Baz just came here for the tea.
Thin, narrow eyes swept over him as he approached Jae Ahn’s table at the back of the room. “By the Shadow,” they swore as they jumped from their seat, “you look more like him with each passing year.”
Baz smiled shyly as they drew him in for a bone-crushing hug, then held him at arm’s length, peering at him over tiny half-moon glasses to assess all the ways in which he resembled Theodore Brysden. Jae hadn’t changed one bit: they were on the small and slender side, with jet-black hair kept in the same short style Baz remembered, though it was now streaked with faint strands of silver. They had never ascribed to the gender binary, preferring to use neutral pronouns, and their style could be described as androgynous: today they wore a charcoal knit vest over their ample-sleeved white shirt, layered silver chains visible around their neck.
“Thanks for meeting me.” Baz sat on a plush lavender upholstered chair. In the background, a jaunty tune blared from a gramophone. “How’ve you been?”
Jae swept an impatient hand in the air. “Never mind little old me. What about you, Basil? How are you?”
Baz shrugged; Jae hummed as if he’d said quite a lot indeed, and leaned forward in their chair. “I’m so sorry to hear about Rosemarie—sorrier still I couldn’t make it to the funeral.”
“That’s all right.” Unlike Emory, Jae had at least notified Baz of their absence—they’d been away on a research trip to the Constellation Isles and couldn’t make it back in time.
“How’s your mother been dealing with everything?” Jae asked. “I called her last time I was in Threnody, but she must have been out. I’ll have to try her again next time I’m there.”
“She’d love that, I’m sure.”
Jae gave him a knowing smile tinged with sadness. They both knew she likely wouldn’t answer next time either. It hadn’t been easy on his mother for a long time now. Anise Brysden had begun to shut down after her husband Collapsed, distancing herself from the warm, lively woman she used to be. A part of Baz always felt guilty at being here at Aldryn, leaving her alone in that big empty house. Whenever he asked, she always swore she was fine. He knew she wasn’t, but Baz didn’t know how to help her because he’d often felt much the same, as if he were simply going through the motions of existing. He knew Jae had tried many times to coax his mother back to her former self, inviting her to gallery openings and tea outings every time their work brought them to Threnody. But Anise always gently shut them down, staying sheltered in the safety of her home. Alone with her ghosts.
Baz’s eyes drifted to the Eclipse sigil on the back of Jae’s sun-kissed hand as they poured him a cup of steaming tea. Jae dealt in illusions, the most common magic among the Eclipse-born. Professor Selandyn still talked fondly of the illustrious Jae Ahn, the best student she’d ever taught in her long career.
“How is everything at Aldryn?” Jae asked, wrapping their ring-adorned hands around their own gold-rimmed cup.
They didn’t need to elaborate for Baz to know they meant specifically with the Eclipse students. He took a sip of his tea. Jasmine, with notes of vanilla. It scalded the roof of his mouth.
“I’m the only one left.”
Jae’s mouth thinned. “I heard about the Salonga boy Collapsing. Did you know he’d contacted me sometime before, asking about my research on the matter?”
Baz went very still. “I wasn’t aware of it, no.”
He’d once told Kai of Jae’s vested interest in all things House Eclipse, but he never thought Kai would go so far as to reach out to them.
“By the time I tried getting back to him, I’d learned he’d Collapsed. It’s partly why I’m in town, actually. He’s at the same Institute as your father, so I mean to go pay him a visit.” Jae regarded Baz over the rim of their glasses. “Have you been to see him recently?”
Whether they meant Theodore or Kai didn’t matter, because the answer remained the same.
Baz fiddled with his teacup. “You know how particular the Institute is about visitors.”
It wasn’t the real reason—though the Regulators did make it especially difficult for Eclipse-born visitors to step into the Institute—but Baz felt ashamed enough as it was; he couldn’t admit to Jae that facing his father and Kai was too difficult. That the thought of the Institute still gave him nightmares.
The Institute was multipurpose: There was the administrative side where magical laws were written and enforced, and the correctional and rehabilitation side where magic gone wrong all but went to die. There was, of course, the Collapsing wing where Eclipse-born who’d received the Unhallowed Seal could adjust to their new magicless existence before being sent out into the world again. There was even a Dreamer wing, where those who’d lost their minds to the sleepscape, leaving behind comatose bodies, were watched over and taken care of by Healers. And then there was the prison wing, where anyone who misused their magic was sent, like Reapers who took lives or Glamours who coerced people into doing unspeakable things or Eclipse-born like Baz’s father whose Collapsing had killed those trapped in the blast.
At the center of it all were the Regulators. Both legislators and law enforcers where magic was concerned, they governed the entirety of the magical population, answering to their own hierarchy within their ranks.
Self-serving bastards, Kai would sneer, rightfully hating the power they wielded.
Baz had visited his father at the Institute only a handful of times shortly after the incident. It never sat right with him, being inside those walls. It was suffocating, and whenever his mother had wanted him to go with her, his answer would always be the same: I can’t. At least Romie had been there to step in, hold their mother’s hand through the pain those visits caused her.
Jae grumbled into their tea. “Last time I went, the Regulators almost didn’t let me through. I had to… persuade them, if you know what I mean.” They winked at Baz. “A little harmless illusion work to get me through the door.”
The corner of Baz’s mouth lifted at that.
“Your dad would love to see you, I’m sure.”
His throat constricted. He suddenly remembered what Kai had said about the nightmares of those who’d Collapsed: an infinite, hollow darkness. If that was the state of their dreaming, Baz could only image what cruel sort of torture their waking hours must consist of.
He tried not to think of how, somewhere in the middle of the city of Threnody, only two hours from here by train, the printing press his father and Jae had worked so hard to build from the ground up was now a pile of rubble. The skeleton of a building no one had bothered tearing down years after the incident that destroyed it. Baz had made the mistake of walking past it once during a Solstice holiday. Vines grew along the solitary piece of brick wall still standing. Snow had blanketed the rest like ash, all that was left of the destruction his father’s Collapsing had wrought.
Memories of that day were frayed. Baz couldn’t recall how his father’s Collapsing came about, only that it did. Only that it killed. None of the employees who worked for him and Jae, but the three clients who’d been in the building at the time. All had been caught in the blast of Theodore’s uncontrollable power.