Chapter 6 Romie
ROMIE brYSDEN REMEMBERED THE MOMENT her life fractured like a tree trunk being cleaved in half, splitting into two distinct eras: before her father Collapsed, and after.
The before was full of happiness. It was bright and comfortable and warm.
It was baking with her mother, the scent of pastries filling the Brysden household.
It was playing outside with Baz, spending all their summers under the old willow tree behind the house.
Play-acting scenes from Song of the Drowned Gods.
Lying in the grass and watching the willow leaves dance, rustling curtains parting to reveal clear blue skies.
It was the certitude that life was good, that no harm could ever be done to her or her loved ones.
That nothing could ever burst this dreamy bubble of existence.
It was naive. It was rosy-hued glasses that eventually shattered, forcing her to see the reality beyond her bubble.
Her father’s Collapsing made Romie notice all the cracks of darkness that had been there from the start.
The frailty of her mother, who became rudderless without her husband.
The fear that had always shaped her brother, which inevitably made him into a recluse, a ghost. The slippery, dangerous nature of Eclipse magic, this thing that Romie had grown up with, had always viewed as being part of her the way her family was part of her genetic makeup, the way they all shared the same blood.
She had never understood why others sneered at and feared and othered Eclipse magic, until the proof of its destructiveness altered everything she’d believed.
Her father, this sweet, gentle man, turned into a killer because of it.
Branded for the unstable magic in his veins.
Held in the unsettling prison that was the Institute because of an accident, yes, but a crime nonetheless.
(Much later, she would learn the truth about this day—that her father was not the one to blame for the rupture in all their lives, but Baz, who had Collapsed unknowingly, only for their father to take the fall.)
Back then, a part of her understood that her naive worldview was forever changed.
But Romie hadn’t wanted it to change, not when everything was already changing so much around her.
Her father, gone and labeled a criminal.
Her mother, fallen into a pit of depression so deep nothing seemed able to help her crawl out of it.
Her brother, pulling back from Romie and everyone around him to the point where she feared she might lose him, too.
Someone had to be the glue that held them all together.
Someone had to try to mend this rip between before and after.
Romie wanted things to be like they used to be, joyful and loud and full of love.
She wanted to silence this voice inside her that perked up whenever someone showed fear toward Eclipse-born, this dreadful, horrible voice that found itself agreeing with them.
Because if someone as innocent and careful and steadfast as her father could do such horrible things with his magic, she’d thought, then no one was safe from the Shadow’s curse, this unhallowed destruction.
Romie hadn’t wanted to fear her brother’s magic or let this resentment for her father take root in her heart.
So she’d put those rosy-hued glasses back on.
Fought to bring that innocent, naive joy of the past back into their lives by remaining bright and buoyant despite all the hardships her family was going through.
Because if she didn’t, everything would be plunged into irreparable darkness.
Act the part of the brave dreamer.
That was what she had done then, what she had done at every turn since.
What she was still doing now as she awaited her own death.
But death, Romie found, did not come as swiftly as she’d anticipated.
The concept of day and night did not seem to exist here in the sea of ash, where perpetual gloom reigned. Romie could only tell the passing of time by the rising and falling of daylight on the other side of the door—which was permanently open, giving them a glimpse of the mountain range beyond.
Romie and the other keys—Aspen, Tol, and Orfeyi—made a home among the dried-up fountain, which was so vast it looked more like a temple than anything.
A circular base with five columns rising all around, doming over them in a trellis that joined in the middle of the fountain, where five giant statues stood, meant to represent the gods.
A thick layer of ash covered their faces like dust, rendering them featureless.
Unknowable. The gods all stood back-to-back against a tree emerging in the middle of the circle they formed, its branches bowing over their heads.
The tree seemed made of glass, and though its crystal-like leaves were dusted with ash, Romie knew they must have once caught the light and reflected it in the most beautiful way.
As far as imprisonment at the hands of a monstrous god went, theirs wasn’t so bad.
They were provided food and water and blankets to fend off the numbing cold.
