You’re alive, she remembered him saying, his words nearly drowned out by the swelling tide. You’re all right. And she’d clung to them so desperately, those words. A life raft keeping her afloat.
Keiran Dunhall Thornby was the perfect embodiment of his lunar house, the bright light of a full moon bursting with promise, and his presence alone had chased away all the darkness from that moonless night. He looked at her now with such intensity, as if he needed to see that she was indeed still alive. Everyone around them seemed to disappear, and for a second it felt like they were back on that beach, shivering against the horrors strewn around them.
But then she blinked. He turned away. And just like that, the moment dissolved between them like sea-foam across the sand.
Emory stroked the spiral mark on her wrist, half expecting it to start glowing silver like it had when it first appeared through whatever odd, ancient magic lived in Dovermere. She remembered the way Keiran had grabbed her wrist that night, the curious expression on his face as he’d frowned at the mark that was mirrored on his own wrist—twin spirals a dull silver on their skin. It had haunted her all summer, how impossible it was that he should be marked with the same symbol, because he wasn’t in the caves that night, hadn’t been there for the ritual that marked each student foolish enough to have been. Still, he’d found her on the beach in the middle of the night. As if he’d been waiting for her—for someone—to make it out of those caves alive.
He knew something about what happened in Dovermere, she was certain of it. It was the only reason she’d bothered coming back to Aldryn—the one thing that managed to pull her out of this ocean of grief she’d been drowning in. She would stop at nothing now to get answers.
“… and I wish each of you an enlightening term. Thank you.”
The dean’s parting words pulled Emory from her daze. Students were already out of their chairs, chattering excitedly as they exchanged handshakes and pats on the back and questions about each other’s summers. She felt painfully disconnected from it all.
Gaze fixed on Keiran, she steeled herself for what she needed to do. Her thoughts raced in tandem with her heart as she mentally listed all the questions she wanted to ask him. Just walk up to him, she told herself. It’s as simple as that. None of it felt simple, though. Without Romie here to do all the talking for her, it was up to Emory now to be bold, something her quiet, timid self balked at.
Keiran’s eyes found hers as she approached, and she was glad her steps didn’t falter. She balled her clammy hands into fists at her side, pushed her trepidation down—and stopped short as a group of upperclassmen caught up to Keiran, stealing his attention away from her.
Emory watched, deflated, as a pretty redheaded girl kissed him on the cheek and a few boys clasped his hand enthusiastically, and through it all Keiran smiled a dimpled smile, such ease and charm emanating from him that it was hard to reconcile the image with the half-drenched boy in her mind.
She thought she heard her name spoken in the chaos of voices. Someone waved at her from halfway across the hall. Penelope West, one of the few friends Emory had made outside of Romie last year, and a fellow New Moon student she’d shared most of her classes with. She’d always liked Penelope, but with her too-bubbly nature and chattiness that could go on forever, the thought of facing her—of facing anyone, really—was suddenly unbearable.
Getting answers from Keiran would have to wait.
Before Penelope could reach her, Emory slipped quietly from the assembly hall, yearning for the solace of her room.
The noonday sun beat down on the quad, great curtains of it falling between the columns that lined the cloisters. Emory cut across the lawn toward the underclassmen dormitories. She slowed near the fountain, where the Tides of Fate—Bruma, Anima, Aestas, and Quies—cast long shadows on the ground. The four deities who ruled over the lunar houses stood in the middle of the basin with their backs to each other, forming a circle in the proper order of the cycle they represented: young Bruma of the New Moon, beautiful Anima of the Waxing Moon, motherly Aestas of the Full Moon, and wise old Quies of the Waning Moon. Appropriately, the sunlight touched only Anima and Aestas, casting the other two in shadows.
Each Tide faced a different path to one of four academic halls: there was moody Noviluna Hall, its door painted black like the new moon sky that gave those of Emory’s house their powers of cleansing darkness and divination; vibrant Crescens Hall, which saw to those born on a waxing moon, their magic tied to growth, amplification, and manifestation; stately Pleniluna Hall, which catered to those who bore the power of the full moon, tied to light, protection, purity, and mindfulness; and Decrescens Hall, as dark and mysterious as the waning moon students who dealt in secrets and dreams, memories and death—and who had been Romie’s peers when she was alive.
There was a fifth hall, but no Tide watched over House Eclipse, and no path led to its door, a nondescript, nearly hidden thing.
Emory stopped by the fountain. Her fingers skimmed the surface of the sacred water, said to have been blessed by the Tides themselves. The water came from Dovermere, a network of caves as mythical as the Tides and in part what had attracted Aldryn’s founders to build their college so close to it. Students were expressly forbidden to take water from the fountain, much less use it in their bloodletting practices—a way for those of the four main lunar houses to access their magic whenever their ruling moon phase wasn’t in position, their power otherwise remaining dormant in their blood. Still, touching the water was meant to be grounding.
It wasn’t.
Emory noticed the delicate flowers floating on the surface, two for each lunar house: black narcissus, indigo hollyhocks, white orchids, purple-black poppies. Eight flowers, one for each of the names she knew had been added to the silver plaques at the Tides’ feet, souls consigned to their care so they might watch over them in the Deep.
A name and a flower for each student claimed by the sea.
And suddenly the flowers weren’t flowers at all, but bodies trapped in a cave with the deadly sea all around them. Emory turned from the fountain just as the door to House Eclipse opened.
The student who emerged made her stomach plummet.
Basil Brysden was tall and long-limbed, with a badly buttoned shirt and unruly brown curls that fell to his chin. He hugged a pile of books close to his chest, head bent low as if he were trying to make himself smaller, or perhaps invisible. Baz had long since succeeded at both: he was a ghost, a hermit, a curiosity only whispered about in the darkest corners of the college.
The Timespinner.
Such rare magic, even for one of the Eclipse-born.
Baz turned toward the fountain. Rich brown eyes met hers, and were it not for the thick-framed glasses they hid behind, Emory might have thought it was Romie staring back at her. They had the same pale, freckled skin, the same protruding ears. But Baz lacked his sister’s sense of mischief, that dreamy, faraway look Romie would get that always infuriated her professors. The bright curiosity that had spread like wildfire until it consumed all she was and could have been.
Baz’s eyes held none of Romie’s bold fire, only timid uncertainty as he greeted her with an awkward, “Emory.”
He looked like he might make a run for it to avoid this conversation altogether. She couldn’t blame him.