Out of time out of time out of time—
They needed more of it, or for it to stand still.
Baz reached for the threads of time, this power he was familiar with if only in a distant, scholarly sort of way. It was knowledge that existed without experience, and as his eyes focused on the hands of his watch again, he tried not to think of it, this nagging inadequacy he feared had become him.
For so long, he’d kept his power in check, shying away from his ability and that damn line he’d drawn between small magic and big magic.
What if in pretending to be mediocre, he had become so?
What if he couldn’t wield his magic now, the one time it counted?
A trickle of water appeared at the mouth of the cavern. Baz thought of Romie, of how any hope for her would drown here with them if he couldn’t bring himself to save them now.
Stop, he thought as the water streamed in, so much quicker now.
Please, he begged.
It was a language he had not spoken often, but it came rushing back to him all the same. Familiar and lovely and strange and entirely his. The whole world seemed to pause for him. Time held its breath. He knew it by the way the pools of water at his feet stopped rippling, by the droplets of water that hung untethered in the air. He and Emory were still in motion, as was the umbra still testing itself against the light, but time, Baz knew, had stopped around them. For them.
The hands of his watch were frozen where they stood, but he could see their subtle vibration, as if they longed for that forward motion ingrained in the very fabric of their design, trying to break free of Baz’s hold.
Quickly now, his magic murmured in his ear. It wouldn’t hold forever.
But Baz didn’t need forever; only long enough.
He tugged at Emory, pulling her wordlessly toward the tunnels as she focused on keeping the umbra at bay. Shallow water nipped at their ankles, then all the way up to their knees. In the narrow corridor outside the Belly of the Beast, they came upon a large wave frozen in time, like a great, watery hand stopped mid-motion as it reached for them.
Baz ran tentative fingers along the wave, watching in amazement as the motion rippled slowly through the particles of water. A little farther down, the frozen wave rose into a veritable wall between them and the next bend in the carved corridor.
The only way out was through.
“You think there’s any chance the umbrae are deathly afraid of water?” Emory asked. She sagged against him, weakened light pouring from her hands. The umbra lay in wait in the dark.
“It’s fear itself. I don’t think getting a little wet will be much of an issue for it.”
“So what do you suggest?”
Baz considered her. “Can you swim while holding the light?”
A nervous, near-hysterical laugh bubbled past Emory’s lips. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Something dawned on her face then, an idea taking shape. She grabbed his hand in hers.
“What are you doing?”
“As soon as I release the light, we make a run for it.”
“Wait, no, you can’t let go of the—”
Baz gasped as sudden warmth enveloped him. It started in his hand, where his fingers were laced through hers. His skin glowed, as if his entire body was suffused with light, like a protective second skin. He blinked at Emory, who was shining just like him. The beam at the end of her other hand intensified, a bright sunburst that swelled and pulsed.
“Now!”
She released the light. It blasted the umbra back, and Emory shoved at Baz, shouting at him to run as the umbra let out a deafening shriek.
They hurried toward the frozen wave. Baz barely had time to take a deep breath before plunging into its ice-cold depths. Emory was instantly at his side, and together they moved through the odd, gravity-less water like brightly burning stars making their way across the dark recesses of the sky, at once eternally slow and impossibly quick.
His pulse beat too rapidly, like the needle of a watch out of sorts, jumping from one line to the next in erratic motions. Before long, his lungs screamed at him, his body rebelling against him, desperate for air.
This is it, Baz thought. He would die in this time-still wave before he could emerge, and then time would speed up again and the tide would rush in with all the sea’s power at its back, and he and Emory would drown, and everything would be lost.
He broke the surface.
Baz breathed in a painful gasp of air, clawing at the wet floor of the half-submerged tunnel. Emory helped pull him up, and together they fell to their hands and knees, both of them still glowing in that protective light. They were in an odd bubble of waterless space created by the curve of the immobile wave. The distant sound of crashing waves reached them, strangely muffled in the quiet, and for a horrible moment, Baz thought he’d lost his grip on time. But the hands of his watch were still frozen, the water around them still motionless.
“The sea,” Emory gasped out. “We have to be close to the exit.”
That was what they heard: the rising tide battering against the cliffside, the outside world unaffected by Baz’s magic. If they made it out of here unscathed, those deadly waves would no doubt make quick work of them.
You could stop time for them, too, his magic whispered in his ear. A single wave, an entire ocean, the world itself. Nothing is out of your reach.
There was little comfort in the thought.
“We can make it,” Emory said. “We just have to—”
The umbra emerged from the time-still wave at their backs. Darkness filled the space around them, and Emory screamed as it sank its claws into her side despite the light still wrapped around her.
The umbra dragged her toward the watery depths.
“No!” Baz lunged for her, wet fingers slipping against hers.
Emory’s eyes widened with unspeakable fear, mouth open on a soundless scream.
The light around her flickered out.
And then she was gone.
31 EMORY
THE STRANGE, STILL WATER MUFFLED Emory’s scream. Bubbles rose and remained suspended around her in the dark as she fought against the umbra’s hold—against Jordyn’s hold.
Cold seeped into her even as a great fire raged in her lungs, and memories of another tide of nightmares rushed in: a voice in the deep, four bodies on a beach, Travers’s emaciated face, and the scream that tore through Lia’s throat and burned it to a crisp.
Fears and nightmares, crushed dreams and dwindling hopes—the umbra feasted on all of it, delighted in her pain. The sorrow she’d felt as a child every time ships sailed past, taking the idea of her mother further away from her. The sting of Penelope’s words as she accused her of not caring. The spark in Baz’s eyes when he looked at her, full of soft yearning she feared she might never quite reciprocate—or worse, that perhaps she did, or was beginning to, and it might break everything between them, this rekindled friendship that was becoming so dear to her.
The umbra wasn’t afraid of her here in the dark. The light was gone, and soon her life would follow. Water was already filling her lungs.
She’d been so close, Romie and Jordyn just within reach for one blissful moment before the umbrae erupted from the darkness beyond stars and claimed Jordyn as their own.
The relief on his face… It was almost as if he’d wanted to become one of them.
It all came back to her now, as if pulled up to the surface of her mind by the umbra’s power. When Jordyn had emerged in his new form, unrecognizable save for that glimmer of humanness still in his black eyes, Romie had pushed Emory back, yelling at her to wake up, to get out. But Emory had only stared, frozen, at the monster that rose from the dark.