The feeling subsided as Kai settled back against the bench. He gave her a thin smile. “All right, say you’re a Tidecaller. What is it you’re here for? I’d throw you a welcome party, but seeing as I’ve been basically kicked out of House Eclipse myself… what does this have to do with me?”
“I need your help understanding how the sleepscape works. How to reach someone in their dreams.”
Kai huffed a laugh. “Walking through the sleepscape isn’t exactly a quaint little stroll down the beach. Navigating it takes years of practice, and even the best Dreamers can get lost, trapped, or worse.” He cut a disbelieving look at Baz. “What’s so important that you’d risk all that?”
“Romie’s alive,” Baz said quietly.
Something shifted in Kai’s eyes, a softness that was there and gone again before Emory could make sense of it. “I thought we went over this already. She’s gone, Brysden.”
“She might not be.”
“Romie used Dreamer magic to speak to me,” Emory asserted. “You were there in the dream. Didn’t you see her?”
Kai said nothing, his expression undecipherable.
“Please, Kai,” Baz pleaded. “We need your help.”
Again, something passed between them, a silent conversation Emory wasn’t privy to. Kai heaved a sigh and threw an arm on the back of the bench. “Fine. I’ll walk you through it.”
Emory wondered if Baz saw it, this devotion the Nightmare Weaver seemed to have for him.
The corner of Kai’s mouth lifted. “But Brysden’s got to do something for me in return.”
Baz looked like he was about ready to disappear. “What?”
“I know which room the Regulators bring us to when they do whatever the fuck it is they’re doing to us. I can’t get to it without eyes on me. But you can.”
“How do you know which room it is?”
Kai hesitated just a moment, and then: “Your dad told me.”
Baz blanched. “You saw him?”
“They usually keep him in a different wing, but they transferred him just the other day. He told me the Regulators took him to this room and did something to him, though he can’t remember what.” At the devastation on Baz’s face, Kai added, “He seemed fine, Brysden. But I need to know what’s in that room. Jae hasn’t been back, as far as I know, so it’s on us now to look into it.”
Baz shuffled uneasily on his feet, blinking away what looked like tears. “I’ll go look around.”
“Good.” Kai’s attention turned to Emory. “Then listen carefully, Tidecaller. Sleepscape 101 starts now.”
* * *
“So what’s the deal with you and Brysden?” Kai asked as she sat next to him on the bench.
She met his penetrating stare with a raise of her brow. “What’s the deal with you and him?”
Neither of them answered the other.
Theirs was an odd friendship, Emory thought. She’d always considered Baz a recluse, more at ease with fictional characters than with real people, so his evident closeness with Kai took her by surprise. She couldn’t imagine what they might possibly have in common. Kai with his sharpness, Baz with his softness. The master of nightmares and the boy plagued by too many fears. From what little she’d gleaned of their dynamic, Kai seemed to like tormenting Baz, pushing his buttons in a way she would have thought would scare him off, make him shut down around himself. But it seemed to have the opposite effect—like Kai coaxed him out of his shell a bit.
Maybe she didn’t know Baz as well as she’d thought.
She drew her legs up under her and eyed the Unhallowed Seal on Kai’s hand. “Do you miss it, your magic?”
“Every damn day.” He motioned to her New Moon sigil. “Scared they’ll take yours away next? Maybe they’ll throw you in a cell next to mine and you can tell me all about how this curious magic of yours came about.”
“No one’s going to find out.”
“You’re putting an awful lot of trust in someone who has literally nothing to lose in here.”
The thought should have unnerved her, yet she felt certain her secret was safe with Kai. “You won’t say anything.”
“And now she pretends to know me enough to predict my actions.”
“I know you wouldn’t betray Baz. He’s involved in this. Surely they wouldn’t be too kind to him for harboring such a secret if word got out.”
It was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Kai pinned her with a glare, and it felt like falling through ice into a cold, dark lake.
“If anything happens to him,” he said, a dangerous bite to his voice, “I’ll make your life a walking nightmare.”
“I wasn’t saying—”
“I’m sure you know how principled he is when it comes to magic. Him helping you with this? It goes against all his precious rules. Which means he trusts you. And that’s the thing about Brysden: under all that worry, all that anxiety, his loyalty, once you earn it, is unswerving.” He leaned in threateningly close. “Don’t fuck that up.”
There was a sudden thickness in her throat at the shame his words conjured. She’d been treating Baz as a necessary means to an end, and for Kai to see the truth of her so easily… Was she really leading Baz on so strong that it was that obvious?
She thought of that fleeting moment on the beach, the way Baz had leaned in. Recalled the quiet emotion on his face the next morning, his evident pride as he showed her around Obscura Hall. And this subtle shift she’d noticed in him since, like he felt more confident around her, more at ease…
Maybe she’d beguiled Baz into helping her long enough, and she should stop. Especially given how close she and Keiran were becoming.
Baz trusted her more than she deserved, of that she was painfully aware. But she needed him. They needed each other.
And yet… she really didn’t want to hurt him.
“I won’t,” Emory told Kai in earnest. It was a promise to him as much as to herself.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
The skepticism in his voice made it obvious he didn’t trust her to keep her word. It should have irked her, but all she could think was how lucky Baz was to have Kai on his side. Maybe their friendship wasn’t so strange after all. Kai was like a keeper of fear where Baz was concerned, protective of him in his own way. A fierce friend—or maybe something more. Something she suspected Baz couldn’t even see.
An odd feeling swept over her at the thought. Before she could dwell on it, Kai leaned back against the bench, the threat of his words evaporating around them.
“All right, then. The sleepscape. What is it you want to know?”
26 BAZ
BAZ SLIPPED FROM THE COURTYARD, leaving Kai and Emory to their lesson. His thoughts raced with the idea of Kai and his father—of his father being subjected to whatever it was the Regulators were experimenting with. The screams he’d heard the night he visited Kai…
They needed to get to the bottom of this.
He found the room that Kai had described, thankfully not bumping into anyone on the way. It had no windows and was locked, but Baz had learned the hairpin trick from Vera, figuring it might come in handy one day and prevent him from using magic to do so. He proceeded to unlock it and found—