66EMORY
EMORY HAD JUST SAVED HERmother from the brink of death—could barely still believe how close she’d come to losing her—and now her best friend was talking about flinging herself into the void.
“I accept this fate in Atheia’s place,” Romie repeated in the wake of everyone’s dumbfounded silence. “If this is what’s needed to save everyone from oblivion, so be it. As Atheia’s vessel, I’ll do it. I accept.”
“No,” Baz breathed, shaking his head. Every muscle in him seemed to strain against the weight of the world, the chaos he was holding back as he slowed down time. “I can’t let you do this, Ro.” He looked at Emory with unshed tears. “I can’t see either of you die.”
Yet that was the choice Equilibris had presented them with, and Emory couldn’t see another way out of this mess. She wasn’t willing to die only for the worlds to be wiped clean, for everyone she loved to stop existing. What would be the point?
But the alternative was unthinkable. For the worlds and everyone in them to survive, two people she couldn’t fathom parting with needed to die.
She looked at Sidraeus, his features set in valiant determination, and knew his choice would echo Romie’s. He had just laid down his life for them all and had been spared by the runes on his skin, the bargain struck between him and the Tidecallers. No such bargain would save him now.
He met her gaze with such peaceful resignation, it speared through her heart like a knife.I am not afraid of death, Tidecaller,his voice echoed in her mind.There is peace in endings, and if mine allows for survival to flourish from it, then it must be done.
He accepted his fate. Atheia’s, too. And while Emory wanted to beg him not to, wanted selfishly to keep him here by her side, this deity who had been her tormentor, her ally, her friend—who had found her in the dark and shown her there was beauty in it—she knew there would be no convincing him. It was his choice to make, and she understood it. She accepted it, even though it broke her heart to do so.
But she would not accept such a fate for Romie.
Sidraeus looked at her as if he knew exactly what she was about to do. He stopped her roughly by the arm as she took a step forward.
“Don’t do this,” he said in that low voice of his. His eyes blared with the wild beauty of the eclipse.
Emory touched his face, smiling through the blur of tears. “You’ve sacrificed yourself for me time and time again. I’m not letting you do it again.” In her mind, she said,We’re accustomed to the dark, you and I. If you’re not afraid of it, neither am I.
His eyes closed, his cheek pressing into her hand. Accepting her choice just as she had his.
There was a great tremble around them as the chaos temporarilybroke through Baz’s defenses. He struggled to keep it contained outside of time, to keep it frozen, but the strain on his face, the way he was leaning against Kai, so weak from holding back this impossible thing…
“Time is running out,” the god of balance said, looking between Emory, Sidraeus, and Romie. “What will it be?”
Without thinking twice on it, Emory reached for Romie, pulling her friend in a tight embrace. “I love you, Ro.”
Romie’s arms wrapped around her middle. “I love you, too. But you understand why I have to do this, right? You dying would accomplish nothing. But Atheia and Sidraeus…”
“I know.” Emory held her tighter, not willing to let go, not wanting Romie to see the tears in her eyes and guess her intentions. “They have to go. But that doesn’t mean you have to.”
“What—”
Romie gasped and sagged against Emory as magic rushed through them. She shoved out of Emory’s arms, confusion stark on her face. “What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s all right,” Emory whispered. “This is how it has to be.”
With the power of the previous keys still coursing through her, Emory sought to separate Atheia from her vessel.
Being her vessel should never have been Romie’s burden to bear, but Emory’s. That’s what Keiran had wanted from her from the start. That’s what Emory had expected for herself too. But Romie had been forced to take on that role instead.
Emory, Emory.
Romie, Romie.
Emory and Romie. Their names practically an anagram, as if their destinies had always been entwined. Interchangeable, in a way. Emory, who thought she’d be the Tides’ vessel. Romie, who had become just that. And Emory who would now take Romie’s place when it counted most.
She had sacrificed parts of herself to save Romie before, but this wasn’t the same. This felt right. Because she knew, had suspected for some time now, ever since they’d come to her in a dream, that Aspen, Tol, and Orfeyi weren’t entirely dead. There was a way to restore them, she was sure of it. But not if Romie flung herself into the void, carrying them inside her—dooming them, unknowingly perhaps, to a truer death, one that could not be undone.
If Emory restored the keys and took Atheia’s essence into herself—made herself into the vessel she was always destined to become—then she would be saving four people she cared about, and an entire universe in the process.
She could feel the magic working, powered not only by the three keys she’d taken into herself to defeat Clover—the original bone, heart, and soul—but her own mother’s blood, too, thus completing the four-part symphony that was Atheia, all four keys swirling inside her in an echo of the power that was inside Romie.
