“A ritual. That’s what Keiran and the Regulator who came to get me said. They needed more power for whatever it was they were planning.”
The Tides will emerge from the depths of Dovermere and finally rid our shores of the stain of the Eclipse.
Cold slithered up Baz’s spine. “The others at the Institute… the ones who’ve been here the longest…” Kai had said their nightmares were empty and hollow—that they felt like ghosts. “What if they’re like that because the Regulators have been harnessing their sealed magic for years and it’s depleting their reservoirs? Taking every last drop of magic from their veins?”
Kai swore, the look in his eyes turning violent. “My blood—”
“I fixed it,” Baz said. “It’s in your veins where it belongs.”
A glance at the empty vial on the desk confirmed it. Kai watched him curiously. “How did you—”
The door unlocked, swung open. Baz scrambled to put himself in front of Kai, readying his magic to stop time, to keep Artem and Vivianne from coming in—
But stared dumbfounded at Jae Ahn instead.
“Jae—what are you doing here?”
“Saving you, clearly,” Jae said with ragged breath. They snuck a look behind them before shutting the door, then strode across the room to the desk. The sight of their charcoal uniform was jarring, despite it only being an illusion. “Gather anything you can find, whatever we might use as evidence for what they did. Quickly now—that alarm should buy us some time but not much.”
“How did you even know we were here?”
“I was coming to see Kai when I ran into Vera outside. She was worried sick that something happened to you.” Their eyes cut to Baz. “I told you to stay away from here, Basil.”
“We figured out what they’re doing.” Baz walked over to the desk. He held up the empty vial, watching Jae’s face blanch at the remaining silver sheen. “They took Kai’s blood. His magic.”
Jae looked between Baz and Kai. “Are you…”
“I’m fine,” Kai bit out.
“I used my magic to reverse the damage,” Baz explained. “My Collapsed magic.”
Jae’s face fell. “Basil…”
They took a tentative step toward him, but Baz shook his head, angry now. “How could you let Dad wither away in here while I remained free?”
“Your father begged me. He knew I’d been living a normal life since I’d Collapsed, and he knew I would keep an eye on you, help you through it as best I could. Those first few months, I was so scared you might slip into that wicked power we’re always warned of. But… you never did. At such a young age, you already had more control over your raw magic than I ever did. So I thought it best to keep you in the dark. Let you lead a normal life.”
Baz felt Kai watching them with narrowed eyes as he pieced it all together. “How in the Deep aren’t you both glowing like fucking silver stars? How’d you manage to escape this?” he seethed, shoving his branded hand in their faces.
Baz had been wondering the same thing. The answer was somewhere deep in his bones; he could feel it. The Collapsing was supposed to eclipse them until there was nothing left but this endless darkness, evil incarnate. The Regulators branded them because that sheer power was supposed to be a threat to everyone around them. But if Baz and Jae could live their entire lives with the raw power of their Collapsing coursing through their veins—if Baz could control it, this thing he’d suppressed all his life without even knowing what it was—then certainly, others could too.
Kai could.
The only thing stopping him was the U-shaped burn scar on his Eclipse tattoo. The Unhallowed Seal, this thing that sought to quiet the magic in their veins.
An idea started to take shape in Baz’s mind as Jae pocketed the empty vial Kai’s blood had been in.
“There’s no time to explain,” Jae muttered defeatedly. “I swear I will once we get out of here, but right now, we need evidence. They’re never going to stop coming after Eclipse-born if we have nothing to use against them.”
Jae tried to open one of the drawers, which was locked. A quick, inquiring look at Baz. And though he still had a million questions he wanted to ask, he shoved all of them down to do this one task, pulling on the thread of time that saw the drawer unlocked.
Jae rummaged through it, slamming documents and ledgers and loose papers on the desk. Kai grabbed a small, black leather-bound ledger from the pile.
Fury swept over his features. He swore, handing the ledger to Baz. “Look.”
It was opened on a page containing Kai’s name, the date his blood sample was taken, how much of it had been harnessed. An earlier entry caught Baz’s attention—Theodore Brysden. But his father’s name was crossed out with a note written in the margin that read: BAD SAMPLE—SYNTH DIDN’T WORK.
Baz frowned at the term. Synth. He flipped to the start of the ledger, where a title was written neatly at the top: S.O. Synthetic Magics. Above the title was a spiral just like the one Emory had on her wrist—like the one on the Hourglass—and below it, a list of instructions:
To make synthetic:
Take 1 vial of blood from a Collapsed Eclipse-born—needs to be in its silver state; the Unhallowed Seal prevents the silver from leaving their veins.
Combine with 1 vial of blood from a magic user with the desired tidal alignment. Note: To imbue synthetic with more than one tidal alignment, use double the amount of silver Eclipse blood.
Ink blood mixture into skin; to activate, wash in salt water. The synthetic lasts approx. 6 hours & works regardless of the moon phase.
Horror was slow to dawn on Baz, and then it hit all at once. “The magic they put to sleep after we Collapse… They take it from us to make some kind of synthetic magic out of it.”
His father’s sample must not have worked because he hadn’t Collapsed. His magic hadn’t yet become this raw, silvery thing in his veins, and so somehow, it had no consequence on these experiments.
Baz frowned at Jae. “Wouldn’t they have seen that Dad’s blood was red?”
“Doubtful. The illusion I placed on him makes it look like he bleeds silver, even now. I made sure my illusion was a sustainable one. An upside of Collapsing, to maintain that kind of magic with little effort.”
“Wouldn’t your blood be silver?” Kai frowned between Jae and Baz.
“No. The silver only stays for a short period after the Collapsing, fading back to red over time—unless, of course, it’s stoppered by the Unhallowed Seal. It’s why those of us who Collapse but manage to escape the seal can avoid detection. Our blood runs red.”
Baz quickly went through the other journals on the desk, full of notes and theories and lists he couldn’t decipher. His eyes caught on Emory’s name, the newest entry at the bottom of one such list. Her date of birth had been crossed out, with another inked over it. A single day before it. Baz’s eyes swept the list all the way to the top, where the title Suspected Tidecaller Eclipses had been penned. His spine tingled with understanding: these were people born across centuries on the same ecliptic event as Emory. A rare variant of a total solar eclipse.