They were not bound or gagged or restrained in any visible way, but it was clear they were prisoners all the same.
Romie suspected Clover’s magic kept them here, by the same persuasive power that had them all lulled into comfortable complacency at the thought of what awaited them.
Sacrifice. That was what Romie and the keys would face. In order to bring Atheia back to life, they needed to return the pieces of themselves that were Atheia’s—Romie’s blood and Aspen’s bones and Tol’s heart and Orfeyi’s soul. Their human deaths for the life of a deity.
“A fair trade, wouldn’t you agree?” crooned Clover.
And they did agree. Romie was no longer sure if it was because of Clover’s magic or if it was her own belief.
There was, of course, a large part of her that did not wish to die, to leave the world she knew behind and abandon those she loved.
But then, this was the destiny she’d been barreling toward.
The song she’d answered. The fate she’d been ready to die for.
And the way Clover explained why it needed to be done, the picture he painted of what he’d do once he made himself into a proper god with the combined power of Atheia and Sidraeus…
it made her want to believe in his vision.
It made all of them believe that their deaths weren’t only inevitable but justified. Glorious, even.
Once Clover made himself into a god, he told them, there would be no more divide between Atheia’s creatures and Sidraeus’s.
Lunar mage and Eclipse-born, witch and hellwraith, draconic and eldritch, those who sang to the Celestials and the Songless who answered to the Soulless One.
They would all be on a level playing field, answering to the same god.
They would, all of them, know the kind of limitless power that Tidecallers had.
And wasn’t that what Romie had always wanted? To know all the magics of the lunar cycle, to be more than just a Dreamer of House Waning Moon?
Her sacrifice meant she would never get to experience this for herself. But she would die a hero, and maybe that alone was worth it.
Sudden music made Romie’s ears perk up. Orfeyi was playing a melody on his lyre, and the notes reverberated within her, sharpening her focus.
It was like waking from a dream, though not the kind she was used to; in fact, she could scarcely access her magic anymore, didn’t even remember sleeping, thanks to whatever sorcery Clover had them under.
But as Orfeyi played his lyre, it was like the fog around her mind cleared, and she was herself again. At her side, Aspen and Tol seemed to come out of similar stupors.
Orfeyi smiled at them. “Welcome back.”
All at once, the memories came rushing back to Romie.
This wasn’t the first time Orfeyi brought them out of their trance.
He did so whenever Clover left them alone in the sea of ash—which Clover did often, claiming to be searching for the final pieces needed for the ritual.
He’d recently returned from one of these outings with a terribly burnt hand and a wild, furious gleam in his eyes, raging about an instrument he could not touch but needed desperately to wield.
Romie remembered him saying something about Emory, how he was waiting for her to join them before he could sacrifice the keys.
This should have set off alarm bells in Romie’s mind, should have pushed her to ask questions, but this amenable lull Clover had them all under kept her quiet. Pliant.
Until Orfeyi played his lyre and made Romie and Aspen and Tol remember what Clover made them forget: that he was, in fact, the enemy.
It was a peculiarity they couldn’t explain, that Orfeyi was the only one of them not affected by Clover’s magic. He had told them before that it was because of the golden lyre he had with him, a gift from the Celestials, which Clover had foolishly let him hold on to.
“The Celestials,” Orfeyi had explained—his world’s version of the Tides, and the Sculptress, and the Forger, versions of Atheia from each world, “speak to me through the lyre, making me see the truth of Clover when you three cannot.”
Romie supposed Orfeyi was calling not on the Celestials themselves, given that they were gone, but on their magic—just like lunar mages could call on the magic of the Tides, even though the Tides weren’t physically there to answer them anymore.
Magic just was; in each world Romie had visited, it existed beyond its creator.
She caught herself marveling at the root-like scars that adorned Orfeyi’s pale skin, just as she had the first time he’d snapped them out of Clover’s spell, and every other time after.
Lightning burns he’d gotten after attracting the Soulless One’s wrath, he’d explained.
“The man who’s keeping us here,” he’d added at their blank stares. “Clover.”