As Baz waited in the quad, part of him hoped Emory wouldn’t show, that she’d have come to her senses last night and gone to the dean after all. He began to think she’d done exactly that as the minutes slipped by and she was still nowhere in sight. The campus clock struck seven, seven fifteen. And just as Baz was about to give up and head to Professor Selandyn’s office, he spotted her at last next to the Fountain of Fate.
With Keiran Dunhall Thornby at her side.
The floor pitched under him. In his mind, he heard Kai’s disdain. Dungshit Fuckby, he’d called Keiran once. He can shove his holier-than-thou attitude where the sun doesn’t shine.
Baz had never liked Keiran either—but he’d arched a brow at Kai, shocked to find out that he knew him at all.
“We went to Trevelyan Prep together,” Kai had explained. “I used to date his best friend.”
“Used to?” Baz had echoed, face warming slightly at the idea of Kai dating someone. He himself had never dated anyone. He’d had the briefest of infatuations with a girl in his grade back at Threnody Prep after she’d kissed him out of the blue one day when they were thirteen. He’d spent a week trying to get the courage to talk to her after that, romanticizing the idea of her until he realized that she’d only kissed him as part of a stupid card game that people liked to play called Kiss the Moon, where you had to kiss someone with the tidal alignment of whichever card you drew.
“He broke things off with me because of his friends. Because people like Dungshit Fuckby despise Eclipse-born so much that they can’t ever see past our alignment. They’ll always choose each other over us, Brysden.” Kai’s eyes had darkened to something fierce then, sending Baz’s stomach into complicated knots. “And we deserve someone whose loyalties aren’t so torn. Someone who understands what it’s like to be us.”
Time seemed to shift again, and suddenly it was last spring in Baz’s mind, and it was Romie he was catching in Keiran’s company, not Emory. He still remembered the shock of finding them together in the Decrescens library.
“What in the Deep were you doing with him?”
“We were just studying.”
Baz knew her well enough to know she was lying. “Does he know who you are? Who—”
“Yes, he knows. It’s fine.”
But how could it be fine?
“You know how he feels about me. About all Eclipse-born.”
He’d seen the guilt plainly on her face before she tossed her head as if to shake it away. “Everything’s not always about you, Baz. He certainly doesn’t have a problem with me, so just butt out.”
Baz had flinched at those words. It was the first time his sister had ever said something so vicious to him. He’d thought she would take it back, but she simply stormed off, and the next thing Baz knew, she was gone. Drowned.
He watched Keiran now and felt sick. He was everything Baz was not: confident where he was shy, admired where he was feared, destined for something more while he remained stagnant. Students looked at Keiran Dunhall Thornby with nothing but awe, seeing him as this paragon of perfection: he was attractive, mild-mannered, well-connected, top of his class, and already had offers trickling in from the world’s most elite post-graduate programs. In fact, he was apparently developing a way to use his Lightkeeper magic to restore old, nearly unsalvageable photographs, which had drawn the attention of several museums across the world.
Keiran was a success story; he’d pulled himself out of tragedy and was now on a path anyone might envy him for, full of bright promise.
His gaze flickered to Baz, and beneath that perfect mask, Baz saw the simmering hatred, felt it from a distance. It rooted him in place well after Keiran turned to leave.
Emory swore under her breath, marching up to him with an apologetic look. “Sorry. Something came up, I didn’t mean to be so late.”
The shadows beneath her storm-colored eyes told him she’d gotten as little sleep as he did, though the rest of her was perfectly composed: mousy blond hair pulled back in a thick ponytail, the sleeves of her crisp white shirt rolled up as if she meant business.
“It’s fine,” he said reflexively. But it wasn’t. How could it be? He watched Keiran’s form disappear into Pleniluna Hall. “I didn’t know you two were friends.”
“Oh. No, we just—” She adjusted the strap of her satchel, clearly flustered. “We bumped into each other, that’s all.”
We were just studying, Romie had said.
“Be careful around him,” Baz warned.
“Why?”
“What do you think would happen if someone like him—if anyone—finds out what you are? People already have every reason to be wary of Eclipse magic. If you slip up around them…”
“I know. I won’t.” She looked at him with hopeful expectation, biting her lip nervously. “Not with a bit of help, at least.”
Baz shied from the question in her tone. He wished he could disappear rather than face the disappointment in her eyes, the slump of her shoulders as she understood his silence for what it was.
“I see,” Emory breathed after a moment. “You’re not going to help me.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking last night. Keeping this secret… it’s too dangerous.”
“So you’d have me go to the dean, then.”
Baz shifted beneath the weight of the box in his arms and that of her gaze. He thought of Romie, of Kai. Of how, if he’d done something more, been more involved, he might have stopped them both from doing these reckless things that led them to their ends. He wouldn’t let that happen again. “It’s the only sensible thing to do.”
Tides, were those tears on her cheeks? He couldn’t bear to have her look at him this way.
Emory wiped angrily at her face. “I don’t know why I asked for your help in the first place. Who was I kidding, right? Baz Brysden would never dare go against the rules.”
“You nearly killed someone.” Anger suddenly rose in his throat, and all the pent-up tension from last night came tumbling out. “For all I know, Romie died because of you. Do you even care that she’s gone?”
The words took them both by surprise.
Emory inhaled sharply and stepped back, hurt blooming in her eyes. Baz regretted it instantly. “I didn’t mean that,” he mumbled. Shame made the top of his ears redden. “It’s just… Tides, Emory, you didn’t even bother coming to her funeral. I know we’re not exactly friends, but I thought…”
He bit back the words, shook his head. He had no delusions about where the two of them stood. They weren’t close, not anymore. Perhaps they’d never been. They’d met at Threnody Prep when she was ten and he was twelve, and the only time they ever really spent together was when Romie was there, the glue holding together all their disparate parts. Even when they grew older and he’d thought—hoped—there might be a chance of something between the two of them, that Emory might reciprocate the feelings that had started taking root in his heart, his father had Collapsed and everyone around him had pulled away. Even her. And he’d accepted it because it was easier that way. He wouldn’t risk hurting them if he kept to himself.