“I hope you enjoyed the gift I sent you,” Atheia said to Sidraeus. “She was a dead ringer for Tala, wasn’t she? I’m sure the pain was excruciating.” She eyed his runes with hunger. “I’m looking forward to seeing you suffer in person.”
Sidraeus remained silent and unmoving, a storm growing behind his eyes.
“Nothing to say?” Atheia smirked. “I forgot how much I enjoy the magics of this world. The compulsion especially. Perhaps I’ll lift it only to hear you scream.”
She gave a jerk of her chin to the Regulators holding Emory, who shoved her to her knees right in front of Sidraeus and splayed her tattooed hand out so it was palm down on the floor. One of them crouched next to her wielding what looked like a hot iron.
A U-shaped brand.
Panic seized Emory. She tried to fight back against the Regulators’ hold, but whatever compulsion Atheia was working on Sidraeus must have extended to her, too. She couldn’t move a muscle.
“You know,” Atheia said, coming to stand between the two of them, “Clover did haveonedecent idea, wanting to make everyone into a Tidecaller. Of course, that’s not exactly what I want. I want to make magic unlimited as it once was, so that those who worship the Tides can touch all the magics at their disposal once more.” Her fingers hooked under Emory’s chin, tilting it up to look at her. “Your blood is going to help me achieve that. All the power you stole—I will spill it to restore lunar magic to its fullest.”
Emory wanted to tell Atheia it hadneverbeen like that with her magic. The only people she had evertakenfrom were the keys, but that was when she didn’t yet know how to control her magic. That was before she realized she couldborrowfrom them if only she asked. If they lent her their magic willingly, they didn’t experience the deadly leeching they had when Emory had forcibly taken from them.
But with lunar mages? There had never been such taking of power. Whenever she used lunar magic, she was manifesting the magic as her own, not pulling it from others. She was a mirror. A mimicker. Not a thief.
But not according to Atheia. To her, Emory was the reason lunar magic was so limited. Because, with Atheia’s return, lunar magicshouldhave been restored to what it once was—accessible to all, no matter their ruling lunar house or tidal alignment. That wasn’tthe case. And so surely, the Eclipse-born must be to blame, the Tidecaller in their midst enemy number one.
The Regulator holding the Unhallowed Seal came close, and the panic inside Emory grew until she found her voice, able to talk through Atheia’s compulsion.
“Please, Ro,” she begged, hoping Romie was still in there the way Keiran had been when he was possessed—and that she might have more influence over Atheia than Keiran had over Sidraeus.
“Begging mercy from Romie won’t help,” Atheia said with that vicious tilt of her lips. “She wants to eradicate Eclipse magic as much as I do.”
Emory shook her head. “Romie wouldn’t want that.”
Not if it meant the death of her brother, her father. Of Emory herself.
And yet… hadn’t Emory seen Romie’s growing disdain for her Tidecaller magic?
Atheia smiled at her knowingly, as if seeing the doubt plainly across her face. “It’s time you gave back what you took, Tidethief. All the power you stole—I will spill it to restore lunar magic to its fullest. But first, this.”
Emory heard Sidraeus in her mind, calling out her name like a lifeline thrown hopelessly in a stormy sea, as the Regulator brought the hot iron down on her hand. The Unhallowed Seal singed her skin, and then Emory’s own screams drowned out every sound.
The pain alone, she might have endured—she had suffered worse before—but it was the knowledge of what this was, what it meant, that drew tears from her eyes and hollowed out her very soul. The pain lasted less than a minute, but the loss she felt when the Regulators released her was unending. Like a part of her had forever been put to rest, and she was left a shade of herself.
On the back of her right hand, marring the surface of her newly modified tattoo, was the Unhallowed Seal.
She could no longer feel her magic.
She could no longer hear Sidraeus in her mind, either. And when she tilted her face up to look at him, the bleak horror in his expression reflected how powerless she felt.
But then—a flare of his ecliptic eyes, the whisper of a crowned shadow behind him. In a blur of motion, Sidraeus broke through whatever Glamour Atheia had held him in and launched himself at her. He was a vengeful storm of shadows that took Atheia by surprise. Her eyes bulged as the clawed hands of the umbra extended out of Sidraeus like a separate entity and closed around her neck. Regulators tried to stop him, but shadows shot them all back.
Emory didn’t have to hear his thoughts to know he was going to kill Atheia for this, and part of her was resigned to it. Romie was gone, after all, and Emory was powerless. Neither of them could stop this now.
I’m sorry, Ro.
But just as Atheia was about to succumb to Sidraeus’s power, he was forced to let go of her, shoved back by a strange rippling barrier that appeared between the two of them. It seemed to take both deities by surprise, as if this hadn’t been either of their doing.
In a swift, furious motion, Atheia produced a dagger that had been strapped to her leg and swiped at Sidraeus’s neck—only for the same ripple of energy to deflect the dagger. She tried again, aiming the dagger at his heart, but it stopped inches from his chest. And as she called on what must have been Reaper magic, as Sidraeus’s own shadows transformed into a piercing blade arcing toward Atheia’s head, that barrier stopped every one of their attempts.
They couldn’t kill each other no matter how much they wanted to. Some fault in the design, perhaps, or maybe this was just as the gods had always intended. The fate and the ruin, made to balance each other out and thus unable to exist without the other.Destined to circle each other in a lethal dance but never come close enough to end the other.
All the fight winked out of Sidraeus, as if he came to the same realization. Atheia seized the moment to conjure a damper collar and snapped it around his neck, making his lethal shadow disappear. Rendering him powerless once more.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he was shoved to his knees beside Emory again.
