“After the hell you just put me through, I’d say we’re even.”
Sidraeus smirked at her before looking out the window again. “Maybe I’ve come to realize that if I go after her in a temper, all it will do is confirm what the people of this world already believe of me. I’ll have stepped into the role of villain they’ve cast me in, and they’ll turn on the Eclipse-born with more ferocity than they already have.” His tone was surprisingly contemplative, until his next words shot at Emory like icy daggers. “And since my fate is tied to them and their pain, I’d rather not be made a victim.”
Emory gulped down the rising guilt in her throat. “I had no choice,” she said in a low voice. Not an apology—she would not apologize for the bargain she’d made.
“There’s always a choice.” Sidraeus gave her an appraising look, as if he could appreciate the viciousness of what she’d done. “You said to me once there was no world that existed in which we could be anything but rivals. Do you feel such hatred toward me still?”
“Hatred would mean I felt anything for you at all.”
“So it’s indifference you claim.”
“Yes.”
That tastes like a lie.
The words spoken in Emory’s mind sent a shiver up her spine, aprickling on her wrist. She felt her cheeks heat at the intensity in his gaze, anger rising in her throat.
“I unbound you from your prison before Clover could bind you to him,” she said defensively. “I’m the reason you’re here in your true form instead of just a nightmare version of yourself.”
A thoughtful hum. “I suppose none of it matters, in the end, if the world is doomed to fall regardless.”
“Not if we find a way to replenish the fountain and stop Clover,” Emory said without any real conviction. That task felt impossible now. And with Clover in the wind, who knew what he was up to.
“Clover is not the one I’m worried about,” Sidraeus said.
“Then who?” Surely not Atheia; he wanted revenge on her, but didn’t seem to view her like a threat. More like a thorn in his side. The answer came to Emory all at once: “The god of balance.”
The god Sidraeus had once answered to, the one who had sentenced him to his prison among the stars. The same god whom Baz had met, and whom Sidraeus believed had sent Baz to retrieve him.
Shadows appeared around Sidraeus as he stepped away from the window. He was taller than Keiran had been, and the effect as he came to tower over her was all the more terrifying. Quiet fury was written across his face.
“Equilibris,” he seethed, “is a tyrannical god who serves one thing and one thing only: the preservation of balance. He will not bend for anything or anyone, and if your time-wielding friend thinks he can get away with whatever he’s playing at—”
“Baz is the smartest person I know, and the most careful. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Neither of you knows Equilibris like I do. As the master of fate, he’s always one step ahead. There’s no undermining him. I’d be careful around the time-wielder. He might be playing right into Equilibris’s hands, whether he knows it or not.”
Emory shook her head, unwilling to entertain this idea for asecond. “I trust Baz with my life. I can’t say the same about you.”
The shadows around Sidraeus seemed to spread toward her slowly. His ecliptic eyes had her hypnotized. “I have lied to you, and you to me,” he said, voice low and silky. “To pretend otherwise would be a disservice to us both. But it seems we need each other now, so I’m willing to put all that unpleasantness behind us if you are.”
Sidraeus held out his hand to her, a delicate hope shining on his face, mixed with a sliver of uncertainty. It was there and gone in a flash before he seemed to catch himself and fight for neutrality. But Emory did not move to grab his hand. She wanted to trust him, but the taste of blood and the sharpness of glass in her mouth lingered.
Sidraeus’s mouth lifted as he sensed her reticence. “I promise not to torture you in nightmares again if you promise to stop stabbing yourself.”
Tides damn her. “Cross me and I’ll gut you.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
And so Emory gripped his hand. She swore there was a flash of relief on Sidraeus’s face, as if this simple gesture of trust, tentative as it may be, meant more to him than she knew. She glanced at their clasped hands, mesmerized by the warmth of his skin, the feel of him. The silver spiral on the inside of her wrist matched the ones that ran all along his arm and the back of his hand, a perfect fit. This close, she could breathe him in. His scent was warm and woody. Like vetiver. It reminded her of the sleepscape, as if the sleeping realm clung to him even here in waking, embedded in his true form.
When she looked into his eyes again, they reflected a rawness she felt within herself. The same fear and darkness and guilt—the same hope that this was something that could work. That they truly could trust each other.
It was like staring into a mirror.
What is above is reflected below. What is on one side is mirrored on the other.
What Sidraeus had said about Equilibris, how the god cared only for the preservation of balance, played in her mind again, along with those whispers she’d heard in her dream. Baz’s image of the tree. The same tree trapped in the hourglass. The same tree that existed in the Reaper room in Decrescens Hall.
