Chapter 12 Emory
THE WORLD SEEMED TO VANISH in a burst of radiant color that forced Emory’s eyes shut. Maybe this was death pulling her under like it had done for the keys. She hadn’t been able to save them; now, she would join them.
But the light subsided. Her eyes opened, and she found that she was still alive, still herself. Not Atheia’s vessel. And the keys…
Bodies splayed in the fountain bed. She couldn’t bring herself to look at them. A sob escaped her lips, her knees buckled, but she wouldn’t let herself crumble, not while the monster who had done this still lived.
Emory’s eyes narrowed on Clover. Bloodlust sang in her veins. He had killed her friends, had sacrificed them without mercy, and now he was going to pay.
She called death magic to her, ready to unleash it. But all the fight winked out of her as she saw the face that appeared at Clover’s side. The one ghost she’d hoped never to see.
Romie looked no different than she had before her death, and maybe that was a small mercy.
A sob broke from Emory’s lips as she let go of her magic, felt the crushing weight of grief settle over her.
She threw her arms around Romie, hugging her close, not caring that she was a ghost or that Clover was close enough to end her own life.
Perhaps it would be a mercy to join Romie in the afterlife.
“I’m sorry.” Emory’s voice broke on the words. “I’m so sorry, Ro.”
Romie’s ghost didn’t hug back, but her voice breathed in Emory’s ear. “Tidethief.”
That word, the cold delivery of it, made Emory go still. Was she in a nightmare? None of her ghosts had ever spoken to her outside of nightmares. And yet, none of them had ever felt so solid—and warm.
Emory pulled back with a jerk, holding Romie at arm’s length. This was Romie in the flesh. For a wild, hopeful second, Emory thought this meant maybe the keys weren’t dead. That maybe Atheia hadn’t come back.
She might have believed it longer if it weren’t for Romie’s eyes—no longer brown, but a rainbow of dancing colors, like a diamond in the light. A kaleidoscope.
“Romie?” Emory breathed.
She knew for certain it wasn’t Romie by the cruel twist of her mouth.
Romie’s fingers dug into Emory’s arms, those unnatural eyes shifting like quicksilver, glinting like a blade about to come down in a killing blow.
But Romie was yanked back suddenly as Clover tugged on a chain he held.
Romie wore a collar like the one Clover had sought to fasten around Sidraeus’s neck, though hers was made of gold. Just like the lyre had been.
This was Atheia, Emory realized. And she was possessing Romie just as Sidraeus had possessed Keiran.
A leashed deity whose power was now in Clover’s hands.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter whose body you came back in, in the end,” Clover mused, watching Atheia tug helplessly at her collar. “Your power will still be mine.”
Atheia doubled over in pain as energy crackled at Clover’s fingertips.
He was calling power away from her, Emory realized, as if the collar around her neck were a conduit between deity and monster.
Clover tipped his head back, breathing in deeply as magic seeped from her and swirled around him in great clouds. Magic he meant to imbibe.
But something was wrong. Clover’s face scrunched up in furious concentration as he fought to draw more and more magic inside him.
His breathing was coming in quick, short bursts, as if this power was too much for him to hold, even though Atheia’s power was only half of what he needed to make himself into a god.
Through the pain, Atheia managed a taunting laugh. “You fool,” she wheezed. “You can’t possibly think you, a mere mortal, can take on all my power.”
Clover’s gaze cut to Emory. “Call Sidraeus here.”
“What? I-I don’t—”
“He is bound to your will, is he not? You used the syrinx. So summon him.”
There was Glamour magic laced in the command, so even though Emory didn’t understand the specifics of the bargain she’d made—even though part of her wanted to fight back, to spare Sidraeus from falling into Clover’s hands—she did as commanded.
She spoke Sidraeus’s name aloud, let it echo through her soul.
It’s a trap, she thought in warning.
Please come, she thought in desperation. Because even if all seemed hopeless, even if Clover couldn’t be stopped, she couldn’t possibly face him alone.
She did not notice, at first, the crowned shadow that loomed behind Clover, poised to strike.
Without a sound, Sidraeus’s true form seemed to detach itself from this umbra-shaped shadow, stepping into the light.
He had donned a jacket like the ones that the Songless wore, the navy and silver garment open to show his bare torso.
