Chapter 5 Kai #2
Perhaps the truth of that bond was this: that Kai and Luce were conduits for Clover, sources of power for him to feed on. Clover gained strength from Luce, the blood key, and deposited all the dark side effects of his magic onto Kai.
And now the darkness Kai kept unwittingly pulling away from Clover was weighing him down, pushing him to act out in waking, and making the nightmares worse than they’d ever been.
Maybe Clover himself is a nightmare, Kai had thought more than once.
A nightmare disguised as a dream, just as the Wychwood appeared to be.
Spinning pretty words and grand promises of a world that could be healed.
Words like flowers in a garden bed used to hide the ugly corpse lying beneath the rotting soil.
I think you were right not to trust Clover, Baz had said. But why that was, Kai couldn’t remember.
Kai gave a long, frustrated sigh. “Tell me again how we went through the door,” he asked Luce, turning to her once more for a way to stay grounded to reality.
Luce gave him a worried look, as she always did, but told him what he so desperately needed to hear.
Thames’s Collapse. The Treasury crumbling down around them.
Clover, Luce, Kai, and Baz heading down into the glowing pool that brought them into the Belly of the Beast, where Clover and Luce opened the door—the two of them now bearing a silver spiral mark on their wrists to prove it—and went through before the tide came crashing in.
Baz shoved back out, as if the door had denied him entry.
That part had always remained clear in Kai’s mind. It was the details leading up to it that were hazy. Ever-changing.
“I know this has been hard on you,” Luce said quietly. “But we’re so close to reaching the next door, one step closer to preventing the vision Cornelius and I saw.”
Kai gave a sharp laugh, motioning toward the woods. “Look around you, Luce. The supposed netherdemon possessions, the rotting, it all started when we got here. You really still believe Clover’s going to save us all?”
“I do,” Luce said without hesitation. But something in her tone felt forced, like she were trying to convince herself as much as Kai. “He got us this far, and if he’s the answer to saving my daughter, then I’ll follow him to the end.”
Clover, Emory, the destruction of worlds.
They had set out to change the outcome of the vision both Luce and Clover had had, but if they were trying to bring back the Tides and the Shadow to prevent the worlds from falling into chaos two hundred years from now, why then was the Wychwood rotting here and now?
It seemed to Kai that whatever apocalypse they were trying to stop had already been set in motion, as if by coming here, they had set the first domino tumbling forward.
Maybe the problem was Clover. Or maybe Kai was suspicious for no reason. All he knew to be real was this darkness and anger that weighed on him, that had him questioning his own sanity.
It was almost as if the darkness was becoming too heavy for him to carry, and Kai felt like he was reaching the limit of his supposedly limitless power, tumbling toward another Collapsing.
In his mind, he saw Thames Collapsing over and over after he’d injected himself with the Tidecaller synth. As if his body could not hold that much power.
What if the same was happening to Kai now? He was taking on Clover’s darkness, the dark underbelly of his Tidecaller magic. And it was stretching his own power thin. Soon it would break, collapse in on itself. And this time, Kai knew it would plunge him forever in darkness.
The Shadow’s curse indeed. Perhaps there was some truth to it after all.
Mindlessly Kai traced the tattoos on his collarbone.
“You know, in the Constellation Isles,” he said, seeing in his mind the place of his birth and aching for it with a fierceness he hadn’t thought possible, “we believe the Shadow sacrificed himself to the Deep to save the world. It’s why we Luaguans tattoo the story of his sacrifice on our skin.
The practice started with Eclipse-born long ago, but nearly everyone in Luagua does it now.
It’s meant to ward off evil of all kinds.
For Eclipse-born, it’s supposed to keep us safe from the dark side of Collapsing.
The Shadow’s curse.” Kai snickered. “A bunch of bullshit, apparently. I’m going mad, and I don’t know if—if I can—”
Luce put a delicate hand on his arm. “I’m right here with you. I’m not going to let you go mad.”
It was true that being around Luce abated some of the darkness around Kai, clearing his mind.
As if the Dreamer were a balm against the nightmares.
She was only a few years older than him, but already she had the countenance of a mother.
She would have been a great one to Emory.
A shame they probably would never get to meet.
“We should get some sleep before we leave,” Luce said. “Will you be all right?”
Kai gave her a tight smile. “I’ll be fine.”
The lie tasted worse than the wine did. So he kept drinking until it was true.
Later, when partygoers started to scatter for the night, Kai found himself in a quiet corridor inside the twins’ manor.
He sat on a windowsill overlooking the garden, with only his wine and morose thoughts for company.
Footsteps echoed in the candlelit corridor, and Kai spotted Clover and Asphodel coming up the stairs.
He watched from his perch in the shadows as Clover kissed Asphodel’s hand demurely, and she boldly kissed him on the cheek, saying something Kai couldn’t hear but knew sounded suggestive.
Clover whispered something back, and then Asphodel disappeared behind her bedroom door, alone, giving him a pretty smile before it shut.
Echoing footsteps again as Clover came Kai’s way.
“Moving on so quickly after Thames?” Kai asked, knife-sharp. “Didn’t take you long to forget about him.”
Clover’s mouth tightened. For a second, Kai thought Clover might punch him for bringing Thames up. He would have welcomed the violence. But Clover hung his head and fidgeted awkwardly, as if he didn’t know how to act.
