“What about Jae?”
“Jae’s interest is purely academic. They don’t concern themselves with this absurd treasure hunt. Promise me you won’t get involved, Basil.”
The promise was a bitter lie in his mouth as he found himself picking Dark Tides up off the shelf.
It was an innocuous little book. Plain dark leather binding, silver title nearly worn away from use. Baz flipped it open to the epigraph and recognized it as the rhyme Kai had alluded to:
There are tides that drown and tides that bind,
tides with voices not all kind,
moon-kissed tides with pitch-black eyes,
and those that dance ’neath stranger skies.
The words felt like nothing more than poetic ramblings, yet they made the hairs on the back of Baz’s neck stand. Someone had carefully drawn the eight phases of the moon atop the four lines, as well as two other symbols beneath them, meant to represent the lunar and solar eclipses. A swirling constellation of childishly rendered stars wove around and over and between the words in blue ink. They looked exactly like the stars Romie would draw whenever they tried recreating illustrations of the Tides—of Quies especially, the Waning Crone always portrayed with her head tipped up to a heavy blanket of stars.
She’s like in my dreams. So many stars.
Baz brought the book back to the permissions desk for Nisha Zenara to stamp its checkout card. Romie’s name wasn’t on it. He’d asked Nisha about it earlier, noticing her brief flicker of recognition as he mentioned Dark Tides. She’d feigned innocence, looking over her ledger and stating that Romie was never listed as having come into the Vault. Baz knew better. If they’d been as close as Kai suggested, Nisha had probably let Romie sneak in unofficially.
Too eager to wait until he was in the Eclipse commons to start reading, he did so as he climbed the narrow stone staircase that led into the Decrescens library above the Vault. He’d just walked through the slender archway at the top, where two marble busts stood as solemn sentinels, each one wearing a crown of gold-leafed laurels, when he deigned to finally look up.
The book dropped at his feet.
Keiran Dunhall Thornby stood before him.
“Brysden,” he said in a voice that was eerily calm.
Time stopped as they stared each other down. It wound back in Baz’s mind until he saw Keiran as a fifteen-year-old boy in a courthouse, alone and angry at being robbed too soon of his family, hazel eyes full of hurt and hate as they swept over Baz.
By some unspoken agreement, the two of them had always given each other a wide berth at Aldryn, knowing full well they’d inevitably clash if they got too close. It was nothing short of a miracle they’d never once been in the same room together, at least not without others there to act as buffers.
But now, as Keiran’s face shed the perfect mask of civility and nonchalance he always wore, Baz realized with no small horror that for the first time, they were indeed alone.
He took an involuntary step back as Keiran lunged—not at Baz, but at the book he’d dropped on the floor. Keiran smirked at his cowering and read the title. He stilled, and Baz thought he might have imagined the unease on his face, the tightness in his shoulders. Slowly, Keiran lifted his eyes back to him, and there was violence brewing in their depths, a storm on the brink of unleash. As if he knew what this book was, what it meant that Baz had it.
Before either of them could say anything, Dean Fulton appeared.
“There you are, I’ve been looking all over for you.”
This seemed to be directed at Keiran, though her voice was tinged with a casual note that threw Baz for a loop. The dean faltered when she spotted him. “Oh, Mr. Brysden. I didn’t see you there.” Her gaze bounced between the two of them in the ensuing silence, no doubt noticing the tension. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything is just fine,” Keiran said with a sharp-edged smile. “Isn’t that right, Brysden?”
“Of course,” Baz gritted out.
Fulton looked at him for a second longer than necessary. “Well, it was nice seeing you, then, Mr. Brysden. I hope you’ll enjoy the equinox festival tonight. Mr. Dunhall Thornby, my office, please.” Her tone brokered no argument as she turned on her heel.
Keiran handed Baz his book back with a scornful curl of his lip. “Happy reading.”
* * *
“Doors to the Deep,” Vera read, peering at the book as they made their way to the equinox festival. She shoved it unceremoniously back into Baz’s hand. “I’ve heard of them before. Water holes that drain the sea into their seemingly bottomless depths. They’re said to be remnants of old, collapsed sea caves, no?”
“Yeah.”
Baz thumbed the pages of Dark Tides as they kept walking. There was palpable excitement in the air as students made their way to the site of the festival on the banks of the River Helene. Everlight lanterns dangled from branches arcing overhead, lining the path down to the river, which slithered through the woods that hugged the hill upon which Aldryn College stood. The magicked lanterns were barely needed on such a night: the waxing gibbous hung high in the sky, its silvery light flooding the woods.
There was no sign of Jae. They’d sent word to Baz the morning after the Institute, letting him know they were safe and confirming they’d come to the equinox festival. It was the only reason Baz was here at all. He never came to these things—too many people, an absolute nightmare. He was grateful to have Vera with him at least. She’d been eager to tag along, claiming she’d never been to such a festival before. They don’t have them in Trevel, she’d said. Baz suspected she also just wanted to see Jae again, so fascinated had she been by their magic.
He couldn’t wait to pester Jae for their thoughts on Dark Tides. It was a truly odd book. Obscure theories on rare tidal movements said to influence magic in strange ways, stranger still than any ecliptic event ever did. Rip currents that brought deadly plagues or incredible fortune to whatever shores they unfurled on. Tides that gifted people with astoundingly long life, and others said to spawn transformations that could only be the stuff of myth, tales of merfolk and men who howled at the moon like wolves. And these water holes that acted as portals believed to take you to distant ports and continents or other worlds entirely.
It was exactly the kind of reading material Professor Selandyn loved to pore over. Impossible magics and theories that weren’t exactly plausible but that she’d entertain nonetheless, often proving them right or wrong. Baz had thought of going to her first about what he’d read in Dark Tides, but after what she’d made him promise, he’d decided a third party might be best.
“But do you think there’s any plausibility to these things being actual doorways?” he asked Vera excitedly. “Here, look—”
He stopped under a lantern and flipped to a particular passage that had drawn his eye.
The tide sinks and swirls out of sight through these holes, carrying along whatever or whoever falls into them. It is said that the Tides sank down into such water holes to bring the Shadow into the Deep, thus spawning this long-standing belief that they are doors to the Deep itself; portals into the dark hellscape that lies at the bottom of the sea. Others believe these carrier tides unfurl onto distant shores, though none have ever survived to tell the tale.*