The Unhallowed Seal was the ultimate penalty for misusing magic. And to lie about one’s tidal alignment was among the very worst offenses.
Once, the Eclipse-born had been so wildly feared that it wasn’t uncommon for parents to forge birth certificates in the hopes of protecting their children from persecution. And though that was a long time ago, and lying about one’s alignment had since become damn near impossible to do, what with the appearance of intricate machines that tested their blood to verify their lunar house and tidal alignment, Emory was fairly certain this had never happened. That no one had ever suddenly become Eclipse-born, much less anything as unheard of as a Tidecaller.
She curled her hands into fists at her sides. This was the spiral mark’s doing, it had to be—she refused to believe she was Eclipse-born.
“You can’t tell anyone. This has to stay between us.”
Baz’s eyes bored into hers. The wind tore at his tangled curls, the only sound in the silence that stretched between them. He was the one person who knew, and if he turned from her now…
Fear and desperation seized her. “Please, Baz. I didn’t want this. These powers aren’t… I’m still the same as before.” She took a tentative step forward and Baz recoiled, as if he feared death still clung to her. “You have to believe me.” She hated how her voice broke.
Baz ran a hand over his tired face, pushing his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose before letting out an angry sigh. “Don’t you have any idea how dangerous Eclipse magic can be? It isn’t something you can keep secret. Even to the most well-trained of us, it’s unstable and unsafe. It has to be controlled, and from what I just saw, you have no control over it whatsoever. You would’ve likely Collapsed if I hadn’t intervened.”
Realization dawned on Emory. He was right. Whether or not these magics were the mark’s doing—that it somehow gave her Eclipse magic, made her into a Tidecaller through whatever twisted ritual she’d interrupted in the caves—she’d had no control tonight, had nearly killed someone because of it.
She couldn’t let that happen again.
“You could train me,” she said quietly.
A nervous laugh bubbled from Baz’s mouth before he saw how serious she was.
“Absolutely not.”
“You could.” Her heart thudded in her chest at how perfect this was. The answer to her problem, staring right at her. “You could show me how to control it, how to—Where are you going?” she yelled at Baz’s back as he stormed off again.
“Did you not hear a single word I just said?”
Emory hurried to catch up to him. “I get it, it’s dangerous. So teach me how to control it so I don’t hurt anyone before I can even make sense of it.”
“There’s no way in the Deep I’m training you. I don’t know the first thing about Tidecaller magic.”
“At the very least, you know more than I do about Eclipse magic.”
“Exactly, which means I know that if you slip up, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“That little display of power you did back there begs to differ. You wound back time, kept my magic from slipping further. You said it yourself, you probably stopped me from Collapsing.” His pace quickened, but she matched it stride for stride. “If Eclipse magic is so dangerous, then having you train me is the best solution for everyone.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s stupid and irresponsible and I don’t want any part of it.”
“Please, Baz.”
“You’re on your own.”
“You know I’ll get branded if I go to the dean!” Emory shouted as he kept walking away from her. Her desperation sharpened. “She’ll send me straight to the Institute, and they’ll seal my magic off without question because when’s the last time anyone’s heard of a fucking Tidethief existing?”
Before she could think twice, the words Emory knew might finally reach him tore angrily from her throat: “Do you really resent me so much you’d let them brand me like they did your father?”
His back went straight as a rod. Emory’s face flushed as he ever so slowly turned to her. She almost wished she had his ability so she could swallow the words back, knowing how sore a subject his father’s Collapsing was. It was the moment that changed everything for Baz—that changed everything between them, too, squashing the budding friendship they’d had as he became a recluse and she let him, finding it easier to keep him at a distance like everyone else did because the alternative would have been social suicide.
She wasn’t exactly proud of herself for it, nor for bringing the subject up now. But she wouldn’t back down from this. She needed him. Needed someone to help her control this magic while she figured out why—how—she had it at all.
“I can’t do this on my own,” Emory whispered against the chaos of the wind and the sea, on the verge of tears at the veracity of those horrible words. She’d never been alone. Romie had been by her side since their first day at Threnody’s prep school for gifted children, a steady presence to count on at every turn. But not here now when Emory needed someone most.
And whose fault was that, in the end?
Baz pressed his lips together, glancing around uneasily.
“You don’t have to decide tonight,” Emory suggested at his hesitation. “We can meet up tomorrow before class, figure out how to go about this. I just… Please don’t go to the dean. I don’t want to be sent to the Institute.”
His gaze found hers and held it this time. She could see the wheels turning behind his eyes, the conflicted emotions churning in them at her plea. She saw the moment his decision skewed in her favor by the way his shoulders drooped. He gave a resigned sigh. “Fine. Tomorrow morning at seven. I’ll keep this between us until then.”
Before she could say anything, Baz took a step back, holding up a hand as if to ward her off. “Right now, I need to think. Just… let me think this through.”
“Of course,” Emory breathed. “Thank you, Baz.” The words felt entirely inadequate.
Baz turned from her, and she was left to watch his figure recede down the path that cut toward town. She was alone, yet she got the impression someone was watching her again. Dovermere’s looming presence, perhaps, or the lingering blame in Travers’s eyes.
Emory tipped her head back to the sky, wondering at the moonless expanse she’d once regarded so fondly. It held no kinship now, only questions and cold, distant stars that looked down on her as accusingly as they had last spring. She still couldn’t refute them, not with the memory of death on her fingertips.
* * *
Dovermere calls to her in a dream.
She enters a world of foreboding darkness where the only marker of time is the strange, slow dripping of water. The breathing silence of Dovermere walks beside her, unsettlingly alive.
She finds them in a ring around a great silver hourglass. Fine black sand falls from one elongated bulb to the other. She watches as they bring their hands against the glass. Flowers bloom in the top bulb, narcissus and hollyhock, orchid and poppy, shifting with the sand slowly swirling down.
And now blood mars the surface of the hourglass where eight red hands claw at it, desperate to break it, but the glass does not shatter. Flowers drop in the bottom bulb and bodies drop in answer. Their time is up, and Emory tries to move, to help, to speak, but she is here and not here, and she thinks they do not see her until a boy with red hair turns to her.