That unnerving feeling Kai couldn’t shake only amplified. He glanced at Farran again, but the boy wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Care to explain what the hell’s going on?” Kai growled.
“Did he not tell you?” the god of the air quipped. “You mortals and your secrets. Always so delightful.”
Kai grabbed Farran by the collar of his shirt. “What. Are. They. Talking. About?”
At last, Farran met his gaze. “We needed someone in the livingrealms to open a portal into hell. Someone who’d have a reason to take such a risk.”
“Who?”Kai demanded.
The answer set all his nerves aflame.
“Baz.”
34BAZ
BAZ COULDN’T HELP BUT GOover the ritual steps in his mind as they hurried toward Decrescens Hall, thinking of all the ways it could go wrong.
But if it wentright, he could be seeing Kai this very night.
The Reaper room was thankfully empty when Virgil led them inside. It was just as he’d described, like a vibrant greenhouse plucked from Crescens Hall and transplanted here in a corner of Decrescens Hall, completely out of place in this house meant to represent sleep and endings and death. The golden-leafed tree in the center seemed to engulf the room, its branches grazing the domed glass ceiling beyond which stars glimmered in a dark sky.
Baz couldn’t breathe. He loosened his tie, a far cry from the satin neckcloth he’d worn two hundred years ago, yet the memory of Kai’s fingers at his neck as he did it up for him came to mind nonetheless.
Please let this work,Baz thought, aching for the moment he might hold Kai in his arms again.
With Professor Selandyn’s help deciphering the ritual—and Sidraeus lending a hand with nuances in the translation—they knew the ritual was a way to access the path between godsworld and abyss, heaven and hell. The tree was a portal, albeit nothing like the doors they had known so far. Once open, it would allow them to walk the path between godsworld and abyss—the same path that Sidraeus used to ferry stray souls to.
“Think of it as the inside of a tree trunk,” Sidraeus had explained. “Those of you who’ve been to the godsworld have seen the crystal-leafed tree that flourishes there. It connects to the abyss, where its dark roots emerge. The path that ties both realms together lies in the space between, on the inside of this massive trunk, spiraling like tree rings. Once we open up the portal, we’ll follow the path downward to the abyss… and hope we can easily climb back up once we’ve pulled your friends out.”
Baz took a steadying breath.One worry at a time.
“Found it.” Emory had been circling the trunk, searching for any indication of a portal opening. The same spiral mark that was found on all other doors was carved into the bark, so faded with age it was no wonder it had remained unnoticed all this time.
She looked up at Baz as he stepped to her side. “Ready?”
“Let’s hope this works,” he said shakily.
He was the one who had been given the ritual, the one so desperate to save Kai that he was willing to face the unknown bowels of hell itself. Here was his part in the story, the heroic stakes to claim as his own, and he was terrified. But he had to do this.
It was his turn to be a key—the fifth part that never quite fit with the others, that never belonged to Atheia like the blood and bones and heart and soul did. He was the lungs that answered to time alone. And as the Tidecaller, representing both life and death, above and below, Emory was the hand that would fit this fifth key into its lock, so to speak.
Baz pressed a hand against the trunk, right next to the carved spiral. He couldn’t exactly give up a lung, but he could give his breath.
A breath in, a breath out.
He could feel each thread of the portal, this ancient power hiding beneath the surface. He pulled on every one of them, coercing the portal to reveal itself, to open how it might have once in the past or would again in the future.
Baz wrenched his hand away from the bark as it burned. There was a crack of thunder as the tree was split open by a thread of lightning that ran up from its roots and all along the trunk. The air feltalivewith the sizzle of this fork of lightning, pulsing with the kind of magic Baz had only felt in Dovermere and in the god of balance’s workshop, the kind of otherworldly power that was unknowable, dangerous if it were ever to fall into the wrong hands. The lightning itself felt alive, carving paths along the trunk, spirals and jagged lines and symbols Baz did not know, until the design created an arch—a doorway.
Emory pressed a hand to the sizzling keyhole in its middle, and it opened onto a familiar darkness. She turned to Baz, wide-eyed. “We did it.”
Baz’s face split into a smile as relief flooded through him. He hadn’twantedto doubt that the ritual would work, but that doubt had very much still been in the back of his mind.
The others peered into the darkness visible through the portal. “I wouldn’t celebrate quite yet if I were you,” said Virgil. “Not when you’re the ones going inthere.”
At the trepidation in his voice, Baz forced himself to look at the darkness more closely. At first glance, he’d thought it looked exactly like the starry expanse beyond the Hourglass in Dovermere. But this darkness was complete and impenetrable.
“You’re sure you want us to stay behind?” Nisha asked, glancingbetween Emory and Baz. “We can come with you—”
