So Emory looked away.
She did not move, not as Keiran spoke her name again, nor as his voice grew fainter until it was nothing at all. When she did look up, it was to glimpse the umbrae pulling him over the edge of the path. The last thing she saw of him were his bloodied hands seeking purchase among stars.
And then she was screaming.
A black-tipped hand wrapped around her neck, claws digging into skin. Fear like she’d never known before surged in her as she stared into the fathomless eyes of an umbra, and it was so much worse than last time, every vicious emotion and memory that rose to the surface of her subconscious chipping away at her soul.
Emory was being hollowed out, doomed to become nothing but a husk. Empty and lifeless.
Maybe she deserved it. Maybe she was no better than Keiran. Without her, none of this would have happened. No one would have died.
She could see nothing past the harrowing images behind her tightly shut eyes, could feel nothing but numbing pain and piercing cold and this never-ending despair and—
The slightest prickle on her wrist, not painful at all but comforting. Familiar.
Emory, Emory.
Her eyes flew open to see a star shooting toward her, carving a blinding path through the dark mass of umbrae. The star was calling her name. It had a voice she’d recognize anywhere, clear and bright and true, and eyes full of starlight, and freckles that were their own constellation.
Romie was here.
Romie was alive and she was here, barreling toward her like the unstoppable force that she was.
Relief, joy, love—they washed over Emory like a tidal wave, filling all the parts of her the umbra sought to extinguish. Light briefly surged around her once more as she fought to gain control of herself and her magic. It blinded the umbra. She fell limply to her knees as it let go, brought a hand to the bloody wounds around her neck and willed them to close.
But the umbra wasn’t done. It found a new target in Romie, its black-hole eyes sizing her up with gleeful hunger. Gorged as it was on Emory’s fears, it looked bigger, and all the more terrifying.
It pounced, faster than lightning, and Romie mirrored its gesture.
“Ro!”
Romie gave a ferocious grunt, but the umbra didn’t touch her. It stumbled back, shying away from the brilliant light that shot from the glowing orb in her hand.
A star plucked from the darkness, a dream to hold the nightmare at bay.
Suddenly, Romie dropped the star as if burned, clutching her hand to her chest. Emory pushed to her feet, stumbled toward Romie as more umbrae flocked around her, but her friend didn’t need her, not as she grabbed two more stars, one in each hand, crying out in pain even as she held them up to fend off the onslaught of umbrae.
Romie looked at Emory, then beyond her, yelling something about closing a door.
The door.
The rift in the darkness was still open, and the umbrae were heading straight for it—for the caves beyond.
Emory froze, remembering how the shade that Jordyn had become had followed her into the waking world. She couldn’t let that happen now, couldn’t let the umbrae reach Baz and Kai, but they were moving undaunted toward the door, and how in the Tides’ name was she supposed to stop them?
But Emory had unlocked it, that door. Her magic—her blood—had done so without her even thinking it.
And keys worked both ways. Something unlocked could be locked again.
She flung a hand out toward the rift, her magic singing in her veins. Lock, lock, lock. It started to close just as a trickle of umbrae reached it, a horde of nightmares eager to escape this tenebrous world that had birthed them.
“Come on, lock,” Emory sobbed through gritted teeth.
The rift was stitching itself together too slowly, allowing screeching shades to slither through to the other side. Those that remained turned to her like they knew she was the one denying them access to the waking world. They rushed toward her, and Emory cowered, stumbling until she hit something solid. Romie, screaming in pain at the burning stars still in her hands. She dropped one of them with a broken whimper, and as its light vanished, they stood with their backs together, umbrae all around them now, a wall of impenetrable darkness closing in on them.
Emory knew this was how they would die, smothered by this tide of nightmares. Romie’s empty, bloodied hand clutched hers, the same thought no doubt crossing her mind. The star she still held in her other hand was dim now, nearly spent.
If this was death, Emory thought, maybe it was a small kindness that they were here together at the end of all things.
But this couldn’t be the end—after everything they’d gone through, she refused to lose her friend here, now, when they’d just found each other again.
Emory gently pried the star from Romie’s hand. It seared her skin, pain like she’d never known. She bit down on her lip, wondering how Romie had withstood it.
“What are you doing?” Romie asked in a small, panicked voice as Emory took a step forward, brandishing the star like a shield.
Emory didn’t have an answer, only this odd certainty in her bones. She looked into the eyes of the umbrae and suddenly didn’t fear them. They were like Jordyn—had been people once too, poor souls trapped here by whatever horrible means.
She thought of Serena, Dania, Daphné, and Harlow, who hadn’t stood a chance against the tide; of Travers and Lia and Jordyn, taken somewhere they couldn’t survive.
She thought of Kai, Baz, Romie—all of them trapped in the confines of their own fears or in prisons of others’ making. Her making.
They deserved to be set free.
The fading star glowed brighter in her hand. Emory faced the nightmares with a single thought.
Heal.
The umbrae erupted in brilliant light. The blast was like that of a Collapsing, silver and bright and so powerful it brought Emory to her knees, tore a scream from her throat. She didn’t understand the magic she was wielding. It was a symphony of all the things that might help the umbrae shuck off their pain and wounds and fears. Dreamer and Nightmare Weaver and Healer alike, Purifier and Lightkeeper and Unraveler. Reaper—the magic of endings. Like what Virgil had told her about clearing diseased fields so that newer things could grow.
She gave the umbrae such an end. And in their unmaking, the sleepscape gained a new constellation of stars. Dreamers and Nightmare Weavers who’d lost themselves in the dark, in this space between worlds, to become shades of themselves.
No more.
The door shut at last, locked tight, sealed with that brilliant light.
Emory let go of her magic, and fell with Romie among newborn stars.
40 BAZ
IN THE QUIET, BAZ WAS afraid to breathe.
Blood pounded in his ears as he stared at the place where Keiran had disappeared. He ached to step through the door, pay whatever price was needed just to see that Emory was okay.
She was gone. She was gone she was gone she was gone she was gone.
He thought of turning back the cogs of time, just a few minutes so he could stop Keiran from slipping through, but somehow he knew that even his magic couldn’t reach beyond the Hourglass. Yet if he could just crane his neck through the dark, find Emory within it, make sure she was all right…
His hand hovered over the striated rock, just below that blooming darkness at its center.
“Baz.”
He wrenched his hand back. Kai stood behind him, body tense. As if he’d meant to pull him away from the door if he tried to step through it.