink from him, without even the need for bloodletting to access whatever meager Reaper magic he might have left, he rusted through the metal restraints.
Emory gaped at him as she sat up, rubbing at her sore wrists. “How…”
“We sort of had to resort to synths. The Tidecaller kind made with your blood.”
The kind that let them access all magics.
Virgil made a face. “Sorry. If it’s any consolation, it’s really watered down. I can already feel it fading after using it just once.”
“It was either that or attempt this jailbreak powerless,” Vera said matter-of-factly. She grabbed one of the vials containing a Tidecaller synth and slipped it to Emory. “Take it. We need you powered up more than anyone.”
Emory stared at the vial in her hand. The U-shaped brand scarring her sigil glared back at her. She knew the synth would make any lunar mage super-powered, but the thought of having to resort to it now… this ghost of her own magic…
Her mother squeezed her hand, the gesture so full of understanding that it almost made the pain of losing her magic bearable.
“We’re running out of time,” came Ife’s voice. She stood in the doorframe with Javier, both of them throwing nervous glances down the hall. “We need to move. Quickly.”
With some help, Emory got down from the gurney. She wobbled on unsteady limbs, holding on tightly to her friends, as Vera injected her with the Tidecaller synth. Emory winced at theneedle—then felt a trickle of magic go through her, familiar yet sowrong, twisted by Atheia’s own power. Emory called on the healing magic she’d always known, willing strength back into her body.
Virgil was right: the power in the synth was incredibly diluted. This was nothing like the generous dose of power Atheia had given to her faithfuls back at Aldryn. Emory could already feel the magic slipping away, so she used it sparingly, keeping it for when it was needed.
“Someone’s coming,” Javier whispered. Looking at Emory, he asked, “You ready to run?”
She gave a weak shake of her head. “If Atheia’s out there, we’re not making it out of here.” Especially not if their escape plan hinged on this diluted magic.
