Atheia felt Romie’s gutting sadness seeping through. This feeling of being alone, of wanting companionship, struck a chord of compassion within Atheia.
Take heart,she told Romie.We have each other now.
24EMORY
OUT OF HABIT, EMORY SEARCHEDfor Romie in dreams, but her friend’s sleeping consciousness wasn’t there. Perhaps Atheia had no use for sleep.
The dreaming mind she did encounter was Virgil’s. She expected to find him in the thralls of the worst sort of nightmare for how haunted he’d been since they’d left the sea of ash—since he’d used his magic to kill—but his dream was surprisingly peaceful.
Virgil was in the quad at Aldryn, sprawled on the grass, his face turned up to the sun. A schoolbook lay open beside him. Laughter had him open his eyes. Lizaveta was sitting down next to him, and it was a version of Lizaveta that Emory scarcely recognized. Light and airy, without the coldness she’d known her by. It was Lizaveta the way Virgil saw her.
The scene changed, and Virgil now stood in front of an old, yellow-leafed tree. For a second Emory thought they were still in the courtyard, but a quick glance around showed they were inside.
The Decrescens classroom was just as Virgil had once described it to her: full of vines growing along the walls and ceiling, and delicate flowers, roses and poppies for the most part, preserved beneath glass domes or growing in clusters along the stone paths carved on the floor. It was a great garden that felt like something that belonged to House Waxing Moon, not House Waning Moon. Except for the tree that grew at the center of it.
The tree’s branches grazed the glass dome above their heads. The soft light from outside hit the yellow leaves just so, making everything golden. As Emory came to stand beside Virgil, she watched the leaves go from that rich gold to crisp brown. In the silence, the dead leaves fell at their feet, and she understood that this dream-Virgil was using his Reaper magic to make the seasons turn, just like he’d told her, long ago, that Reapers did to this tree. Practicing their Reaper magic on it in the way it was meant to be used. Not to kill, not to end life, but to see the beauty in endings, how they paved the way for new beginnings.
Emory studied Virgil’s pained expression, the tears running down his cheeks. She was worried about him. There was a heaviness to him that even the promise of wine earlier at dinner hadn’t been able to alleviate, and now this.
Virgil met her gaze. Whether or not he recognized that she was the real Emory visiting him in dreams, she couldn’t tell.
“I’ve never taken a life, you know,” he said. “All this time, I took pride in being a Reaper because I saw the peaceful side of it. But now… now…” He hiccuped, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “It’s tainted now, isn’t it?”
“It’s not.” Emory slid her hand in his and rested her head against his shoulder.
He broke down at her side and finally told her what had happened. How the Songless had attacked the cave as Emory was taken away by Clover. How the draconics had fought them witheverything they had, ordering Virgil, Nisha, and Vera to run. How one Songless had slipped past, charging at them on his winged horse, lightning lance aimed at Nisha or Vera, Virgil couldn’t remember. He hadn’t thought twice about sending a wave of Reaper magic to save them. The Songless had fallen, and the now riderless horse had bucked wildly before taking to the skies, as if it had sensed the death magic and wanted to get as far away from it as possible. It had given the other Songless pause as their own horses became skittish, and between that and Sidraeus’s sudden appearance and subsequent vanishing into thin air, it gave the others the chance to escape.
Virgil swept a hand over his face. “I can’t shake the image of the light leaving that man’s eyes. I took hislife.”
“You saved lives, too.” Emory understood his pain, the guilt he must feel. “This might mean nothing,” she murmured, “and I don’t know how to take the pain away. But you have to know it wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to.”
Virgil didn’t look too convinced, but he composed himself, sighing deeply. With a half-hearted smile, he pulled her in close, and together they stood in the shadow of the Reaper tree, trying to keep the beauty of death magic alive between them.
Emory frowned at the tree. Where before, all its leaves had fallen, leaving only bare branches that cast eerie shadows, the tree was now lush and green; more alive than what it had first been when she’d walked in. “How does it do that?”
“Do what?”
“Grow back. Is there Sower magic imbued in it or something?” It would be the only explanation for the tree becoming full again after Reaper magic was used on it. Unless this was just the dream working its nonsensical magic, and the reality was different.
Virgil watched the tree contemplatively, as if he’d never wondered before. “Must be.” He looked at Emory with an attempt ata crooked smile, at his chipper self. “I told you I’d bring you here and give you lessons one day. We have time—want to try your hand at using your Reaper magic on it?”
Emory had only ever let herself lean in to this darker strand of magic as a last resort, a knee-jerk reaction. Like when she’d killed one of the eldritch creatures that had attacked them at the Chasm. She wasn’t even sure she could use other magics while dreaming in the sleepscape. And maybe it was because of this that she let herself try.
She sent a wave of Reaper magic toward the tree and watched its leaves turn golden once more. There was something vast and depthless about the tree. It was marked by death right down to its core, as if all the years of Reaper magic being used on it had left scars, lending it power that was at once ancient and dark, calm and serene.
Emory withdrew her magic, cold licking up her spine, as the first brown leaf fell from the tree, dancing a slow, arcing death through the air. The tree was turning dark and rotten, until suddenly it dissolved into black sand and swirling shadows.
Whispers grew in her ears. Darkness pressed in at the edges of the dream. A nightmare looking to devour it. Emory needed to leave lest she put Virgil’s consciousness in danger.
She stepped out of his dreaming and into a familiar scene. Trapped inside the hourglass was the very same tree that had been in the Reaper classroom. It had rematerialized, black sand and shadows becoming wood and leaves once more.
And she recognized this tree, had seen it earlier, drawn on the ritual Baz was trying to decipher.
What is above is reflected below. What is on one side is mirrored on the other.
A chill went through her as she realized she was no longer alone. Those words were spoken in the same strange tongueProfessor Selandyn had used, though it was not her voice that said them now, nor even Sidraeus in his umbra form. The voices were many and layered. They whispered the words over and over, swirling around Emory until she was dizzy from the overlapping sounds.
There was sudden silence—before the hourglass shattered.