“I’ll have you know that I think of him often.” Clover’s voice was gruff, his throat bobbing with emotion. “He haunts my every step.”
His eyes darted to dark corners, as if he were seeing Thames’s ghost. Kai had never seen him so destabilized. Unguarded.
“Did you love him?” Kai asked.
Clover blinked at him like he’d just asked if the sky was blue. “Of course I did. Why would you ask such a thing?”
Kai merely shrugged and took a sip of wine. “Just seems to me you’re rather enjoying yourself with the witch. Plus, you never talk about him.”
“Asphodel is a means to an end, you know that.” Clover swept the wineskin from Kai’s hand and drank. “And I talk of Thames as much as you talk of Baz. Seems to me we’re both mourning in quiet.” He gave the skin back to Kai. “At least I’m trying to be productive.”
Kai snorted. “If that’s what you call manipulating that poor girl.”
“Would you rather this had all been for nothing? That Thames died for us to just sit around here watching the worlds rot? That you will never see Baz again because you will die here wallowing in your self-pity?”
Now it was Kai’s turn to send him a look that promised violence. Perhaps Clover knew he was itching for a fight, and he was riling him up for that very reason. Clover held Kai’s gaze with his own impenetrable stare. And finally he sighed, leaning back against the windowsill Kai was sitting on.
“I apologize,” Clover said, looking at his hands with something like defeat.
Contrition. He traced the silver spiral on his wrist. “You’re right.
This place… with everything that’s going on, I haven’t let myself properly mourn Thames.
I fear if I start reminiscing about him, I will think of Delia, and Polina, and all the world we’ve left behind.
I fear I will falter and not do what’s needed of me at the end.
” His throat bobbed. “The fears are too many. If I open the door to grief, to the memory of Thames, how deeply his death has wrecked me… I won’t survive it. ”
Kai kept silent. He understood these fears more than most. Hiding behind armor. Making himself into an impenetrable fortress. It was what he’d always done. What he’d started to undo thanks to Baz. What he had to do again now to keep himself from crumbling.
Clover’s hand on his made him look up. His turquoise eyes shone with regret.
“I know it hasn’t been easy,” Clover said, low and raw.
“For my part, I apologize. But we mustn’t turn on each other, or lose hope.
” He leaned closer, full of determination.
“We will make this work. And in the end, we will be reunited with those we love, I’m sure of it. ”
“I wish I had your optimism,” Kai said. He’d meant the words to be brittle, sarcastic. Yet they came out softer, and he realized the admission was true. “But you’re not the one slowly losing your mind.”
“You’re not losing your mind, Kai.” Clover grabbed his face and turned it so their eyes locked again. “And this optimism?” he said. “It can be shared.”
Kai felt warmth pour into him, a feeling of lightness he hadn’t known since going through the door.
His eyes fluttered closed as the feeling deepened.
He realized that Clover was using magic—Soultender magic, no doubt, to alleviate this dark cloud of emotions that hung over him.
And though part of him hated being manipulated in such a way, Kai had to admit it was nice to finally feel like he could breathe.
“You see?” Clover whispered, making Kai open his eyes to find him smiling softly. “You don’t have to carry this burden alone, Kai. I’m here for you if you need me.”
The Soultender magic amplified further, making Kai lean in, craving this feeling of elation. Of lightness.
It dawned on him then how close he and Clover were.
Clover still had a hand on his, another cupping his cheek, long fingers snaking their way behind his neck, threading into his hair.
The candlelight cast flickering shadows on Clover’s face, which softened with a kind of openness Kai had never seen on him before.
The pale turquoise of his eyes darkened as they flicked to Kai’s mouth, full of longing.
Clover’s thumb swept over Kai’s cheek, his lips parting as he drew nearer, evidently taking the fact that Kai had not yet pulled away as an opening.
But Kai could see right through him. Behind the longing, the lust, there was just a boy looking to replace what he’d lost. A Nightmare Weaver for a Fear Eater. One Eclipse-born for another.
“Is this how you got Thames to worship at your feet?” Kai felt Clover stiffen as he leaned in to whisper, “Because it won’t work on me.”
Kai pulled back to see the hurt in Clover’s eyes, the vicious storm sweeping over his features as he snatched his hands back in indignant defeat, unexpected rejection.
A swell of satisfaction washed over Kai, even as the dark cloud of emotions returned with a vengeance now that Clover was no longer using his Soultender magic on him.
Because that was what Clover was: a carefully crafted illusion.
A masked manipulator. And here Kai was calling him out on his bullshit, poking holes in his relationship with Thames, wondering if it had ever been real.
I just wanted you to love me! Thames had yelled at Clover at the last. I wanted you to value me, to appreciate how far I was willing to go for your vision—our vision.
Death. That was how far Thames had been willing to go for Clover. Kai doubted the reverse would have ever been true.
His question to Clover remained unanswered, but the fury in Clover’s eyes was answer enough. They both knew Kai could not be so easily duped—not when he’d seen the truth of Clover from the start.
Kai slid off the windowsill. “Better get some sleep,” he threw over his shoulder. “Sweet dreams, Cornelius.”
He hoped it sounded like the threat he’d intended.