Storms raced across dark dawn skies like a grim omen of the day ahead. It hadn’t stopped storming since they’d gotten here, rain falling in sporadic bursts, then quickly turning to snow, before the skies cleared for a blissful few minutes of sunshine that never lasted long enough.
Emory tried to keep her mind off the bone-deep cold that seeped through her damp clothes, but the clacking of her teeth wouldn’t let her think of much else. This world was too quiet. There was only the howling wind, the distant thunder, and her own trembling. It was unsettling for a world that was supposed to be full of song.
Emory and the others had taken shelter under the sloped wall of a mossy cliff. Not quite a cave, but it offered enough protection from the elements. They’d managed to keep a fire going through most of the night, huddling next to it with woolly blankets they’d found in an abandoned village a ways back. They’d slept two to a blanket—Emory with Virgil, Nisha with Vera—too exhausted from the previous day’s journey to mind the fact that their clothes were still damp and their bellies mostly empty.
A noise had them all tensing, but it was only Vivyan and Ivayne returning to their makeshift camp. The mother and daughter duo had accompanied them to this world—the fourth and final one before they reached the sea of ash. And thank the Tides they were here, or Emory and her friends never would have made it this far. The two women were draconics, able to sprout dragonwings from their backs, and seasoned warriors, too. They’d taken it upon themselves to stand lookout and scout the surrounding areas. And best of all, to hunt.
Ivayne held up a dead rabbit with a wide grin. “Breakfast,” she proclaimed.
Emory felt her stomach rumbling at the sight, too hungry to despair over the cute bunny’s death.
Today marked a week since they’d first arrived in this world. They’d come into it with a splash, stepping through this world’s door, which had been a slab of ice-covered rock, only to fall into a scalding pool. For a moment, Emory had imagined they’d fallen into a fiery pit, the very belly of the sleeping volcano they’d left behind. But the warmth was actually pleasant and not flame at all but water a shade of turquoise so vivid, it looked unnatural. Steam wafted up in the air, which was, in contrast, completely frigid.
They’d all heaved themselves out of the steaming pool onto a mossy bank and immediately regretted leaving the warmth behind. The pool was set in a mountainous ridge of black rock and lush grass interspersed with patches of snow. In the distance, high, scraggy peaks glittered white against an angry sky the color of a deep bruise, all blue and black and purple. Lightning split the skies, the rumbling of thunder threatening to break the world apart.
Ever since, they’d been walking toward that distant mountain range. It was where the compass-watch pointed them to, and so they had to assume it was where they’d find the last door—the one that would bring them into the sea of ash where Clover had brought the keys. Where he planned to sacrifice Romie and Aspen and Tol to bring Atheia back.
It hadn’t happened yet. Emory would have known this with certainty even if she hadn’t just seen Sidraeus in the sleepscape, because whenever she used her magic, she could feel the pull ofthe keys from far away, as if her Tidecaller power were desperately seeking a source to fuel itself on. They were still alive. Which meant either Clover hadn’t found the guardian yet—the last piece of Atheia, the soul to bind her blood and heart and bones—or he had but was biding his time, for whatever reason.
As they ate a meager breakfast of grilled rabbit, Emory told her friends of her encounter with Sidraeus. All of them took it as proof that the keys were still alive, if Sidraeus was still without his true form. They debated, for what felt like the hundredth time, why Clover hadn’t sacrificed them yet.
“It’s almost like he’s waiting for us,” Nisha said ominously. Her face was drawn, her eyes red-rimmed. “Like maybe he’s luring us to the sea of ash, just like in the book.”
Emory’s heart lurched as their gazes met over the fire. If anyone here understood the desperation and premature grief she herself felt, it was Nisha, who had only just rekindled her romance with Romie. Some days, it felt like there was no point to keep going; that they would never be able to reach Clover in time to stop him from killing Romie and the others. And then they would have to mourn Romie all over again. Only this time, she’d be gone for good.
“If he were luring us to the sea of ash,” Virgil said darkly, “you’d think he’d help us get there, not try to hinder us at every turn by sending his ash monsters after us.”
They all glanced at the open wilderness outside their shelter, as if expecting said monsters to appear, conjured by Virgil’s words. The ash-umbrae, they’d taken to calling them. The same creatures Clover had manifested back at the Sunforge, umbrae-like wraiths he’d created out of a mound of bones and dust.
Ever since they’d gotten here, ash-umbrae would sprout from the storms and the darkness, as if born of the lightning itself, and attack them relentlessly. Clover was nowhere in sight, but surely he had to be commanding them from afar.
And because the creatures were made of ash, no blade or physical weapon of any kind could impede them. Virgil’s Reaper magic was useless too—ash itself was dead, so what good was it to try to kill what was already lifeless?
Only Emory’s magic seemed to have any effect on them, and even that took a while to get right. She used the same principle as when she’d healed the umbrae in the sleepscape the first time she’d gone through the door in Dovermere. Unmaking them. Returning the ash to where it came from.
Without Sidraeus here to alleviate the dark side effects of her Tidecaller magic, without the keys nearby for her to borrow power from, Emory let herself dive fully into the depths of her power. No holds barred, side effects be damned. There were no limits to what she would do to reach that Godsgate in time. And she didn’t mind the ghosts that appeared after she used magic anymore. Keiran’s ghost was gone. She still saw Lizaveta, Travers, Jordyn, Lia, and all the other Selenic Order initiates who had perished in Dovermere, but most ghosts that flocked to her were faceless, unknowable. She found their presence comforting. Almost.
The souls of the dead are restless.
Sidraeus’s words prickled unpleasantly along her skin.
As they erased all evidence of their camp and prepared to leave for another long day of trekking under hostile skies, Vera held the compass-watch in her lap, fixated on it as if to engrain the direction they needed to go in her mind. The compass had belonged to Emory’s mother, and though it was technically Emory’s now, she’d let Vera have it, thinking her cousin was more attached to it than she was.
Hercousin. Emory still couldn’t wrap her head around it. If one good thing came out of this ordeal, it would be this expansion of her family. Getting close to Vera and hearing all about the Kazanshad awakened a sense of belonging in her that she hadn’t realized was lacking before.
It had always been just her and her father, but now, not only did she have a cousin, she hadthreeaunts, too. Thanks to Vera’s vivid stories, Emory felt like she personally knew Alya, Agata, and Ava, the three older Kazan sisters. Agata and Ava, the latter of which was Vera’s mother, both still lived in Trevel, while Alya lived in Cadence, steps away from Aldryn College. It was a wonder Emory had never crossed paths with her—or maybe she had without even knowing.
Vera had also told her what little she remembered of Adriana, the youngest Kazan and Emory’s mother, whom Emory knew as Luce Meraude. Thoughknewwas putting it mildly, since she’d never met her mother and probably never would. This way, at least, she was no longer something so mythical.
“We’ve veered off path again,” Vera noted, her eyes lifting to Emory. “I swear, each ash-umbra attack pushes us farther away from where we’re supposed to go.”
“It’s a good thing we have that compass to stay the course, then.”
As soon as they left their shelter, rain fell upon them, thunder rumbling overhead. Even without the ash-umbrae to impede their journey, it seemed the world itself was always against them: landslides, flash storms, anything to slow down their progress.
“I hate this place,” Virgil grumbled as they walked, miserable and cold and already exhausted at the thought of another long day ahead of them.
Emory had to agree with him. This world might have been beautiful if it weren’t so desolate. During the week they’d been here, they hadn’t come across a single person. They’d stumbled upon one village, and it had been abandoned, most of it destroyed by some storm, or perhaps by something worse, like the ash-umbrae.
