Clover didn’t seem to notice at first. He took the ceremonial knife from Romie and made his way over to Aspen to cut out her rib bone. Romie fought to keep her eyes open, to keep unconsciousness at bay. They couldn’t let Clover get to Aspen, couldn’t—
“Romie!”
The shout was visceral, full of anguish and desperation. It shot through Romie’s nerves and made her look around her with trepidation. She expected to see Aspen’s rib bone and Tol’s heart in the fountain, lying in her own blood; to feel Orfeyi’s soul brush past her as one might feel a breeze against their cheek. But they were still standing, Clover hovering beside Aspen, knife held aloft between them. All of them had stopped to look at her, as ifshehad been the one to scream. But the voice had belonged to Emory, who must have managed to slither out of Clover’s Glamour to catch Romie just before she hit the ground.
Romie was so weak in Emory’s embrace, her blood pooling beneath her into the fountain. She felt a prickle at her wrist as Emory began to heal the wound there—but Emory was yanked up with a painful yelp as Clover held her by the nape of her neck and shoved her back into the fountain. Power built at Clover’s fingertips, bloodlust in his eyes as he aimed for Emory. Fear unlike anything she’d ever felt seized Romie. She couldn’t let Clover kill her best friend. But she was so, so weak. Blood was pouring out of her now like a river, like the sea, like an endless night pulling her to fathomless depths.
That was when Orfeyi’s song hit its crescendo.
And then there was light.
Threads of shimmering, ethereal light unspooled from the keys, mixing in with their spilt blood. These tendrils of bloody light snaked around Romie’s limbs. Her right wrist. Her left forearm. Her neck.
My pulse points,she realized dimly, as her heart beat ever louder where the threads connected. She could feel Aspen’s life force wrap around her wrist, imbued with her memories of Bryony and Mrs. Amberyl, of the Wychwood and all its wonders, of walking barefoot on mossy earth, and being buried beneath the yew tree for the Sculptress to reshape her bones.
She could feel Tol’s life force fuse to hers as his thread wrapped around the crook of her other arm, imbued with distant recollections of his family, of the grief that followed their passing, of Tol’s own painful remaking as his human heart was molded into one of solid gold.
She felt Orfeyi’s life force meld to hers as his thread wrapped around her neck, and it felt like an electric wire open between them, a shock of all the things he’d been, how he heard the world in song, how it felt to pluck at the strings of his lyre, of the agony that had been the lightning strike burning through him, searing his soul anew.
Three keys. Three lives, connected to three pulse points, each one giving her more and more force. Romie watched her own blood winding itself through those threads of light and, like a live wire, travel between her and the keys. Sharing energy between them.
“What is this?”
The seething fury in Clover’s voice was slow to register in Romie’s mind. But of course he had noticed by now, no longer distracted by Emory. His turquoise eyes were like icy flames as he took in the blood-and-light threads binding the keys.
Romie met Orfeyi’s gaze as he kept singing and plucking at the strings, the song reaching its end.
It was now or never.
Make me your vessel,Romie implored Atheia.We are the same, you and me. Dreamers, both. My blood is your blood. The blood of Quies, the wisest of the Tides, the last in the cycle. So take me. Use me as your vessel, and let the others live.
She felt the dawning of a presence in her mind, old and powerful and so very familiar.
Dreamer,a lovely, womanly voice said in her head.Witch. Warrior. Guardian. Now we are but one.
Atheia’s voice.
It had worked. It had actuallyworked. Romie saw the smile blooming on Orfeyi’s face as the final note left his lips. Saw the same hope and shock mirrored on Aspen and Tol, whose hands were interlaced. The threads between them grew brighter. Romie felt their hearts beating in sync in her pulse points, as if they really had become one. And Atheia was in her head, but Romie still felt like herself. Hadn’t lost herself by becoming the deity’s vessel.
Clover moved quicker than Romie could register, snatching the lyre out of Orfeyi’s hands. There was a dissonance of chords as Clover clutched the instrument against his chest. He curled the fingers of his free hand, and Romie heard the cracking of bones, the squelching of torn flesh, the hitch of a breath. Three muffled sounds of pain rose as one. The light-and-blood threads that connected the keys to Romiesnapped, like the chords of an instrument, and retreated into Romie.
In one swift motion, Aspen and Tol and Orfeyi fell to the fountain floor, lifeless.
Power burned through Romie. She screamed as beams of colorful light poured out of her and stars erupted behind her eyes, tearing away at all that she was and had been and could have become, until Rosemarie Brysden was no more, and there was only Atheia.
12EMORY
THE WORLD SEEMED TO VANISHin a burst of radiant color that forced Emory’s eyes shut. Maybe this was death pulling her under like it had done for the keys. She hadn’t been able to save them; now, she would join them.
But the light subsided. Her eyes opened, and she found that she was still alive, still herself. Not Atheia’s vessel. And the keys…
Bodies splayed in the fountain bed. She couldn’t bring herself to look at them. A sob escaped her lips, her knees buckled, but she wouldn’t let herself crumble, not while the monster who had done this still lived.
Emory’s eyes narrowed on Clover. Bloodlust sang in her veins. He had killed her friends, had sacrificed them without mercy, and now he was going to pay.
She called death magic to her, ready to unleash it. But all the fight winked out of her as she saw the face that appeared at Clover’s side. The one ghost she’d hoped never to see.
Romie looked no different than she had before her death, andmaybe that was a small mercy. A sob broke from Emory’s lips as she let go of her magic, felt the crushing weight of grief settle over her. She threw her arms around Romie, hugging her close, not caring that she was a ghost or that Clover was close enough to end her own life. Perhaps it would be a mercy to join Romie in the afterlife.
