It didn’t surprise him, really. Romie had been a bright light who effortlessly pulled people in. He’d always admired her carefree attitude, this ease with which she moved and talked and dreamed. A part of him might have even envied her for it.
Tides, he missed her.
The clerk stepped aside, and Baz promptly went through the door, the magic of old books beckoning him forward.
“Aisle C, by the way,” the girl called after him. She looked at him over her copy of Song of the Drowned Gods as she settled back in her seat. “That’s where you’ll find the manuscript.”
The silver door shut, seemingly of its own accord, and Baz stood alone in the Vault.
He wound his way down a narrow stone corridor lined with elaborate bronze sconces all alit with magicked everlight, a centuries-old invention the Lightkeepers of House Full Moon had perfected that stood the test of time even against the rise of electricity. The corridor seemed to go on forever until it spilled into a large, circular room around which were additional passages, these ones lined with books. It gave Baz the impression of standing at the center of a clockface, the aisles like the clock’s minute marks. Up and up the rows of shelves climbed, all the way to the vaulted ceiling above, where a curtain of water fell from an opening in its middle.
Baz approached the marble rail in the center of the room. He could almost touch the delicate waterfall on the other side, felt its cold mist on his face. He knew the water came from the Fountain of Fate up in the quad, which must be directly overhead. It spilled into the darkness below his feet, too far down for him to discern the bottom, if there was one at all.
For once, Baz was all too aware of time slipping by, and so he promptly made his way to the H aisle, where The Tides of Fate and the Shadow of Ruin was easy enough to find. It was quite possibly one of the largest books he’d ever seen; his arms buckled under the weight of it as he heaved it off its shelf.
He knew better by now than to question Professor Selandyn’s research, no matter how tired or innocuous or ludicrous her topics might seem at first. He’d once helped her compile a list of lesser-known swamps around the world and was awed at the brilliant paper she then produced on the varying effects of salt water and fresh water used in bloodletting practices. And last year, when she had researched the influence of blood moons over the mating tendencies of bloody-belly comb jellyfish, Baz thought she might have finally gone mad; the award she received for that paper proved him wrong.
Beatrix Selandyn’s mind was praised in every academic circle there was. At Aldryn, at least, she didn’t experience the kind of antagonism other Eclipse-born did, and was instead widely respected. Baz knew how lucky he was to be her assistant. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder why she’d decided to research a myth that pinned their very own house as the villain.
Once, before the Tides vanished, as the myth went, magic was said to have been accessible to all, no matter the moon phase one was born to. People could divine the future and make plants grow and produce light and darkness and walk into dreams and reap lives all at once, so long as they made offerings to the Tides. But when the deities left their shores, they splintered magic into lunar houses and tidal alignments, making it so that those with magic could only practice the single ability they were born with.
And because the Tides were thought to have forsaken their world in order to defeat the Shadow of Ruin—the dark, unhallowed figure associated with House Eclipse—naturally, the Eclipse-born had shouldered the blame for centuries. People believed Eclipse magic was stolen from the Tides, something that should never have belonged to them. They were the outliers of magic wielders, a rarity not entirely belonging to the sacred lunar cycle the world revolved around, and as such, everything about them was made to be contrary:
Where others had their sigils tattooed on their right hand, the Eclipse-born had theirs on their left.
While each of the four main lunar houses was associated with one of the Tides, theirs was linked to the Shadow, the bringer of bad omens, the great eye in the sky that shadowed the world and gave those like Baz their odd, twisted powers.
And while the other houses’ magics followed a careful cycle—a fully formed thing only during one’s ruling lunar phase, thus only accessible for a few days every month unless called upon through bloodletting—Eclipse magic could be accessed at all times, no matter the moon’s position. No bloodletting needed.
That kind of relentless power… some people were envious of it, but it was a burden. A curse. It was why Baz kept to books and knowledge, choosing to hone his mind rather than testing the limits of his time-bending ability. He knew many would kill to have such a gift even if it belonged to House Eclipse, seeing it as power unmatched, a force to rival gods, a way to unmake the very fabric of life as they knew it. Baz himself had thought of using it to undo the things that haunted him most—his sister’s death, his father’s Collapsing—but he would never dare risk it. Time was of a slippery nature, and Eclipse magic was not to be trifled with. It was because of this that Baz wished to become a professor here at Aldryn, why he’d wanted to be Professor Selandyn’s assistant. He’d seen one too many Eclipse-born consumed by their power, and maybe this way, he could help prevent more of them from Collapsing.
Baz lugged the heavy book back to the center of the Vault, where he glanced around for the other aisle the clerk had mentioned. It was only a couple of rows down, and there was no sign of her colleague, nor anyone else, for that matter.
He couldn’t resist: he headed down the C aisle.
The Song of the Drowned Gods manuscript was displayed on a delicate easel inside a locked glass box. It was nothing but flimsily bound yellowing pages, but the sight of the fading title on its battered cover made Baz’s soul stir. How he longed to feel it in his hands, to read the words as Clover had initially thought them.
He looked over a shoulder, then the other. Would it be so wrong of him to break the rules just this once? He might never get another chance to step foot in the Vault…
Without thinking, Baz set The Tides of Fate and the Shadow of Ruin next to the glass case and unclasped the silver cuff around his wrist. Power thrummed in answer, deep in his veins. Before he could change his mind, he called his magic forward, ever so carefully. It was a small enough thing to reach for the threads of time linked to this particular lock, to seize the one that led to a time where it was unlocked.
With a click, the mechanism on the case gave way, the glass panel opened at his touch, and there was Song of the Drowned Gods, his for the taking.
Baz felt like the scholar in the story, reaching for a strange book that might carry him to other worlds. He put on a pair of white cotton gloves meant for handling old texts and took it reverentially between his hands, flipping to the first page.
“There is a world at the center of all things where drowned gods reign over a sea of ash,” he read aloud. He held his breath and waited to find himself beneath the colorless skies he’d read so often about, a foolish, childish part of him daring to hope it might actually work.
But there were no such things as portals, no matter how transportive a piece of writing might be.
Baz laughed at himself. Curious, he flipped to the back of the book, where there was evidence of a single ripped-out page, all that was left of it now a torn fringe scarring the spine. He’d heard the rumors, of course, of an apparent epilogue discarded before the story ever made it to print. Kai had talked about it all the time, obsessed with theories on what Clover might have written.