And it pounced.
There was a clash of shadows and teeth and water and claws. The walls of the cavern shook with the impact of the two monsters twining in a nightmarish dance. Her beast grew and stretched, filling the space within the cave until it became too big, a sentient thing with a will of its own.
There was a distant, thundering sound.
The water at her feet began to rise as more of it poured into the cave, quick and sudden with the force of the rising tide.
And Emory thought she might die here after all. At the hands of the umbrae or the tide or Keiran, it didn’t matter; she was trapped here. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Keiran push up on his elbows, the look he gave her promising death.
Emory took a step back, hit the rock behind her.
The Hourglass.
A way out. A door to somewhere beyond.
Emory whirled around to face it. She brought her still-bloody hand against the rock, where silver and water and blood swirled together into a great spiral at the middle.
Her blood was a key pressing into a lock.
The Hourglass became distorted. A bruise of darkness bloomed in its middle. It grew into a door, a fissure at the center of the Hourglass, a tear in the fabric of the world through which she glimpsed a sea of stars.
And she knew this darkness, recognized these strange tilting lights. Behind her, the shrieks of the umbrae and the roar of the tide were deafening, but they were distant things compared to the pull of what lay on the other side. It beckoned to her, called her forward like a million ghostly hands tugging at her, a thousand echoing sighs that seemed to whisper, There you are. We’ve been waiting for you.
Yes, her own heart answered.
But fear and doubt gripped her. She threw a glance over her shoulder, stomach turning at the sight of Keiran coming up on unsteady feet and the others still prone on the cave floor, lying in gradually rising water. She couldn’t leave them vulnerable to the umbrae and the tide that would come crashing in.
But the door to the Deep called to her. And somewhere beyond it was Romie, fearless Romie, about to go where she could not. Or maybe she’d gone already and everything was lost. But Emory had to know.
She flung a hand behind her, and the flimsy light wrapped around the Selenics amplified, protection against the umbrae. She called on whatever magic she could think of—Dreamer and Unraveler and Healer alike—and thought a single word.
Rise.
She glimpsed the flutter behind Virgil’s eyes, saw Nisha pushing herself slowly up on her elbows and Ife bringing a hand to her head, a dazed look on her face.
They had all made it out of the Beast once, had conquered the tide to claim their place in the Selenic Order; they could do so again. Emory only hoped they’d be fast enough to make it out before the tide trapped them inside.
She saw Keiran move toward her then.
“Don’t,” he commanded.
But his compulsion had no bearing on her now, not against the pull of this great darkness before her. She inched a toe across the threshold. The dark reached for her, drawing her forward like a tender lover. There was only this now. Everything else fell away: the Belly of the Beast, the hunger of the sea, the cold chill of nightmares still circling each other at her back.
The shape of her name yelled in the depths, a voice that told her to wait.
All of it faded until there was only that murmur brushing against her magic.
Emory, Emory.
The starlit void beckoned her forward.
Come, it whispered. Seek us as we have sought you.
And her blood was eager to answer its call.
38 BAZ
A SHRIEK ROSE IN THE depths of Dovermere. It pierced the quiet gloom and echoed oddly through the cave tunnels, giving Baz pause.
Kai turned dark eyes on him. The silver in his pupils and in his veins had dulled, but Baz could still feel it, the power that thrummed inside him in the wake of his Collapsing. Not an eclipsing of one’s self, but an awakening. This he thought again for the hundredth time, not quite able to wrap his mind around it.
“Do you feel that?” the Nightmare Weaver asked.
Cold seeped through Baz as if in answer. The dread he felt was all too familiar.
The umbra he and Emory had fought against. Jordyn.
Baz broke into a run.
He recognized the great cavern mouth that loomed up ahead. Hope and fear twisted in his gut as he spotted Emory in the middle of the Belly of the Beast. Nightmares stretched in every corner of the wide space, with not one umbra but two of them, squaring off in what looked like a brutal dance of shadowed claws and teeth. All around the raised platform were students slowly rising as if in a trance, and Emory stood in front of the distorted Hourglass, inching toward the impossible darkness that bloomed in the center of the column.
The door to the Deep.
Her name tore from Baz’s lips, a desperate plea for her to stop, a last lifeline thrown out at sea. He thought she might have heard him over the chaos that reigned; she seemed to pause, her head tilting ever so slightly toward him, as if she’d recognized his voice through the madness.
Baz flung his magic outward, willing—begging—time to stop. To give him one more second, one last chance to make this right between them.
Please wait, he thought. A prayer spoken to the dark, to the cave itself.
The cave knew him and this strange magic that flowed through his veins. It was an echo of the same power that made up the fabric of Dovermere.
Time, in all its strangeness.
And so the cave stopped for him. Power surged outward from him, and everything that it touched stilled, like dominoes falling over in one fell swoop. The waking students went motionless first, as did the tide at Baz’s back that had begun to rush in, nipping at his heels. The magic reached further still for Emory, for Keiran at her side, for the umbrae tearing each other apart—but it stopped before it could touch them, slipping from his grasp as a sudden force knocked Baz over, skewing his concentration. He thought it was the tide slipping past his magic’s grasp, but this tide was made of light and dark, great tendrils that wrapped around him, binding, limiting.
The kind of magic Emory had once used.
His name spilled from her mouth as she turned at last from the Hourglass, her eyes wide with horror. And then Keiran was between them, fury twisting his features. Light and darkness spilled from his hands, twisting into something else, a magic not entirely his own. The binds around Baz grew tighter, and he realized it was Keiran who commanded them.
Kai snarled as he tore toward Keiran. The sound drew the umbrae’s attention, as if these beasts of fear and darkness were called to the weaver of nightmares, answered to him now that he was Collapsed. They paused their thrashing as Kai pummeled into Keiran and the two of them splashed into the shallow water at the base of the Hourglass. Kai’s fists met with Keiran’s face, again and again and again. The two umbrae were at his back, leaning over his shoulder, and it almost looked like they were melding with him, lending him their cold, fathomless strength.
The Nightmare Weaver was dark fury, unleashing himself upon Keiran.
“Kai,” cried Emory, tears rolling down her cheeks. She stepped off the dais toward them, stopped just out of their reach. “Kai, stop.”
Kai’s fist stilled midair, as if her words had frozen him—and at the fury on his face, Baz wondered if she had done just that, compelling him with Glamour magic. Beneath him, Keiran was unconscious, his face a bruised and bloodied mess.