The fabric was bloodstained, making Emory wonder how he’d gotten it, her mind wandering to the friends she’d left behind at the temple.
Atheia’s eyes widened as she spotted Sidraeus. She growled a fuming, murderous “You” that tipped Clover off to Sidraeus’s presence, but it was already too late. Sidraeus unleashed his magic on Clover, shadowy claws digging into skin as they wrapped around his neck and squeezed.
For a wild second, Emory dared to hope. But in that same breathless, heart-stopping second, ash-umbrae materialized all around Sidraeus, tearing him off Clover with an ease that should not have been possible.
Clover whirled on him, turquoise eyes flashing hungrily as he reached for Sidraeus’s power.
There was no collar to act as conduit between them, but the power he was taking from Atheia still crackled at his fingertips, and maybe that was what allowed him to draw from Sidraeus, too, bringing the deity to his knees.
If the fountain was limitless power, then Sidraeus and Atheia’s combined magic would be the same. And it was coursing through Clover… but it was burning him out. Just like the first Tidecallers who’d tried to siphon power from the fountain to give to Sidraeus.
If four of them couldn’t do it, then surely a single Tidecaller could not.
But Clover wasn’t a Tidecaller anymore. Not entirely.
Not only. He had the power of the previous keys—of the fountain itself—running through him.
And yet here he was, burning out. Perhaps the power had festered inside him, becoming useless.
Perhaps the infinite, combined power of Sidraeus and Atheia was too great for him to contain.
But Clover was nothing if not relentless, and whatever was afflicting him seemed worse for Sidraeus and Atheia. Atheia—with Romie’s features—gritted her teeth and gripped the edge of the fountain. Sidraeus grunted in pain as he knelt in the ash, held down by twisted versions of his umbrae.
And that sight was the final straw for Emory. Seeing her best friend suffering in a body that was no longer hers to control. Seeing Sidraeus, the real Sidraeus, hurt by an echo of his own creations.
It all came back to Clover. Emory would be damned if she let him hurt anyone else.
And here, perhaps, was her chance. Because in this moment, as he was burning out, Clover was vulnerable and not paying a single ounce of attention to her.
In him, Emory could feel the pieces of Atheia that he’d imbibed long ago. Tarnished beyond recognition, twisted into something that were no longer keys but still belonged to Atheia.
Something Emory could call on.
Sidraeus met Emory’s gaze—and his voice rang clear as crystal in her mind.
Power can be taken. So take it.
Emory was too shocked to register the words at first. The spiral mark on her wrist prickled in the way it used to when she would activate it to contact another Selenic Order member.
But Sidraeus’s lips hadn’t moved; it was like he was speaking to her in her mind just as his umbra form did, though this was not the strange, haunting voice of the crowned umbra.
It was his real voice, low and level. A silky tone that spoke of quiet things, like the stillness of a lake on a winter’s night, or the whisper of dead leaves as they fell to the forest floor.
When the words finally registered, Emory looked at Clover, remembering having said that to him last time she’d attempted to call on his power the way she would call on the keys. Clover had easily stopped her then. But now…
Now Emory didn’t try to tap into Clover’s own well of Tidecaller magic, nor the power he had stolen from the fountain.
Understanding what Sidraeus was telling her, what he had correctly guessed that she had been thinking too, she did what Tidecallers did best: she called on the power of Atheia that still lived inside Clover.
Instantly Clover screamed and dropped to the ground, writhing.
Those strange pulses of power that had rippled over him disappeared.
There were only black veins slithering beneath his skin.
His face turned ashen. His bones bent at odd angles.
He clutched at his heart. And Emory had seen all this before, when she’d unwittingly taken power from Romie, Aspen, and Tol.
He seemed to be crumbling in on himself, withering away before her eyes, as if he were losing all the godly power he’d imbibed and Collapsing into something dark and unnatural.
The collar around Atheia’s neck unclasped and fell to the ash-covered ground, as if Clover’s loss of power made it null and void.
The ash-umbrae’s hold on Sidraeus loosened.
Clover’s fury turned to Emory, sensing her interference, knowing she was the one making him weaker.
His ash-umbrae suddenly enveloped him, and Clover disappeared. The look he gave Emory before he vanished was one that promised this wasn’t over. But with how weakened he’d become—how weak she’d made him—Emory knew he wouldn’t be back for some time.