“This one was a new professor at Karunang College,” the Memorist from the Council, Vivianne, said as she sifted through the woman’s memories. “She was at Aldryn for the Quadricentennial and was found helping other foreign Eclipse students escape the Regulators. That’s when she was brought here and made to Collapse.”
The woman spat at Vivianne’s feet. “May you all go to the Deep for this.”
Atheia stepped closer, eyes trailing the woman’s collarbone, where fine lines and geometric symbols were tattooed on her skin. “What are those?”
The woman only glared at her.
“They’re traditional to Luaguan culture,” Vivianne said, sounding bored. “A way to ward off the evil of Collapsing. Baseless superstition, clearly.”
A Regulator burst into the room then, his face pinched with concern. He carried an odd-looking device.A radio,Romie called it. “I—excuse the interruption,” the Regulator panted, “but I think you’ll want to hear this.”
The crackle of the radio gave way to a voice both Atheia and Romie recognized. It was Emory, going on and on about the power of unity and Eclipse magic and healing the world together. The message came to its end and started over, as if on a loop.
Atheia saw the flicker of doubt on the faces around her, theRegulators and the Council members. It was there and gone, but it was clear they were taking Emory’s message seriously. Atheia couldn’t let them start to doubt what they were doing, couldn’t let Emory’s words corrupt them from the path they walked.
The Eclipse-born strapped to the gurney laughed. “You’re all going to pay for this. The Shadow reborn will not let what you’re doing here stand.”
“Silence,” barked Leonie, the elderly Council member. To the Regulators, she said, “Someone get a syringe and take her blood already.”
“Wait,” Atheia said. “I have other plans for this one.”
An idea was forming. She watched Louis and Javier closely. “How long have you had those shields up in your minds?”
They blinked at her. “Wh-what?” Louis stammered.
“It’s a well-constructed ward, I’ll give you that,” she said to Javier. “It speaks to your talent as Wardcrafter that no one else noticed. Small enough to pass undetected from, say, a Memorist, and iron-clad enough that no Unraveler would even know how to look past it.” Atheia tilted her head, smiling. “But of course, as a deity, I see through it plainly enough.”
Javier narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She laughed. “The ruse is up, and the wards are down. If Vivianne were to look in your memories just now, she would see the truth: that you are here to act as spies, feeding information to your friend Ife in the Eclipse-born resistance through the Selenic Mark you bear.”
Vivianne’s mouth fell, her shock mirrored on the other Council members. Atheia could sense her rifling, now unencumbered, through the boys’ memories.
“It’s all true,” Vivianne breathed.
Louis reached for Javier’s hand, the two of them fitting togetherin grim solidarity, recognizing they had been made and there was nothing they could do to refute the word of a deity.
“Lock them up,” the New Moon leader of the Council said to the Regulators, his face red with anger. “Get them out of our sight.”
Atheia stopped the Regulators with a gentle hand. “That won’t be necessary. I have a better use for these two.”
Her eyes went to the Eclipse-born watching this exchange with a puzzled yet guarded look. It might have been Emory who’d sent that radio message out, but she spoke for all Eclipse-born, for Sidraeus, too. And Atheia had a message of her own to send.
You might want to look away for this,she told Romie as she lifted a surgical knife from a tray and got to work.
28EMORY
WHAT JAE HAD SAID WEREa few jarsof moonbrew ended up being a whole cellar full of them.
“Can you believe it?” Virgil exclaimed, grabbing as many jars as his arms could hold. “Barely any wine in this place, but moonbrew they’ve got enough of to last us through the coming apocalypse.”
Jars of the cloudy liquid were passed along to everyone in the safe house, and even the disagreeable scholar and his friends joined in this moment of levity. EvenBaz, whom Emory had never seen drink before. It was a delight to see the pink tinge to his cheeks, the easy smile he wore, the way his voice grew louder as he talked and laughed with family and friends, so very carefree.
Only Sidraeus kept to himself, sticking to the shadows and watching the merriment with an unreadable expression. But Emory could tell there was something like longing there, a desire to be a part of such mundane behavior. What kept him from joining in, she didn’t know.
The night went on and thoughts of Sidraeus vanished fromher mind just as he seemed to vanish from the party. Emory found herself listening to her father, Alya, and Vera exchange memories of her mother; found herself laughing until her sides hurt at the stories Jae and Theodore told as they reminisced on the early years of their printing press, as Professor Selandyn poked fun at them by telling her own stories of them as students back in the day.
Emory hadn’t felt this light in ages. Being here felt oddly like home. Maybe it had to do with the fact that her father was here, a piece of the home she’d always known. And Baz, too; the home she’d come to find in all the mornings spent with him hunched over books in the Decrescens library, in all the tiny moments where familiarity had breathed in their silences. Or even the family she had found in Vera and Alya, a different kind of home she was still getting used to.
