Kai gave a long, frustrated sigh. “Tell me again how we went through the door,” he asked Luce, turning to her once more for a way to stay grounded to reality.
Luce gave him a worried look, as she always did, but told him what he so desperately needed to hear. Thames’s Collapse. The Treasury crumbling down around them. Clover, Luce, Kai, and Baz heading down into the glowing pool that brought them into the Belly of the Beast, where Clover and Luce opened the door—the two of them now bearing a silver spiral mark on their wrists to prove it—and went through before the tide came crashing in.
Baz shoved back out, as if the door had denied him entry.
That part had always remained clear in Kai’s mind. It was the details leading up to it that were hazy. Ever-changing.
“I know this has been hard on you,” Luce said quietly. “But we’re so close to reaching the next door, one step closer to preventing the vision Cornelius and I saw.”
Kai gave a sharp laugh, motioning toward the woods. “Look around you, Luce. The supposed netherdemon possessions, the rotting, it all started when we got here. You really still believe Clover’s going to save us all?”
“I do,” Luce said without hesitation. But something in her tone felt forced, like she were trying to convince herself as much as Kai. “He got us this far, and if he’s the answer to saving my daughter, then I’ll follow him to the end.”
Clover, Emory, the destruction of worlds. They had set out to change the outcome of the vision both Luce and Clover had had, but if they were trying to bring back the Tides and the Shadow to prevent the worlds from falling into chaos two hundred years from now, why then was the Wychwood rotting here and now? It seemed to Kai that whatever apocalypse they were trying tostop had already been set in motion, as if by coming here, they had set the first domino tumbling forward.
Maybe the problem was Clover. Or maybe Kai was suspicious for no reason. All he knew to be real was this darkness and anger that weighed on him, that had him questioning his own sanity.
It was almost as if the darkness was becoming too heavy for him to carry, and Kai felt like he was reaching the limit of his supposedly limitless power, tumbling toward another Collapsing.
In his mind, he saw Thames Collapsing over and over after he’d injected himself with the Tidecaller synth. As if his body could not hold that much power.
What if the same was happening to Kai now? He was taking on Clover’s darkness, the dark underbelly of his Tidecaller magic. And it was stretching his own power thin. Soon it would break, collapse in on itself. And this time, Kai knew it would plunge him forever in darkness.
The Shadow’s curse indeed. Perhaps there was some truth to it after all.
Mindlessly Kai traced the tattoos on his collarbone. “You know, in the Constellation Isles,” he said, seeing in his mind the place of his birth and aching for it with a fierceness he hadn’t thought possible, “we believe the Shadow sacrificed himself to the Deep to save the world. It’s why we Luaguans tattoo the story of his sacrifice on our skin. The practice started with Eclipse-born long ago, but nearly everyone in Luagua does it now. It’s meant to ward off evil of all kinds. For Eclipse-born, it’s supposed to keep us safe from the dark side of Collapsing. The Shadow’s curse.” Kai snickered. “A bunch of bullshit, apparently. I’m going mad, and I don’t know if—if I can—”
Luce put a delicate hand on his arm. “I’m right here with you. I’m not going to let you go mad.”
It was true that being around Luce abated some of the darknessaround Kai, clearing his mind. As if the Dreamer were a balm against the nightmares. She was only a few years older than him, but already she had the countenance of a mother. She would have been a great one to Emory. A shame they probably would never get to meet.
“We should get some sleep before we leave,” Luce said. “Will you be all right?”
Kai gave her a tight smile. “I’ll be fine.”
The lie tasted worse than the wine did. So he kept drinking until it was true.
Later, when partygoers started to scatter for the night, Kai found himself in a quiet corridor inside the twins’ manor. He sat on a windowsill overlooking the garden, with only his wine and morose thoughts for company. Footsteps echoed in the candlelit corridor, and Kai spotted Clover and Asphodel coming up the stairs. He watched from his perch in the shadows as Clover kissed Asphodel’s hand demurely, and she boldly kissed him on the cheek, saying something Kai couldn’t hear but knew sounded suggestive. Clover whispered something back, and then Asphodel disappeared behind her bedroom door, alone, giving him a pretty smile before it shut.
Echoing footsteps again as Clover came Kai’s way.
“Moving on so quickly after Thames?” Kai asked, knife-sharp. “Didn’t take you long to forget about him.”
Clover’s mouth tightened. For a second, Kai thought Clover might punch him for bringing Thames up. He would have welcomed the violence. But Clover hung his head and fidgeted awkwardly, as if he didn’t know how to act.
“I’ll have you know that I think of him often.” Clover’s voice was gruff, his throat bobbing with emotion. “He haunts my every step.”
His eyes darted to dark corners, as if he were seeing Thames’s ghost. Kai had never seen him so destabilized. Unguarded.
“Did you love him?” Kai asked.
Clover blinked at him like he’d just asked if the sky was blue. “Of course I did. Why would you ask such a thing?”
Kai merely shrugged and took a sip of wine. “Just seems to me you’re rather enjoying yourself with the witch. Plus, you never talk about him.”
“Asphodel is a means to an end, you know that.” Clover swept the wineskin from Kai’s hand and drank. “And I talk of Thames as much as you talk of Baz. Seems to me we’re both mourning in quiet.” He gave the skin back to Kai. “At least I’m trying to be productive.”
Kai snorted. “If that’s what you call manipulating that poor girl.”
