He couldn’t bring himself to broach the subject of him and Kai. How close they’d gotten, and what had happened between them. Baz wasn’t sure why he feltguiltyover it now that Emory was here. The way he saw it, the possibility of anything happening between him and Emory had left with her the day she’d gone through the door. But that was how he saw itnow. He was reminded of the time shortly after she left, when he’d still held out hope. When the door of possibility had been left ajar, pending her return.
And he’d turned to Kai instead. Fallen for someone else. Slammed that door in Emory’s face.
A ridiculous thought to have if she never even felt the same way about him to begin with—especially after she’d taken advantage of his feelings for her. But that didn’t matter anymore.
He would tell her about Kai later. For now, it was his secret to hold close to his heart. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that she was keeping things from him, too. The smaller, more personal details that he had no right to demand from her. She looked haunted, perhaps by what had happened with Keiran. Being betrayed by him, losing him, being taunted by a deity wearing his skin, losing him again. It must have taken its toll on her, especially with everything else going on.
Emory reached for his hand, giving him a watery smile. “You have no idea how good it is to see you again.”
“You too.” Baz glanced down at their joined hands. Her New Moon tattoo over his Eclipse one. “You should get that fixed.”
“What?”
“Your sigil. You’re one of us now. Tides, you brought the Shadow himself back to our shores! Seems to me you should have an Eclipse sigil.”
Something flashed in the depths of her eyes, like longing for this chance to fully be part of House Eclipse.
Footsteps echoed in the hall. Through the open door, Baz glimpsed Professor Selandyn walking by.
“Professor!” he called out, hand slipping from Emory’s to reach for the folded-up ritual. “If it’s no bother, I’ve been meaning to ask for your help with something…”
“No bother at all, Basil.”
The professor sat down in a rickety chair that had been tucked in a corner of the room. She pored over the paper for some time, her mouth thinning as she worked to decipher the language.
“I’ve seen this language before,” she said, “in Clover’s journal, remember? This is some kind of ritual, if I’m to understand. It speaks of divine symmetry, the correspondence between all things. This line here…”
She spoke words that slithered up Baz’s spine. From the way Emory’s face blanched, she’d also heard this old, strange tongue before.
“What is above is reflected below,”Professor Selandyn translated. “Fitting, given the imagery of the tree.”
She was right. Trees were curious because they experienced a sort of mirrored growth, with their roots pushing deeper into darkness while their branches extended toward the light. It reminded Baz of a line in Clover’s work—well,Baz’swork—about the Wychwood:
Trees have roots planted firmly in the underworld and hands that graze the heavens.
Underworld.Like the abyss where Kai was fated to go.
“The wording is strange, though,” Professor Selandyn said with a frown. “The above and below could also be read assideways, oracross.”
She tilted the page on its side so that the tree was laid out horizontally, flourishing branches on the left, roots on the right. Baz was struck by the thought that it looked, almost, like lungs.
Perhaps it would have been a more fitting metaphor to call him the lungs…
His own lungs felt like they were burning as he fought to keep his breathing steady, a wild inkling taking root inside him.
“There are phrasings I can’t quite decipher,” Selandyn said. “If I’m to make sense of this ritual, I’ll have to study it further.”
“We can ask Sidraeus about it,” Emory suggested. “Not sure how willing he’ll be to help, but I’ve heard him speak this language before.”
“A language of gods,” the professor mused. She peered at Baz. “This ritual, what are you hoping it might do?”
Disrupt fate. Change everything.
Baz gulped. “It’s how I might save Kai.”
Whatever the ritual might entail, there was no doubt Baz had a role to play. The lungs imagery only solidified this. It couldn’t be a coincidence that he considered himself the lungs of the story—the writer who had breathed life into the tale that set all of this in motion—and that this drawing of a tree clearly also portrayed lungs.
What is above is reflected below. What is on one side is mirrored on the other. Baz didn’t know what it meant in regard to Kai, but he was ready to find out and do what he must to see him again.
