“Waking the Tides.”
“What could be more worthy an endeavor than that? When Artem’s cohort graduated and I took over the reins, we started going through what Farran had found, testing all these rituals and playing around with synths in the hopes of becoming powerful enough to summon the Tides. That first year I was in charge, I also wanted to ensure the preliminaries were harder to pass, hoping it would limit the deaths. Virgil was the only one who made it past his preliminaries; he survived Dovermere all on his own.”
Another Reaper to replace Farran, Emory thought, wondering if it were mere coincidence.
“The year after that,” Keiran continued, “all eight students we tapped for initiation made it to Dovermere. They were just that good.” A bob of his throat. “You know how that worked out.”
Eight names etched on a silver plaque at the Tides’ feet: Quince Travers, Healer. Serena Velan, Darkbearer. The twins, Dania and Lia Azula, Wordsmiths. Daphné Dioré the Wardcrafter and Jordyn Briar Burke the Soultender. Harlow Kerr, Unraveler. And Romie—the fierce, secretive, bright Dreamer.
“It was such a promising group,” Keiran lamented. “The most powerful young mages the Order had seen in years. And with the strides we’d been making developing stronger synths, I thought we might finally have what it took to wake the Tides.” He shook his head angrily. “Their deaths weigh on me still.”
Emory felt a grim kinship with him, to know that he, too, blamed himself for their deaths. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t have done anything to prevent this, that only Dovermere was to blame. It was the lie she told herself every night she woke in cold sweats, plagued by this nightmarish guilt.
“At least their loss wasn’t entirely in vain,” Keiran said quietly. “It brought us you.”
Her cheeks burned furiously at the ardent look he gave her.
“I meant it when I said we’d try to get Romie back,” he asserted. “She and Farran and all the others. And if the Tides won’t grant us this one thing, then I promise we’ll pull them back from the Deep ourselves if it’s the last thing we ever do.”
Emory blinked past the sudden sting in her eyes, looking at the ritual drawn on the page. “And this will bring them back?”
“Not quite. Think of waking the Tides as opening a door. But that door is locked; the Tides barred from our world. So first we need to unlock it.” He rustled the page. “This is how we might do it. It’s a fall equinox ritual, where the first Selenics made offerings of their magic to the Tides. They believed there was power on the fall equinox, since it marks the beginning of the end of the cycle, a bridge between summer and winter. They thought the Tides would hear them and be inclined to answer their call.”
“The fall equinox is in less than a week,” Emory said slowly.
Keiran nodded. “And with the festival happening at the same time, the whole campus will be otherwise occupied. No better time to hold our first ritual with our Tidecaller, I think.”
The fall equinox festival was widely celebrated at Aldryn. Students gathered on the banks of the River Helene to cast boats out to sea, a way to entreat the Tides to guide them into autumn. A handful of students from each house were selected to stand upon their respective houses’ boats and perform feats of magic representing each of their lunar houses as they traveled down the river toward the sea. It was a grand spectacle, and an opportunity for the chosen students to showcase their talents to important dignitaries from grad schools and institutions that sought to recruit them.
House Eclipse was always omitted, likely for fear of its students Collapsing while performing their magic.
Emory watched Keiran as he pocketed the ritual drawing, thinking again of the stark difference between his and Baz’s reactions to her magic. How Baz, Eclipse-born like her, seemed more wary of it than Keiran, when it should have been the other way around.
“Why aren’t you scared of me?” she asked. For all he knew, she could Collapse at any given moment, yet there wasn’t a trace of fear in him. “I’m Eclipse-born. Surely—”
“Surely I must hate all Eclipse-born because one of them killed my parents?” Keiran finished for her with a snicker.
The words were too raw, slicing between them like a blade.
“Maybe I did once.” His brows scrunched together. “I was fifteen and looking for someone to blame, and it seemed so easy then to despise all Eclipse-born for destroying my family. But that was a long time ago, and I don’t think that anymore. I’m not afraid of you, Ainsleif.”
“Why not?”
A hint of his dimpled smile. “Would you prefer it if I were?”
“Of course not. But it would make a lot more sense than… this.” Whatever this was, this thing between them.
Keiran seemed to grasp her meaning. She wished to drown in his molten gaze.
He tugged on her hand then, and she had no choice but to follow as he pulled her deeper into the archives. She hadn’t even known the archives were this big to begin with, and the farther they went, the older everything got, a musty smell clinging like cobwebs to the shelves. He helped her climb up a narrow wrought-iron ladder to a hidden attic that was plunged in darkness.
Keiran’s hand left hers to flick on an everlight lantern. And suddenly dozens of the same light shone around the room, that single lantern reflected in a dizzying array of mirrors of every shape and size, all perfectly aligned to refract the light around them.
It felt more like an abandoned museum than an archive attic. Unhung frames lined the walls, great oak dressers and old bookcases and lecterns gathered dust, and in every corner were things that did not quite belong: swords and bows and arrows, scrolls of parchment so ancient they’d begun to disintegrate, broken clocks and chipped vases, golden string instruments, an easel with a half-painted canvas of wildflowers in a sunlit field.
“Farran dubbed this the Forgotten Place,” Keiran said at her side. “We found it during our freshman year while scouring the archives for anything we could find on the Order. A lot of it is junk, but—”
“Are those the photographs you’re restoring?”
She reached for a silver plaque like the one she’d seen him working on, displayed on top of a claw-footed dresser. The surface was no longer mottled but polished enough to reveal the outlines of three people posing for the camera.
“One of them, yes,” Keiran said. “This one’s not done yet. I think with more work I can restore it enough that we see their faces.”
“It’s amazing, the things you can do with your magic.”
“I’m glad you think so. You know, I used to resent being a Lightkeeper,” he admitted with a bashful smile. “I wanted to be a Memorist or a Seer or an Unraveler. I thought there was only so much I could do with Lightkeeper magic, and I wanted more. That’s what drew me to the Order. We’re taught that there’s the magic we’re born with and ways to excel at it, to push this singular ability we have to its limits. But I wanted to exceed those limits. I wanted no limits at all.”
He looked at her like she was the answer to that dream. A way to attain all magics. She ducked her head, studying the shadows on the silver plaque. They were very clearly the outlines of three men dressed in an older fashion, sitting in what might have been a lavish taproom. Only their faces remained tarnished, rendering them featureless.