There had been a total solar eclipse that day.
Her mother must have lied about the date to hide the fact she was born on an eclipse. It didn’t explain why she’d only ever had Healer magic until now, or why the selenograph confirmed her as such when she was younger. And though it only added to the mystery of Luce Meraude, here was a tiny morsel of truth, at least.
She truly was Eclipse-born.
This single, incomprehensible fact brought about a tangle of emotions she couldn’t begin to understand. Her whole identity lay shattered at her feet. How was she supposed to build herself anew?
In her early years at Threnody Prep, she’d been endlessly fascinated by all things Eclipse. Especially Baz’s magic. She remembered thinking how singular it made him, how desperately she wanted that for herself. She had wished she’d been born in House Eclipse then, with magic that would set her apart—until she realized such magic meant those of House Eclipse were doomed to remain on the sidelines because of it.
It seemed she’d gotten her wish.
“You look lovely with a frown, Ainsleif,” a voice murmured in her ear.
A delighted shiver ran up her spine. Keiran leaned casually against her table, mouth upturned in that dimpled smile. He peered at the almanac. “Research so early?”
“Just trying to make sense of all this.” She voiced the thought that had been nagging her all night. “What if my magic isn’t enough to bring back the Tides?”
“Nonsense. Power like yours was meant for greatness.”
“But how exactly am I supposed to wake them?”
Voices drifted to them as a few other students came into the archives. Keiran pushed off the table. “Let me show you.”
A suggestive lift of his brow was all it took for her to follow him deeper into the archives. Quiet footsteps offset the quickening of her pulse as she struggled to catch up with him. Keiran disappeared behind a shelf, and when she rounded the corner, she nearly collided into him, catching herself just in time. He was browsing old files and finally tugged one of them free.
Keiran skimmed the text. “The Selenics used to keep ledgers of their activities hidden in nondescript school files such as these, lost to us for years because of it. Until Farran and I started doing some digging. He always had a knack for unlocking old mysteries.”
Emory watched him flip to the next page. “You said the two of you grew up together?”
“We did. Him, me, Lizaveta, and Artem, we were practically family. Our parents were all part of the Order and remained close after their heyday at Aldryn. The four of us wanted so badly to follow in their footsteps.” A quick, sad smile. “Farran was the one to push this idea of waking the Tides, actually. Back when we were still at prep school. It was his way of getting us to focus on something other than our grief after what happened to our parents. A way for us to continue their legacy, ensure their deaths weren’t in vain.”
Even though she thought she knew the answer already, she asked, “How did you lose them?”
Keiran stared at the papers in his hand. “They were killed in a Collapsing accident.”
He said it tightly, in a way that made Emory uneasy thinking that she might Collapse one day. Yet he was putting all this faith in her anyway.
Before she could say anything, he handed her one of the papers, where an illustration of eight people forming a circle around a fountain had been drawn over the text of some nondescript administrative form.
“What am I looking at?”
“Look closer.”
She realized the lines of the drawing were formed of words—tiny, nearly illegible script, hidden in plain sight.
“It details the archaic rituals that were observed back in the days of the Tides,” Keiran said, “when people called upon them to use their magics. These rituals have been forgotten over time, no longer useful since magic was splintered. But the first Selenics still performed them, believing they might summon the Tides back from the Deep.”
“Clearly, they never succeeded.” She peered at the drawing. “What makes you think we’ll be able to do it now?”
There was a fierce glimmer in his eyes. “I’m sure they never had a Tidecaller in their mix. With you joining our ranks, lending your own abilities to this kind of ritual… our summons will be stronger than theirs ever could be.”
Emory frowned. “Did Romie know about all of this?”
Baz had been closer to the truth than she suspected he knew, with his talk of cults and songs and Dovermere. If Romie had known Keiran meant to summon the Tides back from the Deep, perhaps she’d likened it to the story in Song of the Drowned Gods. Maybe the note she left was her way of hinting at where she was going in case she didn’t make it back. A way for her to say, Romie Brysden is about to do something reckless （again） and here is where you’ll find her.
“No,” Keiran said, shutting that theory down. “The initiates knew about synthetic magics, but not this. We were going to let them in on it after Dovermere. Those who got the Selenic Mark, that is.”
Emory ran a thumb over her wrist. Keiran tracked the motion. “Aside from the fact that it allows us to communicate with one another, we don’t know much else about it. Clearly, the original Selenics knew enough of the power of Dovermere to craft their initiation ritual around the Hourglass. It’s the only ritual we’ve kept since the Order’s inception. Every year is the same: we round up the eight most promising new students, two of each of the four lunar houses, and have them undergo a series of preliminary tests to see who might have the countenance for synthetic magics. Only those who pass, if any, are invited to the final initiation: vanquishing Dovermere.”
“And those who don’t pass these preliminaries?”
“Memorists like Vivianne make them forget. They go about their lives unaware of the Selenic Order.”
Emory made quick calculations in her head. “So last year, every candidate passed the preliminaries, since there were eight of them in Dovermere. What about the rest of you? Were you all the same year?”
“All of us except Virgil. He’s a year younger than us.” He looked away, voice laced with something bitter as he said, “There were only seven of us who went to Dovermere my freshman year. Louis, Ife, Nisha, Lizaveta, Javier, me, and Farran. The other Waning Moon candidate didn’t make it past preliminaries, and Farran, as you know, drowned at Dovermere.”
A shadow fell on his face. “The four of us, Farran, Liza, Artie, and I, we grew up seeing firsthand the prestige that came with being a Selenic. We knew that once we joined, anything we wanted would be ours for the taking: the best postgraduate programs, the most exclusive internship placements, the highest-ranking jobs, access to synthetic magics. Artem was older than us, so he got in first, made sure to tap us for initiation when we got to Aldryn. We were riding a high then. Thought we were unstoppable. But when Farran died… I couldn’t shake this anger, at first. All of that hurt, and for what? Morsels of fabricated magic, the kind of power that wasn’t worth risking our lives for in Dovermere.”
“So why stay?”
“Because Farran had shown us the potential for more. We wanted to honor his memory by steering the Order back to what it used to be. To go beyond the glamorous parties and networking and do the one thing no Selenic before us had done.”