Vivianne snorted. “Because Keiran is going to wake the Tides and return our magic to its former glory? Come now, Artem. You can’t be that foolish. Your dad went down this very road, and look where it led.”
Artem. Why did that name sound so familiar…？
“But we’ve got her, Viv. She’s the key that my dad and Keiran’s parents never found, the answer they never even knew they were looking for.”
Artem’s gaze cut across the room, and Baz quickly shut his eyes, pretending to be unconscious.
“The Tides will emerge from the depths of Dovermere and finally rid our shores of the stain of the Eclipse. They’ll give us back the power those Tidethieves stole from us.” Baz heard shuffling feet behind the desk, the clear clinking of glass. “After today, we won’t need to taint ourselves with their blood to know the full might of the Tides’ power anymore. Our magic will be free-flowing and true, as it once was.”
Baz’s pulse quickened as he recalled the silver blood they’d extracted from Kai.
They want our raw power, Theodore had said, and for that they need more of us to Collapse. They need us in here.
“The rest of the Council won’t be pleased you kept this from them,” Vivianne said.
“You’re wrong. The Council will praise us. The whole world will—”
The sudden blare of an alarm cut off his words. Shouts and footsteps echoed out the door.
Artem swore. “I need to go check on that.”
“I’m not staying here alone with two Eclipse-born,” Vivianne scoffed as if they were the scum of the earth.
“Then come with me and stay out of the way.”
“What about them?”
“They’re not going anywhere.”
Footsteps treading past him. A door opening. The click and switch of it locking from the outside.
Baz tensed, daring to crack open an eye. They were gone.
He took a proper look at the cuffs around his hands and realized with a sense of relief they weren’t the damper kind—just regular cuffs, locked too tight around his wrists. He fought against the haze still in his mind, tried to call on his magic, but it felt faint and far away. They’d likely given him some kind of sedative.
He crawled over to Kai, shaking him with his restrained hands.
“Kai.”
His eyes fluttered beneath their lids, but he remained lost to unconsciousness. Silver blood had dried in the crook of his arm, streaking from where a needle had been. And it was as if in that silver blood Baz could feel the sleeping magic inside Kai waning, like an ember about to flicker out and become nothing but ash. He looked around wildly for something to help, overwhelmed by this horrible feeling that if he let that ember of power die out, it would take Kai with it. His gaze landed on the desk, where a vial of something silver shimmered in the faint light.
Silver blood. Magic in its rawest form.
Baz could feel it coming off the vial: pure, undiluted power. The kind he’d sensed slumbering in Kai’s veins when he’d first visited him at the Institute, this vast power just beneath his skin that the Unhallowed Seal kept in check. The very seal that was supposed to keep the Shadow’s curse at bay, keep them from slipping into something dark and uncontrollable.
Raw power—was that truly what happened when one Collapsed? If any Eclipse-born could survive it like Baz and Jae apparently had—if they managed to escape the suppression of the seal…
They could be limitless. Power unrivaled.
And if the Regulators were taking their blood—if they knew the kind of power a Collapsing wielded—Baz could only imagine what they might be doing with it.
He bit back a sob, racking his brain for what to do. Outside, alarms and shouts still sounded. Even so, he needed to act quickly before Artem and Vivianne came back. He tested his magic against the cuffs again, pulling on the thread that would unlock them…
A click, and at last they slipped off his wrists.
His magic was waking, stirring. Too slow.
He had to reverse the damage done to Kai, pull on the threads of time the way he’d done for Emory with her Collapsing. But that kind of magic…
That kind of magic might have once brought about his own Collapsing. But he’d already Collapsed.
All this time, he’d had this raw power coursing through his veins without even knowing. His fingers thrummed with the power of that revelation, his heart beating steadily, like the ticking of a clock.
You have to be careful now…
But Baz had been careful all his life, and what good had that done him?
He owed it to Kai—to the Tides-damned Nightmare Weaver himself—to shed his fears for good.
Baz blew out a breath. The threads of time appeared all around him. He seized the one tied to Kai, the one that would return the blood back to where it belonged, in his veins and not in any Regulator’s vials. Fear was a distant thing, still there but shoved deeper down into Baz’s vast well of power. And he marveled at it, this ease with which time unraveled at his command.
Life bloomed under Kai’s skin, and that ember grew to a flame as magic thrummed once more in his veins. It was still contained by the brand, trapped like a flame in an oil lamp, but there all the same.
Kai opened his eyes, drawing a sharp inhale.
Baz fell back with a shaky breath of relief. “Nice of you to finally wake up, asshole.”
Kai’s mouth slanted upward at the echo of his own words mirrored back to him. For once, though, he seemed to have no witty retort of his own. He awkwardly pushed himself up, hands still cuffed together, and sat resting his head against the wall. His eyes closed as if this small action had taken everything from him.
“I thought I was gone there for a second.” He peered at Baz. “I thought you were done for. Tides, Brysden. When you barged into the room like that…”
His throat bobbed with emotion as he swallowed whatever words he might have said.
Baz was almost too afraid to ask: “Do you remember what they did to you?”
“They took my blood. The power flickering in and out… It started the second they drew my blood. It felt like they were ripping my very soul from my body. Like they were bleeding me dry of everything that made me me.” Kai’s expression darkened. “You saw who did this, right? I swear if I ever get my hands on Dungshit Fuckby, he’ll wish he’d never been born. Him and all the Regulators in this Tides-forsaken place.”
A shiver ran up Baz’s spine; he didn’t think for a second that Kai was bluffing.
And it hit him then—truly hit him that he was the one to blame for what had happened to Keiran’s parents, not his father. He was the one who’d Collapsed all those years ago and brought down the Brysden & Ahn printing press, not Theodore.
His father wasn’t a killer. He was.
Keiran must not have known. If he had, Baz doubted he’d still be breathing.
“We need to get out of here,” he said.
With a flick of his magic, Kai’s cuffs unlocked. Kai looked around, rubbing at his wrists. “Where is here, anyway?”
“I don’t know. A Regulator’s office? There was one in here just now before the alarms went off. He and some woman were talking about—about taking Eclipse blood and using it for something.”