“So you met a god.”
Baz startled, hiding the sheet of paper from view on instinct alone. Emory stood in his doorway, leaning on the frame. She’d clearly also just gotten out of the shower, her damp hair drying in soft waves, her cheeks rosy, looking comfortable in loose pants and a too-big sweater that might have belonged to her father. Seeing she’d startled him, she gave Baz an apologetic smile.
“What was that like?” she asked.
Baz rubbed at his neck where the Shadow had grabbed him. “Well, he didn’t try to kill me, for one.”
Emory grimaced. “Sorry about that. He has… issues… with this god of yours.”
“He’s notmygod,” Baz said weakly. His eyes flicked to her. “Though you and the Shadow seem…”
“What?”
Baz flushed. “I don’t know.”
Part of him felt uneasy that some people here suddenly decided to worship at the Shadow’s feet. The other part of him… well, it hadn’t slipped his notice that a lot of people remained wary of the Shadow’s return. Maybe they’d all internalized the myth that painted the Shadow as evil and the Tides as good, something they would need to unlearn if they were to work with him.
“Can we trust him?” Baz asked.
“He’s saved me more times than I can count.” Emory crossed herarms. There was an edge of defensiveness to her voice. But then she seemed to consider the question, and she admitted, “But he’s a deity with an agenda of his own. He wants revenge on Atheia. The Tides, I mean. And your god, too, I suppose.”
Equilibris,the Shadow had called him. A fitting name, Baz thought.
“Why does he want revenge?” he asked, all the different versions of the myth of the Tides and the Shadow converging in his mind. He needed the truth.
Emory sighed, uncrossing her arms and stepping into his room. “It’s a long story.” She eyed the bed uncertainly.
Baz motioned for her to sit. And as Emory launched into the story of Atheia, Sidraeus, and the gods, and how Sidraeus came into her life by way of possessing Keiran, Baz thought how strange it was to be here with her. On one hand, it felt completely normal to be discussing deities and magic the way they had before. As if no time had elapsed at all. But on the other… there was no denying how different they’d become. The things they’d gone through had molded them into different versions of themselves, unrecognizable from the people they’d been before she’d gone through the door.
“I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault again,” Emory admitted when she was done recounting her tale. “If I had listened to Romie and stayed away…”
“Don’t go down that path. Trust me, dwelling on all the things you could have done differently helps no one. You trusted your gut, managed to keep the Shadow out of Clover’s hands and wrangle him to our side. I have no doubt we’ll figure out a way to fix things and bring Romie back.”
Emory gave a half-hearted nod, her gaze drifting as if she were already planning ways to do just that. Baz had seen the way she carried remorse before, but this was different. Like she wastaking responsibility instead of wallowing in shame. Swimming with purpose in the ocean of guilt that had tried to drown her for so long.
“What happened to Kai?”
The question came out quiet, hesitant, like Emory knew there was something Baz wasn’t saying. Something that hurt too much to talk about.
Baz heaved a long, shuddering sigh. “It’s a long story too.”
“I’m all ears if you want to tell it.”
And Baz did. He told her how he and Kai had ended up in the past, how they’d befriended Clover and been burned by him. How Baz had found himself in the god’s workshop, and what he’d done to try to reverse Kai’s fate.
Tears welled in Emory’s eyes as he recounted Luce’s story. He answered all the burning questions she had about her mother, told her, too, of the real Clover ancestor the Kazans hailed from—not Cornelius, as they’d been led to believe, but Cordelia. By the end, he couldn’t tell what Emory felt. She wiped at her cheeks and stared off into the middle distance, a crease forming between her brows.
“All this time,” she breathed, “I thought my mother didn’t want me.”
Baz’s heart lurched. “She wanted to save you.”
The truth should have been a comfort, he thought, but Emory looked shaken, her whole life put into a new perspective, one she didn’t know how to make sense of.
“Do you think we can save them?” she asked quietly. “Romie and Kai and… Luce.”
Baz wanted to laugh at the irony of the situation. It felt like they’d gone back to the start, with him and Emory against the world, Romie gone, and Kai trapped somewhere horrible.
“We have to try,” he said.
