Nothing.
At least, nothing out of the ordinary. It was a medical room, clinical and spotless, with surgical instruments locked away behind glass cases. Cold crept up the back of Baz’s spine. Before he could investigate further, he heard the jangle of keys outside.
Baz backed out of the room, leaving the door unlocked before he disappeared down another corridor. An older attendant looked his way, brows furrowing slightly as if in recognition, but someone called their name, drawing their attention away as Baz rounded another corner.
His eyes zeroed in on the label next to one of the doors.
Theodore Brysden.
Heart pounding in his chest, Baz peered through the slender window, noting the small comforts that made the room almost homey. A pile of books. A knit blanket thrown at the foot of the bed—his mother’s handiwork, no doubt. A picture frame on the desk held a sepia-toned memory of another life, a better time. Four smiling figures that were unrecognizable now.
Breathe in, hold, breathe out.
Baz had been repeating the mantra to himself ever since getting out of the cab, trying to stay grounded. But he suddenly forgot how it went as he spotted his father on the bed, his profile nearly unrecognizable, thanks to the passage of time and something crueler still.
Baz’s throat worked for air that would not come, everything in him locking up as memories of that day erupted behind his eyes.
School had been on holiday, and fifteen-year-old Baz couldn’t wait to spend an entire week holed up in the printing press, reading quietly in an empty office or listening to Jae tell stories against the backdrop of melodical machinery. He distinctly remembered the three clients who’d come into the printing press at noon, the chime over the door announcing their presence. He’d looked up from his book with disinterest, and only suspected something might be wrong when he heard raised voices and saw his father standing between Jae and the clients—two men and a woman—his arms extended as if to stop a fight.
Baz remembered how scared he’d been as one of the men lunged for Jae, damper cuffs in hand, and Jae responded by flinging illusion magic his way and Theodore screamed at everyone to stop, to please just stop.
Then: a blast like that of a star in collapse. Screams and silver veins and the wet glimmer in Theodore’s eyes as the Regulators who eventually showed up subdued him. As they took him away to be branded with the Unhallowed Seal and become this. A frail, pale imitation of the man he’d once been.
You’ll be all right, his father had said to him before Baz was wrenched from his arms. Everything will be all right, Basil.
He watched his father now as he flipped the page of the book he was reading. It felt surreal that only a glass window separated them after so many years. Theodore’s back suddenly went rigid, his face lifting toward the door, as if he could feel his son’s presence on the other side of it.
Baz stepped out of sight before his father could see him. And then he was sprinting down the corridor, lungs burning, everything in him holding on by a flimsy thread. He made it back to the courtyard just in time to see the patients being herded away by an attendant. Something about it being lunchtime, he was distantly aware of Emory saying as she sidled up to him.
Kai spotted him from across the courtyard. His shoulders fell at whatever he saw on Baz’s face. There was nothing to say. No time to say it.
Only when Kai disappeared did Baz’s knees give way. He crumbled against a wall, and it took everything in him to get a grip on his breathing. In and hold and out and in again until the world stilled, quiet and safe once more.
His name spoken softly brought him back to himself. Emory knelt in front of him.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I saw my dad.” His eyes squeezed shut. “After all these years, I still couldn’t bring myself to face him. He killed those people. And I know it was an accident, but I always wondered how it could have happened in the first place.”
Theodore was a Nullifier—it had felt to Baz like that should be the safest kind of Eclipse magic to wield, yet he still Collapsed.
“If I could have stopped it…”
“Hey.”
Emory’s hand gripped his, soft and real and warm. He looked into her stormy eyes and found them to be grounding.
“You were a kid,” she breathed, “and there’s nothing you could have done. But if you need to see him now, if you want to go back…”
“I can’t.”
“Then come on. Let’s go home.”
Home was a funny word, Baz thought. Once, he had never felt more at home than when he was at the printing press with his father and Jae. And when he’d had that ripped from him, home became books, the stories they contained. When he thought of home now, he thought of Aldryn, of the warded sanctuary of Obscura Hall, the warmth of the Eclipse commons. But that home wasn’t one at all, he realized, without Kai there to share it with.
He needed to bring this—whatever was happening at the Institute—into the light. He’d had enough of Eclipse-born hiding in the shadows.
27 EMORY
“OW.” EMORY WINCED AT THE sting of the needle. “Do you have to jab that in quite so hard?”
A withering look from Baz as he pulled the syringe, releasing the sleeping drug into her muscle. “You say that every time, and every time I try to do it more gently.”
If there was one thing she hated in life, it was needles.
“My arm’s still sore from yesterday and the day before that,” she gritted out. A pinprick of blood formed between blooming bruises on her arm.
“Why don’t you just heal the pain away?”
Emory leaned back on the sofa, her muscles already going heavy. “I keep hoping it’ll motivate me to get it right for once.”
The drug was sleep magic imbued in salt water, a tonic that some Dreamer students used during their training to make themselves fall asleep, thus facilitating their access to the sleepscape. Baz had somehow managed to borrow a small stock of it from a teacher in Decrescens Hall.
They’d been experimenting with it for a week now, and still Emory wasn’t able to access the sleepscape.
The first couple of tries, she’d merely fallen into a deep, entirely normal slumber. According to Baz, she even snored a few times, out like a light until the effects of the drug began to wear off and she woke to Baz’s nervous pacing.
After those first few unsuccessful attempts, she’d at least become aware of herself as she slept. It was like being on the brink of sleep yet still awake, when the line between thought and dreaming blurred. It was in this state that she was supposed to find the sleepscape, a thing much easier said than done.
“Just follow the darkness,” Kai had instructed her at the Institute. “All sleep is dark, in a way, but sleepscape darkness is different. You’ll know when you see it.”
Emory thought she glimpsed it once. Blackness so impenetrable it felt tangible. But she’d been under too long already by then; before she could reach it, the sleeping drug wore off, and she was pulled back into waking.
She hoped this time would be different. Outside, the sun was setting, casting the Eclipse commons in warm golden light. The last sliver of a waning moon was already visible in the darkening sky, though if the last few days were any indication, it had no influence at all on Emory’s power and would likely not make using the Dreamer magic any easier now.