A dozen more horses landed around them, silent and observant—andmournful. They all bowed their heads, facing the spot where the guardian’s clothes remained, and Baz swore there were tearsin their eyes. It was as if they’d come down from the skies to pay their respects for the fallen guardian, this boy who might have tamed these divine creatures just as he had in the book.
One of the horses gently nudged the lyre in Jae’s hands, and it was the oddest thing, but Baz knew it was its way of telling them they’d been right about how to capture the guardian’s soul. Indeed, when Jae plucked at the instrument, the wisps of the guardian’s soul lifted from the door and wove around the lyre’s strings. Baz breathed life back into the soul as it fused into the lyre, and the guardian’s life played behind his eyes, so similar to the story he knew fromSong of the Drowned Gods.
As Jae handed Baz the lyre, the power of the three keys he now carried hummed through every part of him. The urgency to get back home amplified, almost unbearable as adrenaline coursed through him. A younger Baz might have succumbed right here under the pressure, forgetting how to breathe as anxiety took over. But he retained his calm, kept breathing in and out and in again as he’d been taught.
And with a final glance at this impossible world, these ethereal creatures, the gate he’d imagined himself guarding so often, Baz whisked Jae and him and the three ancient keys home.
PART IVTHE GOD OF BALANCE
THE WEIGHT OF DREAD WASsomething the god of balance had never anticipated. It sat like a millstone around his neck, leaving him with leaden limbs and an ache in his chest he could never quite soothe. It was constant dissonance in his restless mind, threatening the harmony he was made for.
This was the price of being tied to fate. He was as powerless against it as any mortal, yet burdened with the knowledge of it. Alone to wait for the inevitable, surrounded by ticking clocks that grew more maddening with every second they inched closer to the dreadful conclusion that fate had concocted.
He wanted to be free of it.
He was a god, but he was a servant of fate above all, a ruler of nothing, not even his own nature. He was tired of feeling so caught between duty and desire. He wanted to carve out a fresh start, paint a better outcome, even if it went against everything he had ever stood for. What he was made for.
Balance was meant to keep him impartial, neither good nor evil. Defying fate would tip the scales in favor of the latter, but perhaps villainy would be a lighter burden to bear than the gravity of inaction.
At least then he would be free of this forced equilibrium, and fate would no longer be his concern.
58EMORY
THE THREE KEYS ON THEtable called to Emory with undeniable force.
As Baz told them how he’d retrieved them from the past, everyone at the safe house seemed mesmerized by them—the rib bone stark white, the heart of solid gold, the cloudy wisps of a soul trapped in the strings of a wooden lyre. The original keys that Clover had imbibed. The one thing that might make Emory strong enough to face him.
Emory’s hands were tucked between her thighs, as if that might stop her from reaching out to grab the keys. On the back of her right hand, the uglyUmark that had sullied her freshly combined New Moon and Eclipse sigils was gone, and with her magic returned, its floodgates open wide, it was hard to resist the keys’ pull. Harder still to focus on anything that was being said around her.
Only a few minutes after Baz’s return, he’d taken Emory aside, his face white as a sheet. “Kai told me what they did to you. I’m so sorry, Emory. I should have been there, I should have—”
“Baz. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”
His mouth had been a tight, downturned line as he took her branded hand and ran a thumb over the jagged Unhallowed Seal. “I can unmake it. Like I did for everyone else.”
“Yes,” Emory had said eagerly. Not a trace of hesitation.
Baz had watched her fondly. “You’ve come a long way from the girl who wanted nothing to do with Eclipse magic.”
“Says the boy who used to be too scared to call on his magic for the simplest thing, and look at you now.”
They were no longer those people acting out of fear.
Baz had wound back the threads of time like it was nothing. Barely a breath from him, and it was as if no brand had ever touched Emory’s hand, no seal had ever put her magic to sleep. Her veins had run silver for a moment, her near-Collapsing no longer frozen in place by the brand. She didn’t fall into a proper Collapsing, but as the full might of her power rushed through her again, so hadtheirs, their pull on her so strong she thought she might succumb to them right then and there.
She’d gripped Baz’s arm so tight he’d yelped. “What’s wrong?”
“I can feel them.” The words had been strained, her breath labored. “The keys.”
They bore a trace of Atheia’s power that called to her the same way Romie, Aspen, and Tol had called to her, inviting her magic to borrow from their own with a force that demanded attention, that asked to be claimed. To be devoured.
“I don’t want to turn out like Clover.”
At her whispered words, Baz had gripped her shoulders tight. “You won’t. Just hold off, resist the keys’ pull awhile longer.” Fierce determination had burned behind his glasses. “We’re going to bring Clover down for good.”
They had since been discussing plans to do just that with everyone at the safe house. There were too many unknownssurrounding how exactly the keys might help Emory defeat Clover. They didn’t even know where Clover was, nor the gods who wanted him dead as badly as they did.
An idea crossed Emory’s mind as she watched Farran. He was properly healed now—as was everyone else at the safe house, Emory having used her magic as soon as she got it back to heal away any lingering injuries, including her own. But there was a haunted look in his eye, an awkwardness to the way he held himself. As if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself now that the gods had abandoned their emissary.
