“I admire your mettle, Ms. Ainsleif,” Leonie said with a kind smile. “Unfortunately, surviving Dovermere alone is not enough. There are traditions to follow, preliminary trials to pass, all of which last year’s initiates went through to be deemed worthy of becoming Selenics.”
“So let me do those trials,” Emory pleaded. “Let me prove to you that I deserve my place here too.”
“I don’t know how to put this gently, girl,” the man with Bruma’s face said gruffly, “but the Selenic Order accepts only those of the highest quality into its ranks. Nothing but the best and brightest. As I recall, your name was never even on our list of potential candidates.”
Anger rose in her at that. “With all due respect, sir, I survived what eight of your apparent best and brightest could not. I might not be from one of your legacy families or have the highest grades, but surely that must mean something.”
“It means you were lucky,” Vivianne said. She looked to her companions with bored annoyance. “I say we wipe our name from her memory and be done with this nonsense.”
Emory’s thoughts raced. She would be damned if she let them take her memories. She stepped forward, holding out her wrist. “Your initiates died for this mark, for a chance to wield all lunar magics as their own. When the mark engraved itself on me, it gave me that chance too. It made me into something more than just a Healer. Allowed me to wield magics outside of my own tidal alignment.”
She reached for the Sower magic first, just as she had earlier tonight. She tried not to think of the fact that, even under Baz’s careful tutelage, she hadn’t been able to wield the magic for much more than a few seconds, or how the philodendron she’d tried to revive was just as dead now as it had been before.
Instead, she thought of Romie, a memory rising unbidden to the surface. It was Emory’s sixteenth birthday, and the only time Romie had ever gifted her a plant. “String of hearts,” she’d announced proudly. “I propagated it myself from some cuttings I collected. Pretty, isn’t it?”
It hadn’t survived the week. When Romie found out, she’d laughed herself to tears and teased Emory for her lack of a green thumb.
“I’m a Healer, Ro, not a Sower!”
Romie had gotten that dreamy look in her eyes. “Don’t you wish you could be everything all at once?”
Now Emory had what Romie wished for: access to every magic, something Romie would have never struggled to master had their roles been reversed. But Romie was dead. She was gone and Emory was still here, and the only thing she could do to honor her friend now was to seek justice from within.
She gritted her teeth, imploring the waxing crescent to unlock its mysteries for her, to share its secrets until they became as known to her as the Healing magic she’d been born with.
And it did.
The ivy at the Tidal Council’s feet moved at her command, leaves rustling in an imagined breeze. A vine crept toward her, slithering up her dress to wrap around her wrist. She heard the faint hum of awe in the crowd but did not let it distract her, reaching instead for more. Light and dark answered, as they had the night of the bonfires, but this time, she was in control. The candles flared dramatically, then burned out all at once, plunging the room into darkness except for the everlights strung on the walls. Emory called those lights toward her. They moved slowly, made to look like floating stars, and came to rest in her outstretched hand where they formed a single bright light.
Pride swelled in her as she beamed at it, this impossible magic she wielded. Not the shade of magic that Virgil had imbibed, not a mere taste or impression of it as Nisha described, but the real thing, here at her fingertips. Hers to command.
She let the light extinguish, the vine of ivy fall at her feet. A few bulbs of everlight had remained untouched on the walls, now the only source of light that remained.
In the semidarkness, Emory held her head high as she looked at the Council. “You see? I, too, have the mark and the Tidecaller magic it gave me. The same as Keiran, who can heal birds and make roses bloom. Should that not be enough to earn my place in your Order?”
Something crackled in the air, a tension she couldn’t understand. Scathing remarks of Tidethief and Eclipse-born slithered along her skin. Her heart sank to the pit of her stomach.
This was a horrible mistake.
Emory rounded on Keiran, searched his face for answers; the half of it she could see beneath his mask gave nothing away, but his eyes… His eyes glittered with what looked like triumph.
“I’m not a Tidecaller, Ainsleif,” he said quietly.
His words pounded in her head, utterly incomprehensible. “But I saw you…”
“What you saw me using was synthetic magic. A stronger version of the amplification synths being passed around tonight, but a fabrication all the same.”
He’d played her. He’d let her believe they were the same, that the spiral mark had given them both this impossible power. And she’d been foolish enough to believe it. She should have dug deeper, pressed him harder for the full truth instead of the veiled admissions he’d given her. There was no way out of this now; she’d walked into his trap and revealed her hand, proclaiming herself a Tidecaller in front of all these people.
Tidethief, she heard someone seethe.
False Healer.
Eclipse scum.
Emory threw a furtive glance at the stairs. If she could slip past them, make a run for it…
“Where’s Artem?” a woman asked. “He’s a Regulator, let him deal with her!”
Some of the Selenics echoed their agreement. Emory’s veins filled with ice, her breath coming in shallow bursts. She took a step back, blinking furiously as black spots gathered at the edge of her vision. She needed to get out of here, needed to—
Keiran’s fingers wrapped around her wrist. “Wait. Trust me.”
Artem stepped up to the front of the crowd, slipping his mask off. There was a look of complete authority about him—a Regulator, here to bring her to the Institute where she’d be branded with the Unhallowed Seal.
Emory wrenched free from Keiran’s grasp. She wouldn’t be so naive as to trust him again. She headed for the stairs.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
Artem’s words were laced with such command that Emory froze. Slowly, she turned to him. Power thrummed from him—Glamour magic, she realized, the power of compulsion he wielded under the waxing crescent’s might.
He was compelling her with it.
“Artie,” Keiran said tightly. “Let’s not be rash about this.”
“Rules are rules, Keir,” Artem spat. “And Eclipse-born who lie about their alignment is one of the biggest offenses there is.”
“I didn’t lie,” Emory said weakly.
“If she were to Collapse, the havoc it would wreak—”
Then, more forcefully, “I didn’t lie.” Artem gave her a scathing look that she returned in kind. “I was born a Healer and have all the documents to prove it. These powers only started manifesting after Dovermere.” She looked pleadingly at the Tidal Council, at Keiran. “You have to believe me.”
Artem stepped toward her. “Tell the truth.”