11ROMIE
ROMIE WANTED TO SCREAM. IFonly Emory had listened to her and stayed away. But now Romie and the keys would die, and Emory would be forever lost, her mind and body given over to Atheia. The five of them would meet their end today, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
“It’s time,” Clover said, standing in the middle of the fountain with Emory at his side. He held what looked like a ceremonial knife in his good hand, twirling its pointed end against the index finger of his burnt one.
He forced the four keys to stand around him and Emory. They were marching toward their own death without protest, because he willed it so. He motioned for Romie to step up first. “We’ll start with the blood.”
Romie did as commanded.
To Orfeyi, Clover said, “The music, if you please.”
Orfeyi fiddled over his lyre. They’d known Clover would ask him to play during the ritual. This whole thing had started with a songthey’d all heard across the stars, calling them to this place, bringing them to this very moment, Clover included. It seemed only fitting to welcome Atheia back into the world with music. And the lyre, it was said, had exactly that kind of power.
Clover had tried to play it when he’d first imprisoned them in the sea of ash. He had snatched it from Orfeyi’s hands and plucked at its strings as if hoping it would conjure Atheia right then and there. But the instrument had produced a sound so dissonant, a screeching so far removed from any sort of music, that it had made all their ears bleed.
Only a true musician can wield it,Orfeyi had explained.Someone who has music embedded in their soul, life singing through them.
And Clover, corrupt as his soul had become, was not that someone. But Orfeyi was. The lyre’s chosen player. And what did it matter to Clover who played the instrument, in the end? He had control over Orfeyi anyway.
At least, that was what he believed.
Now, Orfeyi plucked at a string—a single note that perked up Romie’s senses, reverberated through her soul. It seemed to saywe can do this. Her hand did not shake when Clover passed her the ceremonial knife. It was heavier than she expected, the blade wicked sharp, the hilt wrought of some kind of metal with details of spirals and stars. Romie had a sudden flash of the night she’d gone to Dovermere with the Selenic Order initiates, where they’d all slashed their palms open to bleed on the Hourglass.
She brought the blade to her palm to do the same now, but Clover stopped her, saying, “Your wrist, please.”
Romie pressed the blade against her skin. Her gaze swept desperately over Emory and the other keys. She could already imagine how the scene would play out: her blood gushing out of her open wrists until she fell limp to the floor. Clover, moving on to Aspen’s bones—ripping a rib out of her much like the Shadow had,and leaving her for dead. Then Tol’s heart, torn from his chest. Orfeyi’s soul, taken from him as he drew his last breath.
They would all of them be dead, and the essence of the deity their disparate parts would form would rush into Emory, erasing her, too.
“Now, Dreamer,” Clover snapped.
Romie sliced across her right wrist, just below the silver spiral scar she had there. And as the harsh shock of pain turned into the first drop of blood pearling onto her skin, Orfeyi began to sing. The melody was exactly the same that had called each of them here. And Orfeyi’s voice… it was nothing short of angelic, the words in a language Romie didn’t know.
She held her wrist over the center of the fountain, letting her blood spill atop the ash. Her head became thick and her knees weak, but she focused on the melody of the lyre and Orfeyi’s voice, letting them soar through her as she implored the Tides, the Sculptress, the Forger, and the Celestials to come to her now, here at the end of her life, to heed her call.
In her mind, she saw Atheia in the sleepscape again, trying to make her understand something, showing her the threads of light binding the keys to Romie’s pulse points, to Atheia herself.
Act the part of the brave dreamer…
All at once, Romie understood what Atheia wanted them to do. And it all relied on her blood.
Because Romie was a Dreamer the way Atheia had been. She had the magic of possibility, of imagination, running through her veins. And with that magic, she stood in direct opposition to Sidraeus’s ruination, his power over death, the world beyond life. To Clover’s own destructive power and the Tidethievery he’d inherited from the Shadow.
And blood, like water, was what connected all worlds. Connected the four of them to each other and to Atheia, too. The keyswere already a part of Romie, as much as she was a part of them. And through Romie, they would be a part of Atheia, too.
If they madeRomieinto Atheia’s vessel.
The keys would give back the pieces of themselves that belonged to Atheia, just as Clover intended, but only in a metaphorical sense. They didn’t need to die if they bound one another’s threads together, fusing their life forces to Romie, whose body would be used to house Atheia. It would be as if Atheia’s bones and heart and soul lived outside her body—the vessel Romie would become—but these parts of her would still be bound to her by these threads that could not be severed.
This was the sacrifice they had to make to stay alive. Their life force bound to Atheia in this manner would mean they could never be parted from the deity, or each other, but at least they’d all get to live. Even Romie, though she would no longer be only herself, would at least not be dead.
It was the only thing they could do. Atheia needed to be brought back, there was no doubt about that. But they couldn’t let her fall into the hands of Clover, who would simply take all her power until there was nothing left of her—of any of them.
Perhaps, by staying alive, by keeping Atheia’s power separate even though she’d be bound to Romie as her vessel, Clover would find it harder to drain all her power. At the very least, it might give them the chance to escape him.
Darkness threatened to take Romie under, the loss of blood making her queasy. But as she looked at the other keys, she saw the same understanding in their eyes, the same hope sparking to life. She noticed the wooden splinter each of them held in one hand, just like the one she kept in her pocket for bloodletting, and the way they all held their other hand over the center of the fountain—blood dripping from their wrist to mix with hers, imbuing it with the essence of whatever part of Atheia they held. It was what Orfeyiwas singing, what he was imploring the Celestials. And as their blood flowed and mixed with Romie’s, the four parts would be reunited.
They had all of them been drawn to this place by the call of a deity, a song they heard across worlds. And now they would use that same song to bring that deity back to life the proper way.
