Baz frowned. “What do you mean?”
He saw it then—the body sprawled on the path, blond hair unmade from her braided crown, lunar flower petals tangled in the golden strands. Emory’s eyes were glassy, fixed unseeing on a point above. Blood pooled out of her, and it wassilver, before it became black and oozing.
Baz ran to her side. “No, this can’t be…” He turned to Romie with horror. “What happened?”
“She’s Eclipse-born, Baz. A Tidethief at that. Her blood must be returned where it belongs. Just like all the others.”
As if conjured by her words, countless bodies appeared around them, their spilt silver blood pooling onto the path. Faces Baz recognized: Jae, Selandyn, Rusli, and all the others he’d come to know at the safe house. His own father.
Kai.
“No…”
“I’m sorry I had to do it,” said Romie. She held a dagger that dripped silver blood. Her mouth was downturned. “I’m even sorrier that I have to do it to you next. But it’s the only way you’ll be free of the Shadow’s taint.”
Baz shook his head, stumbling away from her, until he tripped and went sprawling. This couldn’t be happening. “You’re not my sister,” he breathed, crawling backward. “You’re Atheia. Romie would never do this.”
Romie’s eyes shifted colors like a prism as she knelt and leaned over him, holding the dagger to his throat. “Wouldn’t she?” The curve of her mouth was imbued with a cruelness that was never Romie’s. “She has always resented Eclipse magic, a secret in her heart that took root and festered until resentment became fear becamesurvival.She understands this world cannot survive with the taint of Eclipse magic present, and she, like any survivor, is willing to do what must be done to save it.”
The edge of the dagger dug into Baz’s neck.
“Romie,” he breathed, “please…”
Her eyes went brown again. That cruelness gone, leaving behind a pained expression. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Baz. But she’s right—I have to do this to save the world.”
She slashed the dagger across Baz’s neck.
Silver blood gushed out of him. Pain and agony unlike any he’d known tore through him. Romie held him as he died, whispering tearful sorrys even as she still held the dagger to his throat. As he looked at her, Baz couldn’t find it in himself to hate her or even blame her. This wasn’t his sister. This wasn’t real. And even if itwere, he did not believe for a second that her mind had not been poisoned by Atheia.
With his last breath, he said, “It’s all right. I forgive you.”
Romie stopped crying. She looked at him for a moment that seemed suspended in time before her features contorted, her face elongating into something born of nightmares. She seemedfuriouswith his forgiveness, enraged at being denied something. She screamed a horrible sound and lunged at Baz as if she were a monster about to devour him—
Baz held his hands up to his face, but the pain he expected never came. He opened his eyes to find he was alone on the obsidian path. No bodies. No possessed sister. His hand flew to his throat where there was no wound, no blood.
It had all been in his head.
A soft sound made him turn around. He was no longer alone: Sidraeus was a bit farther down the path from where Baz stood next to the hourglass. And Emory…
Baz’s heart faltered as he spotted her farther still down the path, in the direction he knew in his gut to be the abyss, even though the path still appeared like a linear, vertical thing rather than the spiraling staircase it had first appeared as. A way to confuse souls, Baz assumed, so that they would unconsciously choose whether they went to the godsworld or the abyss, drawn blindly in whatever direction called to them.
Did that mean, on some level, that Emory thought she belonged in the abyss? She moved slowly as if sleepwalking, her back to them so they couldn’t see her face. And though the abysswaswhere they were headed, an inexplicable fear gripped Baz.
“Emory—”
But Sidraeus was already at her side, pulling her gently back. She blinked up at him, coming out of her trance. Baz didn’t hear the words Sidraeus whispered to her, only saw the slight nod Emory gave him, her face so, so pale, as if she’d actually been drained of blood like Baz had seen in his own hallucination.
The path that led toward the abyss felt so oppressive. Baz had the unshakable thought that if Emory had reached the abyss while still in thrall to whatever strange forces were at work here, she would have never returned. By the looks of it, Emory could feel it too. She kept glancing toward the abyss, as if sensing a presence there, something that might be calling to her. Baz, who still stood next to the hourglass, wanted desperately to drag her back up the path, far away from the allure of hell. Sidraeus seemed to have the same thought as he reached for Emory’s wrist, eyeing her warily.
“I’m fine,” she said to his wordless inquiry, shaking him off. “Really, I am.” She looked at Baz, calling out, “Are you?”
He nodded, swallowing thickly.
“We should keep moving,” Sidraeus said. “Before another vision takes hold of you two, and your will is no longer your own.”
Emory seemed to steel herself, her hands balling into fists at her side. “Let’s go to hell, then.”
But as she and Sidraeus started down the path, Baz found himself glancing at the hourglass again.
