She didn’t blame him for it. She’d been doing the same thing on her end, not ready to face him just yet after everything that had happened at the Institute. But when she finally felt good enough to venture out of her room, her feet led her straight to him, as if pulled to him by an invisible string.
She found him alone in the old office they’d used for their radio transmission, with its fraying tapestry and bookshelves collecting dust. Sidraeus stood on the other side of the room, staring out the window. He glanced at her when she came in, tracking her movements, his face limned in the soft light of a single desk lamp. He looked like a blood moon sky, like a boy riddled with ghosts carved into his skin.
Emory sat at the desk, still unsteady on her feet.
“I owe you an apology,” she said, staring at her hands. The words were easier to get out this way. “When I used the syrinx, I knew exactly the kind of bargain I was making on your behalf, the curse I’d force on you. And I did it anyway, without an ounce of hesitation, because I was so desperate to save Romie and the others and so sure this was the only way. But all this pain you’ve suffered… I truly am sorry.”
“The painI’vesuffered?”
The bite of surprise in his voice made her head snap up. Sidraeus looked angry, jaw tight and nostrils flaring.
“Emory… I’m not the one who was tortured, at least not directly. I’m not the one who was bled dry for my power. Everything that happened, everything Atheia did to you, is because ofme.”
Their eyes held. They’d been down this road before and had given each other the gift of forgiveness. Emory was about to remind him of that—ironic, she knew, after what she’d just said—but Sidraeus wasn’t done.
“You could have left me behind, but you didn’t. You pulled me from the darkness I’d resigned myself to, and I won’t soon forget it.”
His face was a complexity of emotions she could spend an eternity trying to parse and it still wouldn’t be enough. Yet the stark truth beneath his words burrowed inside her. He’d spent so long with his guilt and regrets, he never expected anyone to fight for him. To stand by his side. The capricious god who’d shaped him never had, and neither had Atheia, in the end.
But Emory had.
She realized with a pang that her reasons for doing so hadn’t been out of pure necessity like they had been before. Yes, she needed him. But somewhere between the bargain she’d made and now, she had started to value him not for what he might bring her, but for who he was and how he felt and how he madeherfeel. She had started to care about him.Wantedto stand by his side.
Maybe, beyond forgiveness, what Sidraeus truly longed for was loyalty. Companionship. The certitude that someone would stand by him in the dark, hold his hand on the tortuous road to redemption, and help him mold a better version of himself out of that darkness.
And maybe Emory, so used to hurting others before they could abandon her, had always craved the same thing.
“We’re in this together,” she said, needing him to understand, wondering, despite his words, if he felt the same.
He held her gaze with an intensity that made her aware of every fiber of her being. And when he looked away, it was down at her hands, as if seeing again the burnt flesh as she undid his binds.
“The souls of the Tidecallers cast out the gods from my mind,” Emory said. She described to Sidraeus the markings that had appeared on her. She’d puzzled over it ever since it happened. “How could those marks have had power over actual gods?”
Sidraeus seemed lost in thought for a while. “I learned something at the Institute. About the last Tidecaller, who defied the gods and survived the sacrifice. I told you about Tala, the Luaguan Tidecaller who was like a sister to me. It turns out she escaped Equilibris’s culling by boxing away a portion of her power—putting a damper on herself to hide her limitless well of magic. A damper that she would have had to Collapse to get rid of… which is a practice that lived on in all Eclipse magic that came after her.”
A fond smile played on Sidraeus’s lips. His eyes were distant and full of wonder as he kept speaking, as if he could see Tala before him. “She was always far too intelligent for her own good. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that she would have not only evaded sacrifice for herself but also made it possible for Eclipse magic to remain. For those born with it to survive. She was such a force.”
There was so much love in his voice, it made Emory’s heart ache to imagine the relief he must have felt knowing she’d been the one Tidecaller to escape. Knowing there was at least one death he hadn’t caused.
“I believe Tala went one step further than this damper she placed on her magic by also tattooing herself with wards that would keep the gods’ notice at bay. Wards written in the language of the gods themselves, symbols she’d learned from Atheia and me, which I’ve seen here tattooed on Luaguan Eclipse-born.” He shook his headas if in disbelief. “I wondered why those symbols were so familiar. How they would have found their way into this world at all. And now I’m sure of it: it’s because of Tala. She wanted to protect herself and her peers, and so she found a way for the practice to remain long after she was gone.”
A way to ward against the Shadow’s curse—that was what Luaguans believed of their tattoos. But more than anything, it was a way to ward against the gods who’d sought to eradicate Eclipse magic from the start.
Tala was the reason Eclipse magic had survived at all.
“How did you learn all this?” Emory asked.
“The souls of the Tidecallers spoke to me,” Sidraeus said. “When the pain and suffering I felt was at its worst, when I was delirious from it… They told me how I could put an end to this bargain I’m cursed with.”
Emory blanched. “How?”
“By releasing them from their own curse,” he said after some time. “Finally putting their souls to rest, something they’ve been denied since the moment Equilibris sacrificed them to seal the doors. They are cursed as much as I have ever been. And they want to be free.”
“Is that something you have the power to do?”
“No.” His eyes bore into her. “But you do.”
Emory’s brows shot up. “Me? I don’t even have my magic.”
