She lifted her chin, her blood singing.
“Where do we start?”
* * *
It started with an oath.
Keiran handed her a small silver flake like the one she’d seen Virgil imbibing earlier. An Unraveler synth, he explained. It’ll force you to tell the truth when swearing your oath.
A distant, drowned-out part of her had a terrible sinking feeling as Keiran led her to the large pool. They waded through the shallows until they stood waist-deep in the center of the basin, just out of the cascade’s reach. The rest of the Selenics gathered around her, forming a tight circle in the order of the moon’s phases. All Emory could think of was how surreal they must look to the outside eye, dressed in their sopping wet suits and gowns, their faces cast in dancing turquoise light.
“Here before us you must share three truths,” Keiran intoned. “A painful memory that haunts you, a dream that calls to you, and a secret that burdens you. Let these truths serve as a reminder of the Order’s secrets you carry, and those of yours we now hold.”
It was a reminder, she realized, that if she should ever betray the Order, her deepest, darkest secrets might be used against her.
Keiran and Virgil helped her lie floating in the pool with her face turned to the dark ceiling above. The water was cold, the salt on her lips a bitter shock. The rest of the Selenics grabbed on to her limbs, holding her aloft.
“Speak your truths,” Keiran commanded, his voice made distant by the water filling her ears.
Emory spoke slowly. “A painful memory… is the one I have from the initiation, of waking up on the beach next to those bodies.” There was a faint, pleasant hum at her fingertips, as if the synthetic magic delighted in the truth of her words. She knew she couldn’t lie even if she wanted to. “Sometimes I feel this phantom impression of a corpse brushing against my skin, and I wish the sea had taken me, too, so I wouldn’t have to carry this guilt with me.”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat, focusing on the cascading waterfall. She couldn’t look any of them in the eye.
“A dream that calls to me…” She thought of Romie, of the note Baz had found, of her own odd dreams of Dovermere. It called to mind another Dreamer, and the truth slipped from her lips before she could think twice on it: “… is to find my mother, who abandoned me at birth. To finally know her and discover all the ways we’re different and alike. I dream of her coming home so we can be a family together.”
Her cheeks flushed at the thought of sharing such private thoughts—something she had never fully been able to articulate in her own mind—with people she barely knew. Her heart picked up speed at what she needed to share next.
“A secret that burdens me…”
They already knew she was a Tidecaller, and no secret was more of a burden than that. Unless… The words came to her too fast, but she forced herself to speak them slowly, to weigh each one so she wouldn’t say more than she should.
“The night Travers washed ashore was when I first used Tidecaller magic. At least, the first time I remember using it. While I was trying to heal him, everything came rushing up to the surface at Lizaveta’s amplifying touch. I couldn’t stop it.” Her eyes found Virgil. “I felt the Reaper magic at my fingertips, and it was so overwhelming that I was afraid it would kill Travers. That I would be the one to kill him. I…” She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to find the words to work around the Unraveler magic—she didn’t want to drag Baz into this by revealing he’d helped her. “The magic stopped before it could kill him.” Her throat worked for air. “But Travers died anyway, and I’ll always feel responsible for it.”
Your fault.
Emory heaved a breath, somehow lighter for having admitted the truth of that night. She found genuine empathy in Virgil’s eyes.
“Let us seal these truths in the water,” Keiran said solemnly. He bent closer to murmur, “Don’t fight it.”
It was her only warning before her head was shoved underwater.
She thrashed against the seven pairs of hands that held her down, screaming her surprise. This had to be part of the oath-taking ritual, but primal instinct kicked in, a tidal wave of terror that threatened to fill her lungs, pull her under. Visions of dark, turbulent depths rose to greet her, and all around her were bodies, their eyes fixed and unblinking in death. The logical part of her knew it wasn’t real, knew it was just her mind conjuring her worst fear, but still her nails dug into someone’s wrist as she fought against their hold, her screams near soundless in the water.
And then, just as suddenly, it was over. They pulled her up, and Emory broke through the surface, choking on a gulp of air. She clung desperately to Keiran as he pushed wet strands of hair from her face, something dark and lovely and powerful in his eyes.
“The Order welcomes you, daughter of the Eclipse. Arise as a Selenic.”
She did, and nothing had ever felt so right.
Someone popped a bottle, and a flute of sparkling wine was handed to her. They drank in the ethereal light of the pool, and all the while Emory did not mind her sopping gown, her damp hair, because here with Keiran’s jacket draped over her shoulders and the Selenics’ curiosity about her magic—not the academic intrigue tinged with dread that Baz treated her with, but pure, sheer wonder—she was made to feel important, valued.
She slowly learned about the others—that Louis and Javier were an item, melting into each other whenever they were together, that Ife was kind and warm, that Nisha had a quiet magnetism that had her begrudgingly understanding Romie’s infatuation with her. Only Lizaveta kept her distance, and as she and Keiran held a tense conversation at the other end of the grotto, Emory couldn’t help feeling bad for her.
If Lizaveta had lost someone to the violence of a Collapsing, it was no wonder she was so cold to her.
Virgil walked up to her and refilled her glass. There was a disarming earnestness to him as he said, “You know, what you said about Travers… Don’t beat yourself up over it. If you had used Reaper magic, it would have been a kindness, I think. No one should have to suffer the way he did.”
Emory remembered the way he’d looked when Travers’s body was taken away, the profound grief written on his face. She considered him. “Have you ever…”
Virgil lifted a bemused brow. “What, killed someone?” A booming laugh. “Tides, no. You do know most Reapers have never and will never actually reap a life, yeah? We have too much respect for it. Death magic isn’t all doom and gloom. It’s rarely ever about death at all and more about endings. The peace of a cycle coming to its end so that it may start again or not at all. Drying up a rose to preserve its beauty forever, for example. Helping farmers remove crop residues or rid their fields of pests and diseases so that newer things can take root and grow.”
He smiled peacefully, a dreamy, faraway look in his eye, so different from his usual flair. “There’s a classroom in Decrescens Hall that’s as full of life as any of the Sower greenhouses. Vines and flowers fill every inch of it, and in the center is this massive tree. We Reapers practice making the seasons turn, changing the leaves from green to yellow and red and crisp brown until everything is bare. Our own perpetual autumns and winters at our fingertips.”