Emory flinched, her body going rigid. She wasn’t sure if it was the deity towering over her she feared or the echo of Keiran the gesture conjured. “Sid—Sidraeus,” she sputtered as his clawed hands dug deeper into her skin. “Let go of me.”
Those fathomless eyes drank her in, a flicker of hatred burning deep within.
You’re the reason I’m here, Tidecaller. Why should I not kill you?
He had no mouth to speak with, the words echoing instead in Emory’s mind. He spoke in a tongue that was rough yet ethereal, something she felt certain she had heard before but never understood until now. His hold on her tightened, and she grappled with the arm choking her, her hands connecting with what felt like exposed bone, those swirling shadows making her fingers go numb with cold.
“Please,” she managed painfully.Pitifully. “You need me.”
Cold laughter in her mind. Lungs burning as they ached for breath. Her vision started to go dark, and she truly believed he would kill her then. Would she become an eternal sleeper? Her consciousness trapped among the stars while her body remained behind, vacant until it eventually withered?
All at once, Sidraeus let her go. Emory gasped for breath and grasped her neck, scrambling away from the umbra’s towering form. The shadows around him lengthened to follow her. They wound around her middle as if to keep her from escaping.
His voice sounded in her mind again:We’ve played this game before, and you had me captured. You betrayed me, yet still I chose to sacrifice myself for you.
“I never asked you to.” Her voice was raw, her throat burning with every word. “And you betrayed me first. You were going to make me siphon all the power of the gods’ fountain to you, knowing it would have killed me.”
A pity you still breathe, and I paid the price for it. Spin it however you want, Tidecaller, but you owe me.A clawed finger of shadow brushed against the bruises on her neck. A threat; a promise.Rest assured I’ll find a way to collect.
Fear settled in her bones. She was, perhaps for the first time, truly scared of him. It was as if whatever shred of humanity she’d come to glimpse in him had been filed away to nothing, stripped from him the same way his body had been. Before her stood not Sidraeus but the Shadow of Ruin, the ruthless deity she had always heard of in stories.
A chill went through her as she realized they were no longer in the dream-Dovermere but in the black, glittering sleepscape, empty save for the two of them. There was nothing but darkness and stars, but it felt to her like there were a thousand eyes on them, countless whispering voices on a nonexistent breeze. And it was her name they were calling.
The souls of the dead are restless,the Shadow said.How eager they are for you to join them.
Her gaze snapped to his fathomless one. The swirling shadows around him receded until she could see the bony outline of his ribs, the abyss that lived between them, the obsidian thing that beat in his middle. His heart. She wondered if all umbrae were like this beneath the billowing shadows, or if this was a particularity of his, a king amongst umbrae. A deity stripped of his body, reduced to this creature that was as much overseer as prisoner in this slumbering realm.
“Does this mean you’re back to ferrying the souls of the dead, then?” Emory asked.
I cannot help them so long as the fountain remains depleted. There is no resting place for them now.
Dread crept along Emory’s spine. If the souls of the dead couldn’t be put to rest, if all the power from the fountain had been extinguished by Clover, were they all trapped here in the place between worlds? A purgatory of sorts. Maybe they were overspilling, slipping through cracks between worlds. It would explain why Emory was still plagued by ghosts whenever she used magic, she supposed.
Tell me, have you been visited byhisghost yet, or can I assume his soul is burning in the infernal abyss?
His voice dripped with cold disdain, and Emory knew he meant Keiran.
“I haven’t seen him,” she said. She was grateful Keiran’s ghost seemed to be gone for good. She puzzled over Sidraeus’s cruel contentment over this. She knew there had been no love between Shadow and vessel, but surely the prison of Keiran’s body had been better than the one he now found himself in. “But it’s not him I care about right now. I need to know if you’ve heard anything from my friends. From the keys.”
Emory wasn’t sure how Sidraeus’s imprisonment here worked. Clearly, she could contact him through dreams. Perhaps Romie could as well, and he’d gotten to talk to her—something Emory hadn’t been able to do since the last time she’d seen her best friend, when Clover’s creatures had taken Romie, Aspen, and Tol to the sea of ash, where they would be sacrificed to revive Atheia—the deity known in Emory’s world as the Tides, the opposite of everything Sidraeus was.
They are shielded from me, as they are shielded from you,Sidraeus said. At the way she deflated, his voice became almost gleeful.You cannot stop what’s coming. Clover will sacrifice them. Atheia will be whole again, I will have my body back, and you—
“I won’t let my friends die. There has to be a way to stop Clover.”
A cruel, cold laugh.Even if you were to reach the godsworld in time, how do you plan to stop him? If his power is an entire sea of ash, yours is but a tiny speck of dust. You stand no chance against him.
He was right. And this was the conundrum they found themselves in, wasn’t it? Because the only one who might stand a chance against Clover was Sidraeus, but he was trapped here. The only way he could regain his true form was if Atheia came back to life, and for that, Emory’s friends needed to die. Which meant that as long as Sidraeus was in here, Romie, Aspen, and Tol still lived… but so did Clover.
There had to be another way. Sidraeus had done it before, had escaped his prison by slithering into Keiran’s revived corpse. If all it took was another body…
That feeling of being watched slithered along Emory’s spine again. She felt properly cold now, goose bumps running along her skin. Or maybe that was the dawning of consciousness, the chill of where she lay asleep seeping into her dream. Calling her back to herself.
Emory, Emory,the unseen souls of the dead whispered, as if trying to tell her a secret. As if hungering for her own soul.
Sidraeus withdrew into the darkness.When you’re ready to pay your debt, Tidecaller, you know where to find me.
A trail of shadows caressing her neck was the last thing she felt before waking.
