If he was apologizing for trying to kill Romie despite his promise not to or for failing to do so, she couldn’t tell, nor did she have time to consider how she felt about it, because suddenly the room was trembling with such force that part of the tree was uprooted and the glass dome over their heads cracked and burst, sending lethal shards flying toward them.
Emory shielded her face, but the glass never reached her, Atheia standing tall to erect a ward over their group. The Tidal Council and Regulators and their still-Glamoured captives had all been knocked around by the powerful quake and were now righting themselves, looking at one another with alarm.
From somewhere outside, screams drifted to them.
“No,” Atheia breathed. Her mouth was agape, a storm of emotions flitting across her face, as if she could sense something the rest of them could not. “It can’t be.”
“What is it?” asked one of the Tidal Council. “What happened?”
“Clover has done the unthinkable.” Atheia’s kaleidoscope eyes homed in on Sidraeus. “Can you feel it? The chaos he has wrought, the mess he’s created? The fault lies with you, Sidraeus.” To the Regulators, she said, “Bring them to the quad. It’s time we put an end to the eclipse.”
42BAZ
BAZ WAS SUDDENLY SPRAWLED ATthe foot of a familiar tree, his limbs tangled with Kai’s. Their hands were still clasped tightly, a testament to how scared they’d both been to lose the other. Despite the horrors they’d just escaped, Baz wanted to stay here in this desperate embrace and forget the world around them existed. Kai seemed to share the sentiment. His eyes dropped to Baz’s mouth. Heat rose up Baz’s neck.
Now wasn’t the time for a proper reunion.
But oh, how he’d missed this—the way his heart galloped at a single look from Kai, how the two of them seemed to melt into each other like hot metal poured into a mold. They were a perfect fit as Kai’s face nestled in the crook of Baz’s neck and Baz pulled him in closer, arms winding tightly around him. They held each other in the quiet, not needing words or anything but this closeness, this brief moment of stillness in the chaos.
Noises sounded from afar. Reality crashing in. Too brusque an end to too tender a moment.
Neither of them let the other go even as they got to their feet, as if their interwoven fingers were the last shred of strength they were both holding on to.
Kai’s gaze sharpened as he took in the Reaper room they were in. “What is this place? Where did that bastard send us?”
“Back to Aldryn,” Baz answered. The room was in shambles—the tree half uprooted, the ceiling shattered—and it was empty, quiet. “The others should be here…”
Unless, he thought, they hadn’t gotten out of the portal.
Baz reached for the familiar pocket watch he’d snatched from the god’s workshop—the device that had helped him navigate time travel. He didn’t know what compelled him to pick it up when he saw it there amid the rubble of the destroyed workshop, but it could come in handy now, to flick open the little magnifying glass that would allow him to view past events.
Before he could do so, noises echoed outside the room again—only this time, there was no denying they werescreams.
Wordlessly, Baz and Kai hurried out the door toward the screaming, still holding hands. Down the corridor, students had amassed outside Decrescens library, their faces pressed against a large diamond-paned window. They all looked aghast at what they saw outside, hands covering their mouths, tears in their eyes, the air ripe with their fear.
Baz and Kai shoved their way through to see what they all stared at. The Aldersea wasn’t entirely visible from here, as Decrescens Hall was set farther back from the edge of the cliff, behind Pleniluna Hall. But Baz could see enough of it to knowsomethinghad changed. He couldn’t make sense of it, only grew more and more confused the longer he stared at it.
Students around them were shouting, some of them racing through the corridors toward Pleniluna Hall to get a better view. Baz and Kai ran after them, and finally, on the very top floor ofthe Pleniluna library, they got a full view of the coast.
In the distance, a storm raged over Cadence, veins of lightning turning the dark skies a deep indigo.
Only it wasn’t Cadence anymore. Not really.
Where the village had once been now stood twin peaks that were as different from each other as night and day: one, a snow-capped mountain of moss-clad rock; the other, a desolate, jagged black volcano. They seemed fused together in an impossible way, as if the peaks had merged to create one, but fell short of such a vision.
The quaint cottages of Cadence were still there, Baz realized as he swept a gaze down the length of the peaks, but instead of being neatly organized along cobblestone streets gently sloping toward the sea, they now clung to the side of the mountains. As if a giant had plucked them from their places and scattered them along the mountainside.
And the Aldersea that had hugged the Cadence coast was no longer a sea at all but a sprawling forest of ancient-looking trees, their branches twisting up toward stormy skies.
As Baz stared and stared, trying to make sense of what his eyes were seeing, a loud roar rent the night. The source: something large flying above the twin peaks.
Something that looked, impossibly, like adragon.
Understanding hit Baz all at once. Clover hadn’t blown up all the doors between worlds. He’d gone one step further andcombinedall worlds, fusing them together. Whatever he did had created this great cosmic shift that saw the four worlds overlapping in strange, chaotic ways. Forests growing out of the sea. Snowy peaks sprouting in the space between islands. Beaches becoming deserts with rivers of lava running through. Different shores colliding to make something new.
All the worlds’ peoples and beasts and magics clashing in thisone great space, so that Clover could easily rule over this new domain of his.
A world without borders. Without limits.
