“Sidraeus,” she breathed, holding his face in her hands. “Sid.” The way his dark lashes brushed against his cheeks as he closed his eyes, leaning into her touch, made her heart flutter.
“Emory.” His eyes opened, intent on hers. Searching for an answer in them. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Is it not what you want?”
“It is. More than you can know. But I—” His jaw worked as he fought for words. “Can you ever forgive me, for making you feel so unsafe while I was wearing his face? For taunting you with the trauma he inflicted on you?”
She understood then that this softness was him not wanting to bring up the ghosts that plagued her, the memory of Keiran’s hand wrapped around her throat, the insecurities that might forever linger. And this—the tender way he was treating her, the unspoken power he was giving her by letting her lead—it made her want to curl up in his embrace and never let go.
“We said we forgave each other, remember? I trust you,” she said, and she meant it. She had never felt safer. “I want this.”
The words unlocked something in him. Her name escaped his lips again, and then they were crashing together like two burning stars, hands clenching into hair and shirts without reservation now. They kissed like they were chasing the last bit of the sun’s light. Like there would be no tomorrow. Like there would never be enough time between them to savor this.
As if they knew they would be interrupted a minute later, ripped apart by the creak of a door and a squeal of surprise.
“I didn’t see anything.”
Vera stood in the doorway, staring pointedly away from Emory and Sidraeus. Emory felt heat rise to her cheeks as she pushed Sidraeus away, mortified at what her cousin had walked in on.
“Just letting you know Baz is back,” Vera said. “He’s fine, before you ask. Waiting downstairs to speak to all of us. I’ll, uh, give you two a minute.”
Vera winked at Emory as she left. No judgment, no questioning Emory’s choices. As if what happened here was an inevitability. Something she’d seen coming all along.
Emory and Sidraeus looked at each other in the quiet, swollen-lipped and panting. She wondered how much further they might have taken things if Vera hadn’t interrupted. Images of what could have been played in her mind, making heat coil inside her. Sidraeus’s burning gaze on her mouth didn’t help. She didn’t need to hear his thoughts to know he was imagining the same things, and if they didn’t get out of this room soon, he wouldn’t hesitate to turn them into reality. And Emory would gladly let him.
“We should head down,” she said, trying to break the spell, to convince her own limbs to move.
But she wanted so badly to stay in this room, even as relief coursed through her at Baz’s safe return, even as his voice reached her from downstairs and she yearned to see his face. Because if Baz was back, and if he’d succeeded at what he set out to do, then what happened next might change everything.
She wanted more time to explore what this was before they set out to save the worlds again.
But at least they’d had this moment, which had briefly felt like eternity.
57BAZ
IT WAS A SHOT INthe dark to believe the time travel pocket watch could truly take Bazanywhere, including a different world. He was going on a hunch based on what Kai had told him of Farran—the god’s old apprentice—and how he would use his pocket watch to travel out of the abyss. If he was able to do that, going from the deepest recesses of the realm of death to one of the realms of the living, then surely traveling from one living realm to another wasn’t that big of a stretch.
Baz knew his hunch had been right when he and Jae found themselves in the Wychwood. And it truly was the Wychwood, Baz was certain about it. He’d seen it often enough in illustrations, had glimpsed it briefly in his own time, superposed against the fabric of his own world. Here and now, the Wychwood was still only the Wychwood, a separate world from his, a very real place pulled from a storybook. It smelled of moss and earth and subtle decay. It felt like a dream come to life.
“This is…” Jae spun in slow circles, staring wide-eyed at thethick woods around them. They looked like they wanted to document every fragment of their surroundings. They’d devoted their life’s work to Clover’s imaginary worlds, and now here they were, standing in the real version of one. “This can’t be real.”
Let’s reclaim this adventure and make the story our own,Jae had said before Baz pulled the two of them through time. And now it was time for them to do so.
“We need to find the door,” Baz said, trying to catch his bearings. “It should be nearby.”
At least, he hoped so. He’d willed the pocket watch to bring them to the exact time and place he knew they needed to be.
Jae knelt to point at something on the ground. “Fresh tracks,” they said. “Four sets. Could be Clover, Kai, Luce, and the witch.”
Baz gaped at them. “Where did you learn to track?”
Jae shrugged with a secretive smile. “I’m full of surprises, Basil. Thought you’d know this about me by now. Their tracks get muddied around here, though.” They jerked their chin at the pocket watch in Baz’s hand. “Can’t you use that device of yours to see where they went?”
Baz flicked open the magnifying glass. Indeed, it showed Clover, Kai, Luce, and Asphodel going through here less than an hour ago. A million thoughts ran through Baz’s mind. He had the power to stop what he knew would happen: Clover murdering the witch, Kai and Luce falling into the abyss. But he’d been down this road before, trying to change the past. With fate broken—its threads all jumbled up, out of order, in chaotic shambles—there was no knowing how much more tangled things might become if he tried changing these big events now.
Still, his new unbound power was a marvel. It was as if the universe were at his fingertips, as if he had the power of the god of balance himself running through him, making him master of time and fate if he wanted to.
But he knew what he had to do. So he would hone that power like a needle, small and precise and effective.
