“I think my presence at Dovermere is what called Travers and Lia back. Both times, I was at the beach, in the water.” Emory traced her Selenic Mark. “I tried reaching Romie through the mark last night. What if I somehow called Lia back instead? If our ritual made it possible for her to hear me?”
“That wouldn’t explain Travers, though,” Keiran argued. “There was no ritual that time.”
Emory groaned, grabbing her head between her hands. “Then maybe it’s like Baz thinks, and there’s this impossible dream song calling us to other worlds like in Song of the Drowned Gods.” She laughed a little hysterically. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”
Keiran sat beside her, his warm hand caressing the back of her neck. She melted against his touch.
“If we’re to assume Romie and Jordyn are still alive,” he surmised, “maybe Brysden is right about them being stuck. Not in another world, but some kind of in-between. A purgatory between here and the Deep. Not quite living, not quite dead.”
At the perplexed look Emory shot him, he added, “I’ve done my own fair share of research on Dovermere and these supposed doors to the Deep, read everything I can in preparation for waking the Tides. We know for a fact that Dovermere holds power beyond our understanding. I’m sure you felt it when you were there, the dark pull of the Hourglass. Like a beast you know you shouldn’t approach but want to touch regardless.”
In her mind she heard an echo of her whispered name as the caves filled with water.
“If Dovermere’s both the place the Tides were birthed in and vanished to,” Keiran continued, “it would make sense for it to be a gateway to the Deep itself. And maybe it opened last spring because, for the first time in the Order’s history, the circle around the Hourglass was complete. With magic not just of the four lunar houses, but of House Eclipse, too.”
Cold licked up Emory’s spine. If her mere presence had opened this door to the Deep, then she had sent the four of them to purgatory.
She might as well have sentenced them to death.
As if reading her mind, Keiran ventured another guess. “What if by escaping death that night, you formed a link to those Dovermere did claim? Maybe that’s how Romie could contact you in your dream, why Travers and Lia both came back when you were near Dovermere. Death left its mark on you all.”
Emory shook her head. “But if I called them back to the world of the living, why did they die?”
This seemed to throw him for a loop. He stared into the middle distance. “The Deep demands payment,” he said quietly. His gaze sharpened, focused on her. “Think about it. No one has crossed through those doors and lived to tell the tale because such a crossing demands payment. Because no one can step into the Deep and return to the living without first paying the price. If Travers and Lia had one foot in the underworld before crossing back into the world of the living… it might explain their strange deaths.”
Emory’s heart raced. “They both lost their magic in some strange reversal of their power.” A Healer withering away to bones. A Wordsmith losing the ability to speak things into being. “You think that was the payment demanded by the Deep?”
Keiran nodded grimly. “Their magic—their very lifeblood—in exchange for the act of crossing into the underworld. Maybe Brysden’s theory about the lost epilogue isn’t too far off. This idea of holding a key to cross through worlds… it makes sense. Take Reapers and Shadowguides, for example. The veil to the Deep is thinner for them than it is for anyone else. They have the countenance for it, have been blessed by the Tides with gifts that have them closely intertwined with death. But even they can’t physically find themselves in the Deep. They’d need some kind of protection to survive it.”
“You mean the epilogue?”
“Maybe. Or something the epilogue might have hinted at. If Romie was researching such a possibility, she might know how we can go through that door and come back from the Deep unscathed. It’s the missing piece to what we’ve been trying to achieve.”
“Romie’s the key to all of it,” Emory breathed.
“And she found a way to contact you in a dream.” Keiran’s eyes glistened. “With your power… you could wield Dreamer magic too. Reach her in the sleepscape, find out what we need to wake the Tides. To save her too.”
Emory shied away from the intensity in his expression. The kind of magic he was asking her to do was far beyond her reach. After last night’s ritual, she wasn’t even sure how this Tidecaller thing worked anymore. Would she need to come into contact with a Dreamer first to mirror their magic, or could she call on it through her own power? It was too much to think of.
“Hey.” Keiran pressed his forehead to hers, fingers weaving through her hair. “We’re so close, Ains. I know you can do this.”
His words—this utter faith in her he seemed to have—thrilled and scared her in equal measure. “If this fails, I’m blaming you,” she said lightly, forcing the corners of her mouth up.
“There it is,” Keiran whispered. “That smile.”
A featherlight brush of his lips against hers had her eyes fluttering shut. Warmth rushed to her face as he trailed delicate kisses down her jaw. She was burning and nothing mattered—until Lia’s incinerated mouth flashed in her mind.
Emory pulled away with a start, fresh horror on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just… with everything that’s happened…”
“No, of course.” Keiran kissed her forehead. “I’ll go.”
She pressed a hand to his arm as he started to get up. “Wait.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go further with him—because Tides, she did. And it wasn’t that she’d never gone further than kissing before, either. Her first time had been a fumbling experience with a boy at Threnody Prep; her second, a drunken romp with another New Moon student during her first week at Aldryn. Both instances had been disappointing and fleeting, fueled by mindless attraction and this nagging sense that she needed to catch up. It was silly, really, but all she could do then was compare herself to bold, experienced Romie, whose generous curves and aura of confidence turned heads wherever she went. Meanwhile, Emory was always overlooked, for who would spare a glance at her, the timid, reserved, bland girl, when they were blinded by the blazing sun that was Romie?
But this thing with Keiran, whatever it was… It felt different. Suddenly she was the sun, and he looked at her like she was everything he’d ever wanted. She’d never known this kind of rush—this kind of budding intimacy. And she wanted so desperately to see it flourish.
“Stay with me?”
She flushed as the words left her mouth. A part of her didn’t think it was her place to ask such a thing of him, but the thought of being alone—of falling asleep and possibly dreaming of Romie again, or not dreaming of her at all—was unbearable.
Understanding lit Keiran’s eyes. He settled back against the headboard and drew her into the crook of his arm. They stayed like that for a while in comfortable silence.