When Clover extended a hand to her, the black spiral that flashed on the inside of his wrist a dark twin to her vessel’s silver one, Atheia did not hesitate to grab it.
And together, they rose.
56EMORY
THE SAFE HOUSE ON THEshores of Threnody felt like home after the horrors of the Institute.
Emory slept and slept and slept, all those days of blood loss and captivity finally catching up to her. Louis tried to tend to everyone’s wounds in Emory’s place, but his own Healing magic was still a faint, ever-waning thing. He could only do so much, reverting to traditional healing methods where he could. He healed Emory’s wounds to the best of his ability, but her recovery was slow without her own magic aiding her. The synth she’d taken had long since faded to nothing in her bloodstream.
Every time she saw the Unhallowed Seal on her hand, she wanted to claw it off. No one could reverse such a curse—except for Baz, who wasn’t here.
“He and Jae went back in time to fetch the original keys,” Kai told her when she was lucid enough to understand where she was and what had happened. There had been worry behind Kai’scarefully shielded exterior; Emory could tell it ate him up to not have gone with Baz.
She’d watched him as he sat at her bedside, expression far away. This was the cost of being a hero: to wonder if the choices you’d made were the right ones, no matter the outcome.
Emory had reached for his hand and squeezed. “Thank you for rescuing me. For saving all of us.”
His dark eyes had met hers, an understanding passing between them. “I know what it’s like to be kept in that place. It was about time someone burned it to the ground.”
Swallowed up by a pocket of sleepscape. Nothing could have been a more fitting end to the Institute.
After Sidraeus had whisked Emory, Kai, and Luce away—Theodore and Farran, she’d later learned, had been lifted out of there by Gwenhael, along with Emory’s other friends—Kai had convinced Sidraeus to go back to the Institute with him to make sure they’d left no one behind. Together, Shadow and Nightmare Weaver had watched the blooming sleepscape devour what was left of the Eclipse wing.
Emory wished she could have seen it.
Days went by without Baz reappearing, without a whisper of Clover or Atheia or the gods. When Emory wasn’t sleeping, she was visited by her friends. Nisha spent a lot of time curled up at her side, telling her how Romie had fought against Atheia’s hold, wondering how—if—they would ever get Romie back. Virgil found ways to make Emory laugh as he always did, trying his best to shake away the dark memories of the Institute. Vera, Emory couldn’t help but notice, was a near constant presence at his side, and it was obvious to everyone that there was something blooming between the two.
Others Emory never thought she’d see again came to visit her too: Ivayne and Vivyan, accompanied by Caius, the young draconic page who’d been a part of the corrupt Fellowship of theLight, and who’d since left them to join the Golden Helm. Emory often saw him through her window, sitting on the beach writing in his bestiary—a compendium of creatures he was having a tremendous time filling with all sorts of animals and insects foreign to his own world—while Gwenhael soared over the Aldersea, terrorizing the seagulls.
Then there was the newcomer: Farran Caine. Emory didn’t see much of him, but Kai told her all about his miraculous recovery—chalked up to the fact that he’d been touched by the divine—and all the groveling Farran had been doing to prove how sorry he was for getting Kai and Luce trapped in the abyss.
“And you forgive him?” Emory had asked him dubiously.
“Hell no.” Kai had let out a long, frustrated sigh. “But he’s been manipulated by gods all his life. Guess we can’t really blame the guy for it. That’s what your mom thinks, anyway.”
Emory thought she might never get used to those words. Mom. Mother.Parents, plural, because by some miracle, both her parents were with her. The father who’d always been her shore, a sure place to land. And her mother the sailor, who’d fought her hardest to pull Emory from the stormy seas trying to claim her and bring her back to safety.
Sitting by Emory’s bedside, Luce had told her everything. About her vision, the reason she’d left Emory, her journey through time—all of it a desperate attempt to save Emory. And though Baz had already recounted much of this to Emory, nothing could compare with hearing it in her mother’s own words.
“I’m sorry about everything you’ve been through,” Luce had said through tears. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t do more for you. If I could go back—”
Emory had embraced her, trying to convey how much her presence meant to her. Her mother had hugged her back, and every resentment Emory had ever had toward her vanished. It didn’tmatter that Luce had abandoned her. It didn’t matter that she’d left Emory wondering about her all her life, missing a mother she had never known. Because she was here now, in the flesh. No longer a simple myth, a story Emory clung to, but a real person she could finally know.
Her mother the sailor, Emory the sea. Together, they had somehow made it back to the shores where it had all begun, to Emory’s father, the lighthouse keeper who had always been here as a beacon waiting, and maybe the three of them could finally be a family. There was comfort in that thought.
But it was odd, seeing them together. Time had run in a straight line for Henry, but in a loop for Luce, leaving him in his forties and her in her early twenties, frozen in a version of herself that was not much older than when Henry had first laid eyes on her.
The distance between them was a strange one, bridged only by their shared love and concern for Emory. After their first visit at her bedside together, they mostly came to her separately. She knew her father well enough to see how much Luce’s return had destabilized him. He’d always been a quiet man, content with the quiet life he’d chosen. But part of Emory always wondered if he was that way because he was holding out hope for the intrepid sailor’s return. Frozen in time himself as he tended his lighthouse and watched the horizon.
And now, at long last, she had reappeared.
When Emory asked him what might happen between the two of them, her father gave her a sad smile, rubbing at his beard. “I don’t know. Things are complicated, aren’t they?” He stared off in the distance for a while, perhaps imagining what a future might look like between them, or maybe accepting that what they’d shared would forever be trapped in the past. At last, he turned to Emory and patted her hand. “All that matters is that you get to know her. And I’m so glad for that.”
So was she. Having Luce here was like a dream made reality, and Emory cherished every moment of it, these quiet conversations, the memories and tears they shared, lamenting all the lost time they wished they could have had together. Vera and Alya sometimes came to see her with Luce, sharing stories of the Kazans, the two sisters laughing loudly together as if they’d never been apart.
Between the visits and the sleep, Emory felt a constant dread in her stomach at the thought of losing Baz and Jae to the threads of time, at the thought of Atheia and Clover still out there.
At the thought of Sidraeus, somewhere in this safe house, keeping his distance from her.
