In the end, she’d painstakingly succeeded in making a single sunflower appear in the fields of rippling tall grass. It felt like using Sower magic, in a sense, but so much harder, given that she was conjuring something from nothing.
After practicing enough times to get the hang of it, it was with this same Illusion magic that she’d made the dark moon and sunflower of Baz’s Eclipse tattoo disappear, leaving his left hand perfectly unmarred, while on his right was a near-flawless rendition of the dark moon and narcissus of House New Moon’s sigil. Same as hers.
Baz caught her smiling at her handiwork and flexed his hand. “If it gets too hard to hold the illusion…”
“I know.” She could already feel the strain of it on her magic, how difficult it was to keep the illusion up. The sunflower had felt easier: once sprung into being, it had stopped draining her power, though the illusion had then slowly withered away to nothing. For this, she needed to keep a hold on the magic long enough at least to get them into the Institute—without Collapsing.
A stern-faced Regulator greeted them at the door. “Purpose of your visit?”
“We’re visiting a Collapsed patient,” Baz answered with surprising calm. “Kai Salonga.”
The Regulator noted the New Moon tattoos on their hands. “Identity cards.”
Emory felt Baz stiffen ever so slightly as the Regulator looked at their cards, searched their faces. For a moment, she thought it wouldn’t work. But the Regulator handed them back their cards and motioned them through the next door with a bored jerk of the head.
Baz blew out a sigh. Emory forced a smile; the magic was already taking its toll. Just a while longer, she told herself as an attendant led them through the maze of corridors. The edges of her vision began to blur.
“Let go of it,” Baz muttered at her side. “Now.”
She didn’t need to be told twice. Emory sighed in relief as she let go of the illusion. Baz tugged on his sleeves, hiding the back of his hands. She hoped it would be enough.
They were brought to a small inner courtyard where another attendant watched over four patients: an aging man and a middle-aged woman playing chess, a girl not much older than Emory huddled in the corner drawing in a notebook, and Kai, sitting cross-legged on a bench with a book open in his lap. Without taking his eyes off his reading, he swept his shoulder-length dark hair back, tying it in a low bun. The sunlight caught the delicate chains he wore around his neck, complementing the warm undertones of his skin, and Emory thought she saw the edges of a tattoo peeking out from his shirt.
Kai finally caught sight of them as he lifted his head. His eyes narrowed in on Baz, and the air between them grew taut in a way Emory didn’t quite understand.
“Back so soon, Brysden?”
Emory seized. That voice…
There was a curious glint in Kai’s gaze as it fell on her. She stood completely hypnotized.
“This is Emory Ainsleif,” Baz said with an awkward clearing of his throat. “She’s a friend. Of Romie’s.”
“You were in my dream the other night,” Emory blurted.
Kai’s brow shot up. “Was I now?”
There was no mistaking his voice, like a midnight breeze.
That way lies madness, dreamling.
Wake up.
“You were there when I saw Romie. You woke me from my dream.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed where I’m currently being kept,” Kai sneered as he motioned to his branded hand, to the heavy damper cuffs around his wrists, “I can assure you I’m in no position to be walking into anyone’s slumber.”
Something in his tone, in the faint recognition he tried to hide from his eyes, told her he knew exactly what she was referring to.
“How else would I have dreamed of you when I’ve never even met you?” She’d seen him around campus a few times, had heard of him sure enough, but this went beyond that.
“You know what they say,” Kai said in a wry way that reminded her a bit of Virgil. “Dreams are manifestations of our unconscious desires.” He gave her a disinterested once-over. “I’m flattered, though you’re not exactly my type.”
Did she imagine the way his eyes cut to Baz? Baz was frowning between them, looking completely oblivious to the insinuation. “I think I saw you too,” he said to Kai. “After I came to visit you. I had the nightmare again…”
He trailed off. A loaded look passed between him and Kai, and Emory felt like she was intruding on something deeply personal.
“I thought I was seeing things,” Baz breathed, “but you were really there, weren’t you?”
Kai watched Baz for a beat, and something changed in him, as if having Baz admit that he’d also seen him in his sleep had settled something. Whatever pretense he’d been assuming vanished. He spoke in a sinister undertone: “Told you they were doing weird shit to us.”
“Wait—what weird shit?” Emory asked, feeling completely out of the loop.
“The night I visited Kai,” Baz explained grimly, “the Regulators did something to one of the Eclipse-born here. There were screams and weird power surges. That’s the night I saw Kai in my sleep.” He frowned at the U on Kai’s hand. “But it doesn’t make sense. How can you access the sleepscape if your magic is sealed?”
“Fuck if I know,” Kai groaned. “The first time it happened, I thought I was going crazy. I tried doing it again, but it never worked unless the Regulators were making someone scream. Then I’d find myself pulled into the sleepscape, like whatever they did messed with the seal on my magic, and it managed to slip through the cracks somehow. Last time it happened was on the fall equinox.”
“That’s the night I saw you,” Emory said. It felt a tad violating to have had him in her head, even if he had snapped her out of that twisted dream. “Why me, though?”
“No idea. I have no control over it. Usually it’s the nightmares of those closest to me that call. Or those of other Dreamers.” He tilted his head to peer at her New Moon sigil. “But you’re no Dreamer.”
Baz shot Emory a sidelong glance. “That’s the thing,” he said slowly. “She kind of… is?”
At Kai’s dubious expression, Emory explained, “I’m a Dreamer, and a Healer, a Lightkeeper, a Sower, an Illusionist… I’m all of that and more, or can be if I choose to, because I’m a Tidecaller.”
It felt strangely empowering to say it aloud—until Kai snickered at her, full of disbelief.
“Sure you are. And I’m the Shadow himself.” He looked at Baz. “Don’t tell me you believe this nonsense.”
“I’ve seen her use Tidecaller magic myself.”
“And I’ve seen nightmares that would make you both gouge your eyes out—doesn’t make them real.”
“You just admitted to using magic even though you have the seal,” Emory shot back. “You might want to reevaluate what can be real or not.”
“Trust me, I think I have a fairly decent ability to tell reality from fantasy.”
Kai’s gaze pierced her soul, and for a delirious moment, she wondered if that cold sense of foreboding she felt was his magic, still alive somehow despite the brand that sealed it off. Baz took a step forward. He spoke Kai’s name in warning, as if he, too, wondered if his power might not be as slumbering as it should be.