23ROMIE
ATHEIA COULD FEEL HIS PRESENCElike a splinter under her skin.
She had known the moment Sidraeus had appeared in this world, not long after she had. Like a note of brimstone in the air, a pestilence on the horizon. She felt sickened to her core, and yet she hungered for him all the more for it, desperate to sink her teeth in him and destroy him. Make him pay for the damage he’d done to her beloved world.
From her window, Atheia watched the unbridled sea below. She had been set up in the empty quarters of a professor who’d recently been dismissed for his outspokenness in support of Eclipse-born students. An office space on the top floor of the palatial Pleniluna Hall, dressed in white marble and gold filigree, velvet curtains, a plush light blue settee, and a soft carpet beneath her feet.
Atheia had opened the window to let in the night breeze. She’d been given new clothes to wear but found she did not particularly care for the fashion of the century, yearning for the flowing,diaphanous gowns she had worn during her time here. So she’d shucked out of her earlier attire—a silky white shirt with a velvet pinafore dress over it that hugged her vessel’s curves and was scandalously short as far as she was concerned—and had slipped into what she understood to be a nightgown, the loose muslin falling to her knees. The cold nipped at her skin despite the shawl wrapped loosely over her shoulders, but she didn’t mind it one bit. It made her feel alive.
A knock came at the door. “Come in,” Atheia said.
Entering the room were four people she took to be the Tidal Council, the leaders of the Selenic Order, followed closely by Louis and Javier, the last remaining members of the Order’s current cohort at school; the rest of them were either dead or traitors that had flocked to the Eclipse-born’s side.
“So this is her,” said the oldest woman here, small in stature with a cloud of silver hair and a face lined with history. Her eyes shone with an excited glimmer as they took in Atheia. She had the sigil of House Waxing Moon on her veiny hand.
“She looks well for a dead girl,” a tall, reedy man noted gruffly, leering at Atheia in a way that made her conscious of the thin nightgown. His hand bore the sigil of House New Moon.
“I was never dead,” Atheia said, tightening the shawl around her.
The old woman smacked the man aside, seeming to humble him a bit. “I’m Leonie Thornby,” she introduced herself. “It’s an honor to be standing before the Tides of Fate in the flesh.”
“Hold your horses, Leonie,” said another man whose Full Moon sigil flashed as he crossed his arms over his heavy chest. “We still haven’t confirmed this vessel nonsense to be true.” He narrowed his eyes at Atheia. “There’s only one way to know you’re who you say you are. Viv?”
This he called to the fourth Tidal Council member, a statuesque woman with a haughty expression and the sigil of House WaningMoon on her hand. She advanced toward Atheia looking almost bored, her mouth pinched in contempt. “Vivianne Delaune.” She spoke her name like it was something to revere, or fear. “I’ll be sifting through your memories to confirm what you have claimed. If you try to block me…”
“I won’t, Memorist.” Atheia made an inviting motion. “I have nothing to hide.”
The woman cut herself and bled in a shallow bowl of water to access her magic. Atheia felt her rummaging through her mind. When she was done, Vivianne pulled back with wonder.
“She’s telling the truth.” Her whisper was low and tremulous. “She’s the Tides. All four of them combined.”
Atheia jutted her chin out. “Call me Atheia.”
The woman immediately bowed her head in a show of respect, with Leonie and the reedy man following suit. The heavyset man of House Full Moon hesitated, still not fully convinced, it seemed.
Atheia tilted her head as she rummaged through his mind with magic of her own. “You mistrust me,” she noted. “And even if I am the Tides, you do not wish to bow to a girl half your age who failed her initiation. Well. I’ll have you know Rosemarie Brysden survived much more than any of you ever did or ever could. She achieved what all of you Selenics have failed to do since the Tides left your shores: she brought them back. Broughtmeback. So I believe the proper response here is tobow.”
The man bent at the waist, influenced by the Glamour in her voice. When she let him go, he remained there, quivering. “Apologies,” he said, “I should never have doubted.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” Atheia lifted his face up to look at her, delighting at the mix of fear and begrudging respect she saw in him. “But I am benevolent. So let’s start over, shall we? There is work to be done.”
The Tidal Council proceeded to tell her about the decline of lunar magic and how they’d been taking steps to overcome it. When Atheia found out about the origin of the synthetic magics they injected themselves with—made with the silver blood of Eclipse-born—she felt a rage inside her at the thought of lunar mages forced to debase themselves in such a way. Forced to resort to tainting themselves with the very magic she wanted to eradicate.
It was sickening.
But in another way, it was only fitting that these Eclipse-born gave back what they had stolen. Their magic was derived from the first Tidecallers, and so they were as much thieves as their predecessors had been.
“I want to see this Institute where the synths are made,” Atheia declared. An idea was dawning, and she needed to see the process done with her own eyes to be sure it would work.
They made plans to go the very next day. And as Atheia watched the Order members bowing once more before retreating from her quarters, she couldn’t help the swarm of memories that washed over her. How similar this all was to the Veiled Atlas she had known, before they’d sided with Sidraeus.
The difference was,thesepeople wereherpeople. They wielded the lunar magic she had bestowed upon them, and she knew they would not turn their backs on her as Sidraeus’s creatures had. They would not break her heart as the original members of the Veiled Atlas had. Because, despite everything, she had loved them, those Tidecallers. She had believed they added depth to this world, that they were the missing color to her tapestry of magic. But they had made their allegiance clear.
They had chosen wrong. And she would never be fooled again.
A heart-shaped face appeared unbidden in her mind, narrow dark eyes full of bright hope and laughter, a curtain of silky blackhair blowing in the wind. It was a face Atheia would have liked to forget.
Atheia shook away the memories and snuffed out her vessel’s curiosity like a candle. A sudden noise made her turn from the window’s vista to the door. A cat approached her from the shadows. Where it had come from, she did not know, but her vessel recognized it immediately, a wave of fond love pouring out of her.Dusk, it was called. It seemed well fed, which meant it hadn’t been abandoned what with Romie’s brother being gone. Likely it had found another student to take care of it. Atheia reached a hand to it. The cat sniffed at it—and hissed, its hackles rising, before it scurried away through the door left ajar.
