Something in her broke then. The words came out in a sob. “I’m sorry. Everything is too much, and I just…”
“It’s all right.”
Keiran pulled her in, a light in the dark as he’d always been. She clung to him as whatever dam she’d built around her crumbled and everything came pouring out—everything that happened in Dovermere, the sleepscape, Jordyn. The only part she left out was her close call with her Collapsing, too scared and ashamed to admit to it.
And that kiss.
When she was done, Keiran tipped her chin up, hazel eyes searching hers. He wiped her tears, trapped her hands between his, and pressed them against his chest. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
Safe. But at what cost? Penelope would have her memories taken. Baz was on academic probation and still liable for her secret—still at risk should something happen down the line. And she would have to keep the farce going, pretend to be a Healer for the rest of her life.
A small price to pay, Emory supposed, for keeping her magic and her place within the Order.
For so long she’d dreaded being found out and sent to the Regulators. She’d been scared to see her former self eclipsed by who she’d become, horrified at the idea of ever wearing the golden sunflower and dark moon of House Eclipse. But now, as she stared down at the untruth of her New Moon tattoo, the prospect of having to keep lying forever felt more daunting than anything else.
She’d discovered what it meant to have Eclipse magic, had started to imagine what it would be like to study in Obscura Hall, to belong to its house.
At least she had the Order, she thought, and perhaps that was where she truly belonged.
* * *
Baz wasn’t in the dining hall or the library or even the greenhouse when Emory went looking for him that night. To apologize. See what could be salvaged between them, if anything at all. She was on her way back to her room, defeated, when she finally glimpsed his lanky form slipping into Obscura Hall.
“Baz, wait!”
She followed him inside, catching him in front of the elevator.
“Professor Selandyn filled me in on everything,” Baz said in a clipped tone. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Baz, I’m so sorry.”
His jaw was a hard line, and his eyes… There was no softness there. Nothing of the boy who’d kissed her on the beach, of the friend who’d kept her from shattering time and again this past month.
“You’re angry with me.”
Baz pressed the button to call the elevator. “I’m angry at myself.”
His voice was barely above a whisper, and that made it so much worse.
“I should never have agreed to any of it. Helping you, keeping your secret. It was reckless. Foolish.” His throat worked. “Ever since you came into my life, it’s been nothing but near-misses and inexplicable deaths, and it’s too much, Emory. I can’t do it anymore.”
Guilt threatened to choke her. “What about Romie?”
“We’re no closer to finding out how to bring her back.”
“So you’re just giving up?”
“I’m asking you to give up. Us going to Dovermere… It was a mistake.” The rickety elevator dinged as it reached the top, and Baz stepped inside. He couldn’t look at her as he said, “Everything you touch crumbles to dust.”
An ocean of words rose in her throat, but none of them came out. All she could think was that she’d done exactly what Kai thought she would: betrayed Baz’s trust, his loyalty. She’d fucked it all up.
“Did you tell Keiran you almost Collapsed?”
She couldn’t respond.
Baz nodded tightly as the door began to shut. “I hope you know what you’re doing, because I won’t be there to save you next time.”
Baz disappeared, and Emory left, trying to keep from breaking down into angry tears. His words crawled over her, seeping into every corner of her mind. He was right. Everything was her fault. Travers and Lia, called to their deaths by her proximity to Dovermere. Jordyn’s soul devoured by the umbrae. Romie stranded in a place that would not let her go. Penelope driven to such grief and resentment that she had outed her to the dean. And Baz, who couldn’t even look at her anymore.
It all came back to her, the source of everyone’s suffering.
She was a suffocator. A stormy sea leaving only ruin in her wake.
Emory should never have come back to Aldryn. Should have stayed home after the summer, safely tucked away in her father’s lighthouse, with no other soul for miles around. No one for her to damage.
Had she not followed Romie into the caves, she would still be a Healer, nothing more than mediocre, but none of this would have happened, and she’d still have her friend at her side.
Emory had dared to reach for it all, everything that wasn’t hers to take. Everything she’d felt entitled to, all in the name of finding herself, of becoming someone noteworthy.
And what was left, in the end?
Her feet led her right to Keiran’s doorstep. His face and hair were mussed from sleep when he opened the door. Torso bare. The smell of his aftershave wrapped around her, warm and inviting.
“Can I stay with you tonight?” she asked, not bothering to wipe the tears on her cheeks.
He wordlessly pulled her to him, and in the circle of his arms, tucked under the warm covers of his bed, she found safety. Comfort. She pressed a kiss to the side of his mouth, cupped his face in her hand. His cheek dug into the heat of her palm. She ran her other hand through his supple hair, let it fall to the back of his neck, trailed it down his shoulder.
Keiran’s eyes fluttered shut. “What do you want, Ains?”
“I want…”
I want. It was what had gotten her into this mess to begin with, but here in the dark, she couldn’t deny this ache for him. This need to feel wanted, desired. The need to know that someone, at least, didn’t hate her.
Faint light fell on Keiran’s face, so close to her own. Those dark-lashed eyes looked at her with the same intensity that always set her aflame.
I saw you, Ains.
It was all she’d ever wanted, to be seen. To have someone see her for everything that she was and wasn’t and deem it enough.
“I want you,” she whispered. “I want this.”
Emory lifted his hand between them, pressed it against her neck, curled his fingers around it like he’d done to her before. “You have a hold on me too. You have all of me, and I don’t mind it for a second.”
With that simple admission, Keiran took what she offered, gave as much in return. Pleasure came in waves, breaking and remaking until they were utterly spent, and lust gave way to something else then, raw and intimate. A kind of fragile state that might shatter as soon as they pulled apart. And in that delicate embrace, with the melody of their quiet panting wrapped around them, words rose to Emory’s mind. Big words, impossible ones. Words she could not speak, for they lodged themselves in her throat, stuck there by their own too-muchness. She only clung tighter to Keiran, her mouth pressed against the crook of his neck as her tears pooled onto his skin, and hoped this was enough to convey what she dared not say.
They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and maybe that, too, was enough.