“Alas, when the next eclipse shadowed the world and birthed others who bore an echo of the same strange power as his, Phoebus the Shadow called them all to his ranks, and soon enough, he had an army at his command with which to face the Tides and wrest their own godly magic from them. The Tides knew they had to stop him. It was Quies, the Withering Crone, who came up with the solution: they would trap the Shadow in the Deep. The Realm of Death, the very one she ruled over.
“But Quies was not strong enough to keep him there on her own, so she called upon her sisters. Together, the four Tides trapped the Shadow in the Deep. They made a prison from their own blood and bones to contain him, to ensure he could never be freed.”
Baz’s mind raced with the clear similarities to Song of the Drowned Gods, where blood and bones and heart and soul—the four heroes of the story—were bound together to hold the great beast of shadow at the center of the sea of ash and free the drowned gods from their fate.
“Does the myth ever make mention of Dovermere?”
He couldn’t shake it, this dread that crawled along his skin at the thought of that place. A cave that had swallowed nine souls and spat two of them out wholly changed: a Healer withering away to bones, and another reborn with the power of the Eclipse in her veins.
Professor Selandyn was slow to answer. “Some believe Dovermere was both the birthplace of the Tides and the place where they trapped the Shadow. But I wouldn’t put too much stock in that theory. Every coastal place of significance around the world lays claim to the origin of the myth. It’s why all the best magical colleges are built near the sea, because their founders thought they could benefit from being near that source of power, the traces the Tides might have left behind.”
She regarded him carefully, as if she saw exactly what was going through his head. “What is this really about, Basil?”
“Just curious, is all.”
“Can I tell you what I think? I think you’re looking for an explanation to your sister’s drowning, searching for meaning and magnitude where there is likely none. She was a force of nature, and for her to meet such a senseless end is inconceivable.”
Selandyn leaned closer, eyes soft. “You know the magics at play in Dovermere are beyond anything we can understand. It cannot be tamed or unraveled or vanquished, not by you or I or anyone else. It’s best to leave it alone. There are no answers there to find. Sometimes death is just that, and accepting it is the best we can hope for.”
Baz swallowed a great scalding sip of tea, the note burning a hole in his pocket.
A sudden knock at the door startled him. Selandyn drew herself up with a smile.
“Ah, that must be them.”
It didn’t register who she might be talking about until she’d opened the door and Baz was staring at two faces that were near mirrors of Kai’s.
Professor Selandyn greeted his parents in their native tongue and proceeded to introduce Baz. It was a punch to the gut as their sorrowful faces took him in, as they shook his hand and asked him polite questions about how he knew Kai, if he’d been with him the day he Collapsed.
I wish I would have been, Baz thought, his throat locking up. I wish I could have convinced him not to do it.
Baz couldn’t bear the thought of hurting his parents any further by telling them what he knew. He couldn’t stand there any longer and made some excuse about being late for class. Only as he walked out of Selandyn’s office, leaving all of Kai’s belongings in his parents’ hands, did it hit him fully:
Kai was truly gone.
There might be a slight chance of him eventually being let out of the Institute if he was deemed stable enough to leave, because unlike Baz’s father, his Collapsing hadn’t hurt anyone, had caused no casualties. But Kai as he knew him was gone. Whoever might walk out of there would no longer fully be Kai. Not the Nightmare Weaver, but a hollowed-out shell of who he used to be.
* * *
Later, he stood on the wet sand of Dovermere Cove, the Aldersea’s blue-gray waters glistening in the afternoon sun. In the distance, the entrance to the caves was a half-hidden scar below the rising tide.
Baz listened intently to the wind that pulled at his hair, to the waves crashing against the cliffside. In these sounds, he searched for a melody, the call of the drowned gods or the plea of the guardian pulling on his soul. But all he felt was the dark thrum of Dovermere, which pulsed in time with his own heartbeat.
Death masquerading as mystery, seeking to lure him to his watery end just as it had his sister.
Perhaps Romie, intrepid dreamer that she was, had not been able to tell the difference—had been duped by her grand notions and constant need for something more.
And maybe Selandyn was right. Death was just death, a cave was just a cave, and the best thing Baz could do was accept that his sister was never coming back.
7 EMORY
SHE WAS LATE FOR HER selenography level II class, where her professor was already rambling on about moon placement degrees and calculations and nodes, things that generally tended to go over Emory’s head. It was one of those mandatory subjects everyone had been studying since prep school, an exploration into the science that governed their magic and bored most people to death.
When Emory walked into the familiar classroom—the same dark lecture hall last year’s class had been held in, tucked away in the lower levels of Noviluna Hall—she was met with a fresh pang of grief, her eyes instantly going to the top row where she and Romie would always sit together, trying not to fall asleep as the professor droned about all the ways silver, water, and blood were connected to magic. Above her, an impressive tableau of waves that went from frothy pastel seafoam to churning black depths was painted on the sloped ceiling, where dainty globes of everlight hung from silver chains like shimmering water drops. She hurried to the first empty seat she could find, Baz’s words grating against her skull.
Do you even care that she’s gone?
The fact that he would ask such a thing stung more than his questioning her role in Romie’s death. Because of course she cared. It was why she’d gone after her to Dovermere in the first place, why she’d come back to Aldryn now. It was why she hadn’t given up on their friendship last term, even when Romie seemed so adamant to push her away.
Emory had cared enough to notice everything: all the late nights Romie spent Tides knew where, the parties she came back from with a glazed look in her eye, the classes she missed in favor of sleeping, the way her grades started slipping and the plants in their room died from neglect, and the students Emory occasionally saw her with on campus, huddled together in dark corners with this impenetrable air of secrecy hanging over them. Travers, Lia, Dania. Other students who’d drowned in the caves. Nisha Zenara most of all, who’d seemed to have all but replaced Emory at Romie’s side.
Emory had cared even despite how isolating it had felt. While she’d been spending the better part of her time studying in the Noviluna library, fighting for her place at Aldryn because getting in was just the first step and now she had to earn that place by keeping her grades up, Romie had been off chasing the next best thing, the next best friend.
We get to reinvent ourselves here, be whoever we please.
Never had Emory thought this new life Romie imagined for herself might not include her at all.