Baz was on his knees in front of her, hands gripping her shoulders to shake her awake. He slumped back onto the floor, looking deflated. “What happened?”
Emory curled her hands into fists. “I made it, but I couldn’t sense Romie anywhere. Then the umbrae showed up.”
Baz swore. He took his glasses off, ran a hand over his haggard face. “I heard you calling out to her. Then you started trembling and I—”
“I want to try it again.”
“Emory…”
“Again.”
“No. We’ll pick this up tomorrow. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
She fell back against the sofa, sighing deeply. He was right, of course—she felt like she’d just cycled up the hill from Cadence to Aldryn about a dozen times. “It’s like she’s too far away for me to reach,” she mused. “Like something’s blocking her from me.”
Baz sat beside her, his arm brushing hers. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” he repeated softly.
Emory drew her knees up beneath her and turned to face him. He still hadn’t put his glasses back on, and his eyes were closed as if in sleep. She studied his face openly. These past few days spent here with him in Obscura Hall had shifted something between them. Or maybe it was Kai’s looming threat, the fierce protectiveness he’d shown Baz, that made her see him in a new light. Whatever it was, it felt easy with him. Comfortable in a way she hadn’t counted on.
“You look different without your glasses.”
His eyes fluttered open. This close, she could make out the faint freckles on his nose, the various shades of brown in his irises.
“Different how?”
“Less scholarly, maybe. Not so tragically serious.”
A shy smile from him. “What if I like being the serious scholar?”
“Is that why you want to become a professor? To study books in peace with your endless supply of tea and coffee?”
She’d meant it teasingly, but Baz seemed to consider the question in earnest, eyes unfocused as he looked out the window to the Aldersea.
“I don’t know. I think I mostly want to help other Eclipse-born find their balance. Teach them what I know of control to limit their chances of Collapsing as much as I possibly can. I know there’s not much I can do to prevent it, in the end. But if I can make this place into some kind of… sanctuary, a place where they can feel safe, then that’ll be enough.”
He ran a self-conscious hand on the back of his neck. “It probably sounds silly.”
“No. You’re good at this, Baz.”
It was the truth. Despite all his trepidations, he was truly in his element here, helping her practice her magic. And seeing this side of him, hearing him voice his motivations aloud, made her understand him in a way she hadn’t before. She’d viewed him as this frightened boy who downplayed his power and let life pass him by, content to keep his nose down and buried in books. But maybe this was his own way of trying to fight for something. He had all this incredible power coursing through his veins, something she was keenly aware of after having tried to use it herself and feeling just how vast and depthless it was, yet he chose not to utilize it. He chose instead to help other Eclipse-born in whatever small way he could so that they wouldn’t know the same fate as his father, as Kai.
Perhaps she’d been too quick to judge him all those years ago, writing him off as someone too withdrawn, too quiet, too dull. There was something noble in his goal. A steady optimism to him that she found particularly endearing.
“I wouldn’t have made it this far without you,” Emory murmured.
She didn’t know what compelled her to brush his hair back from his brow, curling it around his ear. He stilled at her touch; something heated in the browns of his eyes, so rich and inviting and soft without his glasses to hide behind. She couldn’t deny a part of her was rather enjoying it, the attention, this attraction she’d been noticing more and more from him. For a second, she imagined what it might be like to kiss him, if only just to see if there was something there. If she might return the feelings he’d once harbored for her, and maybe still did now.
He looked at her with hopeful anticipation, like he knew exactly what she was thinking.
Emory pulled away.
Tides. What was she doing? “I should go.” She pretended not to see the disheartened sag of his shoulders, reaching instead for her satchel. “See you tomorrow?”
She was spending entirely too much time with him lately, and taking advantage of this soft spot he had for her was blurring the lines between what was real and what was not. There was nothing here but friendship, wouldn’t ever be a chance for something more because that wasn’t what she wanted. It was Keiran who filled every part of her mind, Keiran who excited her and made her feel important. It was him she burned for—not Baz.
So why then did she feel so wretched leaving him?
* * *
Attending a party at Decrescens Hall was just what she needed to purge Baz from her mind.
It was, admittedly, a very exclusive upperclassman party that Emory hadn’t technically been invited to, though Keiran did mention she should pop by if she had the chance after her training. They’d both been so busy this past week, she with her sleepscape sessions with Baz, he with his photograph restoration, a sample of which he meant to present to interested museums and art curators. She needed to see him. If only so his lips could erase all lingering thoughts of Baz—the soft feel of his hair on her fingers, the little flip her stomach had made as she realized how close they were.
She was in dire need of a drink.
Outside the Decrescens upperclassman dorms, Virgil was laughing boisterously on the porch with a group of students Emory didn’t know. Wine spilled from the bottle he held as he noticed her.
“Emory!” He slid down the porch railing and threw an arm over her shoulder. “So glad you could make it. Let me show you around our humble Waning Moon abode.”
There was nothing humble about the dark, opulent common room they stepped into, full of velvet settees and lounge chairs, diaphanous curtains billowing in the breeze coming in through an arched window. Candles were lit haphazardly on shelves full of old grimoires and silver instruments, and music played from a scratchy gramophone. Emory spotted the other Selenics in the fray of students: Javier and Louis laughing together on a settee, Nisha chatting up a girl by the overflowing drink cart, Ife dancing, and Lizaveta slyly passing a velvet pouch to two handsome boys in exchange for what looked like a wad of bills.
“Is that…”
“Synths,” Virgil confirmed. “The mild version. We bring them to these kinds of parties sometimes. It’s a bit of an unspoken rule among the buyers not to say a word about them. One of Aldryn’s most well-kept secrets. After the Order itself—and your secret alignment, of course.” He winked at her, then nodded at someone in the distance. “Ah. Here comes our fearless leader.”
Keiran had never looked more handsome, she thought. His hair was perfectly styled, and he wore a fine-knit black turtleneck that hugged his chest. His mouth quirked up when he saw her.
“Don’t think we all haven’t noticed that,” Virgil whispered in her ear. With a flourish, he picked up two coupes of sparkling wine off a passing tray and handed her one, clinking his coupe against hers before downing it in one go. “Enjoy.”