Emory could almost hear the pointed comment Romie might have made. People fear what they don’t understand, she would say, nose tilted up in disdain at such small-mindedness. But there’s beauty in death, you know.
Indeed, no one would ever dare frown upon a Healer, whose touch could prove more efficient than any modern medicine, but some magics, like a Shadowguide’s ability to commune with spirits, or a Reaper’s death touch, made most people uneasy—especially those with little to no magic. They don’t understand like we do that death is just as much a part of the sacred cycle as life, Romie would say.
It didn’t make losing her any easier.
“Here we are,” the driver exclaimed as the cab crested the hill. “Aldryn College.”
Everything in Emory seized as the heavy iron gates creaked their welcome, silver-wrought motto splitting down the middle as they opened: Post tenebras lux; iterum atque iterum.
After darkness, light; again and again.
Gravel crunched beneath the cab’s wheels. Emory had the sudden urge to tell the driver to stop, turn back, but the gates closed behind them with a clang of finality. Nerves rattled on the heels of nausea as she took in the familiar stone steps up to the inner courtyard, flanked by towering elms. Here the driver stopped. Emory handed him a few coins, clutched the strap of her bag. No sooner had she stepped out of the cab than she wished she’d stayed in it forever, already missing the anonymity of that liminal space, the feeling of being nowhere and nowhen and no one for as long as she remained between the life she’d left at home this very morning and the one waiting for her at Aldryn. The person she would have to become here.
Her heart thundered in her chest as she climbed those eight steps, one for each of the moon’s phases: a step for the new moon, three for the waxing, one for the full moon, and three for the waning.
She faltered at the top just as she had last year, though her nerves back then had been tinged with excitement, not dread. This is it, college at last, Romie had mused on their first day of freshman year, all starry-eyed as she took in the fabled campus. We get to reinvent ourselves here, be whoever we please. And though Emory had been eager to do just that, she never understood why someone like Romie would want to be anyone but herself, so effortlessly charming and unique in a way Emory had only ever dreamed of being.
For Emory, college was a chance to be known as more than what she’d been all her life: the girl who hailed from nowhere, who always came second-best, who’d been terrified of not getting into Aldryn because her magic was wholly unremarkable compared to her best friend’s.
It offered a clean slate, the first page in a new notebook just waiting to be filled.
She ran a finger along the scar on the inside of her wrist, a silver spiral that started at the base of her thumb and stopped on the tangle of stark blue veins at her pulse point. Her gaze went to the fountain at the center of the lawn, where the Tides of Fate guarded the names of the drowned. It was too late now to erase what had been written in silver and blood, she thought. Too late to even ponder such things, it seemed: the quad was void of its usual hum of activity, and the few stragglers hurrying through the cloisters made Emory realize just how late her train had been as the dean’s voice echoed from the assembly hall where she was giving her usual welcome speech.
Emory swore. As much as she dreaded this part—yearned to run to her dorm instead, shut herself in, and avoid everyone on campus for the rest of term—she had come back for a reason, equipped with a plan. And it all started here.
She tried to ease into the dark wood-paneled room unnoticed, but the heavy door slipped from her grasp and slammed shut behind her. Heads turned her way. Emory’s cheeks burned, and for a split second, she caught herself searching the sea of faces for the one person who might have made this easier. She could almost picture it: Romie waving her over to the seat she would have saved for her. An anchor in the storm as she’d always been, before everything had changed and the girl Emory had known since childhood started slipping away, swept up by something more sinister than the tide that took her.
But Romie was not here. And neither, apparently, was Romie’s brother. Relief and guilt churned in Emory’s stomach at his absence. Before she could dwell on it, she tightened her fingers around her satchel and took the first empty seat she could find. Chin held high, she tried to adopt the devil-may-care attitude Romie might have had in her place, but still she felt the furtive glances thrown her way, heard the murmurs rising.
That’s the girl who came back from the caves.
The student who survived the Beast.
The one the tide did not claim.
Dean Fulton called for silence. “I must insist once more that students stay clear of Dovermere Caves. After the tragic events of last spring, it begs repeating: Dovermere is unsafe, its tides unpredictable, and as such it remains strictly off-limits.”
Her dark eyes flitted toward Emory as she continued. “I urge you to remember those who have fallen. Remember Quince Travers and Serena Velan of House New Moon, and Dania and Lia Azula of House Waxing Moon. Remember Daphné Dioré and Jordyn Briar Burke of House Full Moon, and Harlow Kerr and Romie Brysden of House Waning Moon. Remember their names. Honor them by ensuring no other ever knows the same horrible fate. There is no glory to be found in those caves. Only death.”
Emory’s nails dug into her skin again as students looked her way. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to break. She’d spent months preparing for this moment, hoped the summer holiday might allow for things to settle—for the shock of tragedy to fade and the students of Aldryn College to forget, as she had tried so desperately to.
Eight of her classmates dead, and Emory the only one left standing.
She thought the images that burned behind her eyes might be visible for all to see. Nine freshmen standing in a circle around a column of rock, their bloody wrists bearing a spiral mark that glowed silver in the dark. The sound of the tide rushing in earlier than it should have, death eager to have its fill. The sea and the stars and her name whispered in her ear.
Bodies on the sand.
Foolish of her, really, to think such a thing might be so easily forgotten.
The dean kept talking, but Emory didn’t hear a word. Only when students stopped staring did she let out a breath, slowly uncurl her fists. Blood bloomed beneath her nails; her palms were a mess, but already the wounds were smoothing over, her healing magic surging with barely a thought from her to answer the pull of the new moon that governed it. She latched onto this small comfort as the pressure in her veins lessened. All summer she’d felt this inexplicable pressure, like an itch she couldn’t scratch that grew to a painful throb unless she drew blood.
She eyed the row of windows behind the dean, wary of the breeze they let in. She swore she heard a whisper slithering in, the sea calling to her, looking to wrap around her limbs, desperate to pull her down, down, down toward the Deep—
Emory saw him out of the corner of her eye. He sat a few rows away, a barrier between her and the windows, the sea beyond. Dusty light fell on the side of his face as he peered at her over a shoulder, casting the rest of his features in shadows. His unflinching stare pulled her up to the surface, made everything go quiet. She recognized his boyish good looks, those thick-lashed eyes: they were the first living thing she’d seen after waking next to those broken and bloated bodies.