A look passed between Nisha and Emory. Neither of them said aloud the too-big, too-hopeful thought that popped into their minds. That perhaps they could find a way to save Romie. To exorcize Atheia out of her, the way Sidraeus had eventually left Keiran’s body.
Only this time, the vessel couldn’t die.
“I’m all for that idea,” Virgil said as the ground lurched beneath them again, “but how in the Deep do we get out of here?”
The ash below them was still a veritable sea, a riptide they would get lost in if on foot. Vivyan and Ivayne couldn’t carry all of themto the door. And besides, the other side didn’t look any more inviting than in here, with the awaiting Songless ready to attack them.
Emory turned to Sidraeus. “Is there nothing you can do?”
Sidraeus only stared at her—then laughed, a short, cruel huff. “You bargain away my soul, use whateverthisis”—he motioned to his spiral scars—“to bring me to my knees, and now you want my help?”
Emory ignored the twisting guilt in her gut. “We’re in this together now whether you like it or not. If Atheia’s headed to our world, if she’s going after Eclipse-born… That pain you felt from me earlier? It will benothingcompared to the pain you’ll feel fromall of uswho have a trace of your magic. You want to take your revenge on Atheia? Then help us stop her.”
A confusing mix of emotions shone on Sidraeus’s face before he seemed to catch himself and fight for neutrality. For a second, Emory thought he might kill her here and now, consequences be damned. But he only extended a hand to her.
“Grab on to me,” he said. “All of you.”
At Emory’s hesitation, Sidraeus’s voice rang in her mind.Don’t you trust me, Tidecaller?
There was an edge of challenge there as he held her gaze. She didn’t trust him—couldn’t. But she trusted that his thirst for revenge would outweigh everything else. And so she grabbed his hand.
His skin was pleasantly warm, and she found herself looking at him, still trying to make sense of therealhim. For a moment, she got lost in his ecliptic eyes. She used to find them unnatural, haunting. But perhaps that was just because of the face he had been wearing then.
In this face, his true face, his eyes were nothing short of breathtaking.
Emory looked away, trying to chase away such thoughts. Vivyan was the first of the group to relent, moving to Sidraeus’s other sideand laying a hand on his forearm. Her other hand, Emory noticed, remained on her sword. Everyone else followed suit.
Sidraeus never looked away from Emory. She locked eyes with him again.
“Hold on,” he said.
His shadow lengthened over him, appearing again like this separate entity, as if the crowned umbra was always by Sidraeus’s side. It swallowed them all up like the dark maw of some great beast, and the sea of ash around them vanished.
EMORY HELD ON TO SIDRAEUSfor dear life, feeling like she were being squeezed through a tunnel of oppressive dark. Stars rushed past them at dizzying speed, a maelstrom of swirling black interspersed with glittering spots. This felt nothing like when Clover had whisked her away from the temple; that had felt like she’d dissolved into nothing before coming back to herself in an entirely different place. This… it was as if Sidraeus had become the darkness—the shadow he had embodied in the sleeping realm—to travel from one place to another, just as Atheia had become the elements.
Emory’s eardrums popped as the darkness suddenly abated. They now stood on the mossy banks of a familiar hot spring—the place where they’d first arrived in the fourth world. In the distance, Emory could see the storms raging over the mountains they’d just left behind.
She blinked up at Sidraeus, trying to work out what just happened. Her friends looked just as confused and queasy from the experience. Virgil doubled over to spill his guts on the snow-covered ground.
The runes on Sidraeus’s skin were bright with ethereal light. “I can only travel this way within each world,” he said. “We’ll need to cross through the space between worlds by foot.”
Emory searched their surroundings. “But—how do we find thedoor back to the previous world? I thought it was impossible to go back through the doors.”
At least, that’s what they’d assumed. Never backward, always forward. It was why Emory and Romie had never been able to find the door they’d first come through in the Wychwood to return home. Why they’d been forced to find the next door instead.
“There is a way to travel backward,” Sidraeus said. “If you have an instrument Atheia and I created. A compass we gifted to our disciples in case they ever got trapped between worlds or separated from the Tidecallers who had the power to move freely between worlds.”
The Veiled Atlas compass.
Vera clasped it where it hung around her neck. Sidraeus eyed it with a flicker of unreadable emotion. “That compass would reveal the way back to you,” he said, then turned to Emory. “But a Tidecaller can find the door without it.”
“How?”
Sidraeus had Emory stand on the ley line and listen to it as she once had. It felt corrupted beyond measure, but she managed to find the point where its magic converged in a nexus of power.Now call on it,Sidraeus’s voice said in her mind, nearly making her lose focus.Make it manifest itself. Like a secret you’re coaxing into the light.
Emory let the allure of his voice wash over her. Everything in her seemed to go calm. She called on a blend of Unraveler and Wordsmith magics, willing the door to appear, the same door they had stepped through to enter this fourth world. It did, shimmering into existence before their very eyes—an ice-covered basalt door, much like the one Elín had guided them through to bring them to the hidden community in the grotto.
Emory pressed a hand to the door and jerked back in surprise as it opened, already unlocked.
