“No one really knows. No soul that has ever gone into it has ever returned. It is a great, black nothing. Some say it’s a place where souls go to be unmade. Others believe it to be a way out of this universe. A door that might open onto infinite shores beyond this one.”
A grim silence settled over the room. A place where souls went to be unmade—wasthatthe fate Equilibris had seen for Kai and Luce, what the god’s old apprentice believed awaitedeveryoneif Kai couldn’t be saved? An unmaking.Oblivion.
Baz refused to see it become reality. He studied the drawing again. “I think this tree is depicting a portal to the underworld. And if it’s the same as the Reaper tree… then we need to go back to Aldryn.”
When he brought it up to Jae later that morning as the two of them sat at the top of the dunes, Baz expected the Illusionist to push back, tell him getting into Aldryn was impossible, what with it swarming with Regulators. To his surprise, though, Jae considered it in earnest.
“We’ve been talking about pushing back against the Regulators,” they said, “trying to find ways to get more people outside of our little resistance here to join our cause. Having a presence on campus again—say, by reclaiming Obscura Hall and using it as a base—would help us organize with the students and professors there who might be sympathetic. They could help us get the word out easier.”
“But how?” Baz asked. “Drutten’s out for blood. And as for the Tides… No one’s going to let us just walk into Aldryn and take over Obscura Hall.”
“Which is exactly why we haven’t done it. We were waiting for the right moment, the right leverage, the right support… I suppose with the Shadow at our side now, we have just that. But you saw how some of the others reacted to him yesterday. They don’t trust him, and they won’t trust Emory so easily, either.”
“Do you?”
“Wholeheartedly. But what we’re trying to do isn’t about breaking through to one or two people. It’s an entire movement. And if the Tides have truly returned to our shores intent on eradicating Eclipse-born, we need to act now more than ever, before the Selenic Order and Tidelore cultists use that as a reason to come at us with more viciousness than before.”
“Any ideas?”
Jae stared at the boardinghouse in the distance, a glimmer of mischief in their eyes. “A few.”
Baz wanted to feel reassured by this, but it seemed like the clock was ticking ever on, and he wasn’t any closer to saving Kai. He told Jae more about the ritual, the Reaper tree, and his own half-baked theories about his connection to this tree that, when tipped sideways, looked like lungs.
“I still can’t believe you’re the one who wroteSong of the Drowned Gods,” Jae huffed. “To think I’ve dedicated my life to scholarly research on this book, and all this time the author’s been growing up in front of me!”
Baz gave them a bashful smile. He didn’t know how to feel about this yet, his opinion of Clover all the more tarnished now that he knew what became of him. What he did to Emory, to Romie, the keys.
“The ideas still originated with Clover, though,” Baz said forlornly, thinking of the journal he’d seen Clover bent over so many times, writing snippets of his visions and dreams, which would go on to inspire the book Baz had always been fated to pen. “In a way, it’s like I stole them from him.”
“It’s not stealing if his name’s the one slapped on the cover,” Jae argued. “And the story is all you.”
“You’re wrong there,” Baz said. “I might have written it, but the story’s always been yours.”
Jae’s brows shot up. “Mine?”
“You’re the one who introduced me to it. Who sparked my love of stories to begin with. And you’re arguably the person who knows the story best. You see nuances in it that no one else does. If you hadn’t gifted me a copy when I was younger, if you hadn’t told me the book was a portal to other worlds, I might not have become so obsessed with it. And if that were the case, then I could never have written it when I traveled to the past. Maybe the book would never have existed at all. So you see? If anyone should take credit for its existence, it’s you.”
“Well,” Jae said, clearing their throat. Their eyes shone with emotion. They reached for Baz’s hand and patted it affectionately. “Thank you, Basil. I’m sure you of all people understand how much that means to me.” They cleared their throat again as they shot to their feet. “Now, I’m going to need you to repeat all that in front of Alya, because she’s been giving me grief about never returning Clover’s journal to her, and I think this might earn me a few points back in my favor.”
Baz grimaced at the thought of the journal he’d left behind in the past. He hadn’t taken it with him when he was pulled through the portal on a page to the god’s workshop. He supposed it was now lost forever.
“How’s that going with Alya?” he asked Jae. “Trying to mend your relationship with her?”
Jae shrugged, failing to hide their smile. “Well, now that we’re both here, I figured it wouldn’t hurt…” They stared off at the horizon where waves were picking up speed, the high tide coming in again. “To think you found Alya’s sister two hundred years in the past, of all places,” Jae mused with a bewildered shake of their head. “Alya never fully believed Adriana was dead, you know. At least back then, when we were together. I hope for her sake—and Vera’s, and Emory’s—that we don’t lose her all over again.”
The words stuck with Baz, weighing on his soul. This was the downside of hope: the prospect of failure. There was a way to save Kai and Luce, and that ignited a blazing optimism inside them all. But if they failed, it would destroy them.
26EMORY
IF SOMEONE HAD TOLD EMORY, not so long ago, that she’d one day be sitting with her father, her aunt, and her cousin, casually having tea and discussing the possibility of saving her mother from hell, she would have thought it was the start of a terrible joke. But here the four of them were, and it felt like the strangest, most beautiful dream to see how easily Vera could make Henry laugh, to know that every time Alya’s eyes lingered on Emory, a fond smile on her lips, it was because she was seeing Adriana in her features.
If this was what family felt like, Emory was sorry to have missed so much of it. She soaked it in now as they talked of her mother, who was beginning to feel less like a myth and more like a real flesh and blood person. A person she had gotten all wrong, it seemed.
All these years, she’d thought her mother had abandoned her because she didn’t want her. But according to Baz, everything Luce had done had been tosaveEmory—and she had ended up in the Deep for it.
Her gaze drifted across the busy dining hall to where Sidraeus, Baz, and Professor Selandyn sat discussing the ritual. The stiff, awkward way Sidraeus held himself was almost comical next to the other two, with Professor Selandyn’s overt friendliness and Baz’s usual anxious state.
Sidraeus clearly didn’t want to be here, surrounded by Eclipse-born who were still giving him a wide berth and dirty looks. He’d been mostly keeping his distance from everyone, no doubt sensing the fear he instilled in some. Yet he was still here, Emory had to give him that. He seemed to have let go of his vendetta against Atheia for now, shifting his focus to the ritual—if only to ensure they weren’t doing exactly what Equilibris wanted them to do, he’d told her.
