Baz watched him carefully. “How did you Collapse, Kai?”
He gave a long, frustrated sigh, like he’d known this was coming. “Last time Romie and I were in the sleepscape and I almost Collapsed… I can’t describe it, Brysden, this sense of peace I felt. I was on the brink of Collapse, that darkness pulling me forward, and all I could think was that it didn’t feel so threatening at all. Not a curse, but a dam about to break to let something good through. I had this gut feeling that I’d be okay if I just… let myself succumb to that pull.” He shook his head, staring into the middle distance. “After Romie drowned… I knew if I went back to the sleepscape without her, followed the song further than we’d gone together, I’d Collapse. And maybe with all that power coursing through me, I would finally reach the epilogue.”
The look he threw Baz set his insides aflame.
“I knew I had to try. So I went to sleep in Obscura Hall, thinking if I did Collapse, at least the wards would contain the blast, and no one would get hurt. But then I started fucking sleepwalking, and suddenly I was on the beach down at Dovermere Cove. Almost like the song was calling my subconscious deeper into the sleepscape, while it called my body closer to Dovermere. I don’t know. I only woke up after the umbrae found me in the sleepscape. I almost had it, I think. The epilogue. But then I Collapsed. The blast woke me, pulled me from the sleepscape, and someone must have seen it all happen, because next thing I knew, some Regulator was snapping damper cuffs around my wrists and bringing me here to get branded with the fucking seal.”
“Kai…”
The stark light over their heads flickered.
Kai swore. “And now it’s happening again.”
“What is?”
“This is how it starts. Whatever it is they do to us.”
A distant, muffled scream broke the quiet.
Baz nearly leapt out of his skin as Vera opened the door, a panicked look on her face. “We need to go. Something’s happening down the hall.”
He looked to Kai and thought, if he and Vera had come this far undetected, he might help Kai escape. The same thought seemed to occur to Kai. Baz saw it in the twinkle in his eyes, like the first glimmer of stars in a night sky. He saw it in the way Kai’s body tensed, as if ready to pounce. He could follow Baz and Vera out of here and be free.
But the Unhallowed Seal would forever paint a target on his back, wherever he went. Kai flexed his hand, like he, too, had come to the same conclusion.
Another scream, and the stars in Kai’s eyes glowed brighter, his features set with fierce determination now as he settled back on his bed. “Go. I’m not leaving until I figure this out.”
Baz’s heart broke. “Please. We can go back to Obscura Hall—”
The lights flickered on and off again, more quickly than before.
“You need to go, Brysden.”
Baz thought he saw a silvery track of veins on Kai’s neck, as if his slumbering magic was stirring despite the seal on it. Baz frowned, mouth open to ask if he felt his magic waking, but Vera tugged on his arm with renewed urgency as another bloodcurdling scream rose, and before Baz knew it, he was out the door, holding on to that last glimpse of Kai as it slammed shut between them.
“Come on,” Vera urged him.
They hurried down the corridor. Power surged all around them when another scream echoed. Baz faltered as someone pleaded, “Stop, please, don’t take it,” and for a second he thought it might have been his father, though it sounded nothing like him. Vera pulled at his sleeve, swearing as footsteps sounded ahead of them—and a Regulator rounded the bend.
One with an all-too-familiar face.
“Jae?”
Baz stared incomprehensibly at Jae Ahn. They were clad in a Regulator’s charcoal uniform, a panicked look in their eye.
“Basil, what in the Tides’ name—”
Nearby voices cut them off. Baz whipped around. The screaming had stopped, and the voices—they were coming from that same direction. Jae’s face turned ashen with fear the likes of which Baz had not seen from them since… since his father Collapsed, he realized. Confused bits of memory from that day swirled in his mind, but before he could say a word, Jae motioned him and Vera down the hall.
“We need to get out of here,” they whispered. “Quickly now.”
The three of them ran as quietly as they could.
“On the left,” Vera wheezed as they came to a crossing. Baz recognized it, knew the door they’d come through was just past this next bend—
“Hey!”
Two Regulators appeared behind them at the other end of the corridor. They tore toward them. Panicked, Baz considered what it would be like to freeze them in time. Pausing time for immaterial objects was one thing, but people, whole living organisms, was something he’d never dared attempt. Yet what choice did he have?
But then—a wall materialized out of thin air between them and the Regulators, severing the corridor as if it had always stood there.
“What the fuck?” Vera exclaimed.
Jae was smiling rather smugly. “That should give them pause.” Jae shook their sleeves—no longer wearing the stiff charcoal Regulator uniform, but their usual frilly shirt and vest combination. They caught Baz’s eye and winked at him. “Let’s go.”
Vera stared after Jae with her mouth slightly agape. “What the fuck?” she repeated.
“They’re an Illusionist,” Baz explained breathlessly.
A little harmless illusion work to get me through the door, Jae had said about getting into the Institute. But what were they doing here in the middle of the night?
Angry shouts echoed behind the illusioned wall, making his pulse hike. He and Vera ran down the empty corridor after Jae. He could barely remember how to breathe as they reached the exit. The knot of tension in his chest didn’t ease in the slightest even as they burst into the night.
Breathe in, hold, breathe out.
They made for the wooded area at the edge of the Institute, and only once they were there did Jae finally stop, rounding on Baz.
“When I suggested you come visit your dad,” they said tensely, “I didn’t mean break into the Institute in the middle of the Tides-damned night. What were you thinking?”
“I might ask the same of you,” Baz retorted angrily. “And what were you doing dressed as a Regulator?”
Jae pointed to the Institute. “I was trying to figure out what that was. That’s why I’m in Cadence, Basil. There’s something odd going on at the Institute, something to do with Collapsed Eclipse-born.”
“I know. Kai told me. That’s who I came to see, not Dad.” He glanced back at the building. “Did you find anything, at least?”
“No. I was heading toward the screaming when I bumped into you. You need to stay far away from here from now on, understood? I don’t want you anywhere near what’s happening.”
Baz didn’t need to be told twice—but the idea of Kai being left behind to fend for himself, and his father, too…
As if they read his mind, Jae put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “I won’t stop digging until I figure this out, Basil. I promise.” They glanced at Vera. “How did you two get here?”