Chapter 13 Baz
IT ALWAYS STARTED OUT THE same way: Baz standing on Dovermere Cove, watching his past self heading to Cadence with Kai, before making his way up to the Eclipse commons.
It always ended the same, too: Kai going through the door, and Baz ending up in the god’s workshop, having failed once more.
The timeline always reset to the original one, and so each time, Baz tried a different method of stopping the outcome.
His first attempt had been fueled by desperation.
His second, he left all subtlety behind and confronted Kai from the start, hoping that honesty would wield the best results and that together they could come up with a plan.
If anything, it felt good not to be alone in this as Kai vowed to do everything in his power to stop Clover.
The chaos that ensued in this timeline still haunted Baz so much that by the third attempt, all he did was observe from the shadows as a ghost—he’d always been good at that—unwilling to change anything at all until the very last second.
In this fourth attempt, Baz strove for balance.
He wouldn’t outright show himself to Kai, but couldn’t remain entirely a ghost, either.
So he left clues. Wrote Kai letters that he slipped in his room.
Don’t trust Clover. Don’t go through the door.
Don’t, don’t, don’t. He left some for his past self, too, hoping to sow seeds of doubt in both their minds, enough to make them ask the right questions, enough to change the outcome.
But it was as if they never even saw any of his messages. As if someone were destroying them before they could.
Baz thought it might be Clover himself, given how he’d been onto him in the first and second timelines.
So he watched Clover closely. Watched Thames, too, since they were both joined at the hip, and Thames, being Eclipse-born, could have easily found the clues Baz left around Obscura Hall.
But neither Clover nor Thames seemed to be meddling in Baz’s scheming.
The longer he observed them, the more it pained Baz to see how much of Thames was wrapped up in Clover.
Their love was obsessive, unhealthy. And more one-sided than Thames believed, because surely Clover did not love him if he was so willing to let him go in the end, watching him Collapse to his untimely death.
Suddenly the answer smacked Baz in the face.
This all started with Clover—and Thames, who did his bidding.
It starts at the root, not the leaf, Baz remembered telling Emory once, when they were in Romie’s greenhouse practicing Emory’s Sower magic.
The root of the problem here had always been Clover.
Clover manipulating Thames to Collapse; Clover making Thames take all the blame; Clover replacing Thames with Kai as his Fear Eater slash Nightmare Weaver.
Perhaps this was how Baz could dupe fate.
Not by trying to rewrite history entirely, but by replacing one with the other.
Not by chipping away wildly at the cup until it might fracture, but by taking out the fragment he was so desperate to erase from the pattern and patching it up with something else to keep the cup intact.
If someone with nightmare magic was needed to go through the door with Clover and Luce, it would not be Kai. This time, it would be Thames.
Guilt churned in Baz’s gut at the thought, but he reminded himself that he was doing this to save Kai, and Thames was meant to die anyway.
It left the question of Luce, and for that, he felt sorry, thinking he might leave Emory’s mother to her grim end.
But if fate was irrevocable, and Baz could only save one of them…
Who knows—maybe Thames would exert some influence on Clover as they traveled through worlds together, and neither he nor Luce would perish. Maybe it was a small kindness, however twisted, to give Thames more time, to stay a while longer at Clover’s side, before meeting his end.
For this to work, Baz needed Thames not to Collapse—to never get any ideas about making a Tidecaller synth that he would inject himself with and succumb to.
Clover and Thames would never have found out the truth about Collapsing if they hadn’t realized both Kai and Baz had already Collapsed and now had limitless power.
And so Baz tried to alter this one event, turning the knobs on the pocket watch to fast-forward to that day Kai brought a horde of umbrae into the secret library room.
Activating the invisibility feature on the pocket watch, Baz watched his past self sitting in the Decrescens library with Clover.
Thames came by, asking where Kai and Luce were, before he headed toward the secret room, where he would find them coming out of dreaming with a tempest of darkness all around them.
Baz pulled at the threads of time around Thames and made him pause, freezing him where he stood a few feet from the painting that led into the secret room.
His heart pounded furiously as the seconds ticked by, and then the library shuddered under the weight of an explosion of darkness that spilled from the now cracked painting.
Baz saw his past self rush toward the room along with Clover.
He froze them, too, before remembering that past-Baz had helped Kai and Luce fight back the darkness.
If he didn’t go into that room to help Kai now…
Shit. Baz started to run toward the secret room, but a hand grabbed the back of his shirt, yanking him to a stop.
Baz whirled around and shoved his assailant away in panic, wondering distantly if he’d dropped the pocket watch, if the invisibility had stopped working. If his own time magic had slipped.
He’d frozen everyone in the library, and no one was supposed to see him.
Yet staring right at him stood a student with blond curls and blue eyes, and for a second, Baz thought it was Clover—that the Tidecaller had somehow evaded Baz’s magic.
But it wasn’t Clover, as evidenced by the House Waning Moon sigil on the boy’s hand.
Baz had never seen him before, but the boy looked at him with recognition—and a sharp, frantic sort of anger.
“You’re only making things worse,” the boy seethed.
There was a flash of metal from around the boy’s neck as he moved toward Baz as if to lunge at him again.
Another explosion of darkness from the secret room—and Kai’s voice, screaming—had them both turning their heads at the sound. Baz took off again toward Kai, but something hit his head.
He fell limply to the floor, and darkness took him.
Baz gasped as he came to. He was in the god’s workshop again. His head throbbed from whatever had hit him, and he winced as he brought a hand to the tender flesh.
That boy…
You’re only making things worse.
Had he been the one to hit Baz? How had it made him come back here, when the timeline hadn’t even come to its end yet?
The god was nowhere in sight. Baz tried to get up, but a spell of dizziness kept him down.
The pocket watch was still in his hand. He looked it over, fearing it might have gotten damaged somehow, which might explain why the invisibility feature had stopped working.
It was the only explanation for that boy seeing him. Unless…
Baz froze as he saw the piece of paper tucked into the pocket watch. He flicked the magnifying glass open, and the piece of paper slipped free from its grooves. He unfolded it to find looping handwriting he didn’t recognize.
Next time, meet me in Decrescens library. Reaper section.
Don’t tell the god.
“Well? Any luck?”
Baz quickly crumpled the piece of paper in his fist. The god was making his way toward him, dabbing his forehead with a cloth.
“I…” Baz’s thoughts ran wild. He wanted to tell the god what had happened, but the note sowed doubt in his mind.
He had a suspicion as to who the boy was, remembering the flash of metal that had glinted around the boy’s neck.
He cleared his throat, getting up on his feet. “I’m ready to go back now, please.”
The god chuckled darkly. “I swear you have a stubborner head than anyone I’ve ever met. Well, nearly everyone.” His eyes pierced through Baz. “Are you sure you wish to go back again so soon?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
The god sighed, snapped his fingers.
And when Baz found himself on Dovermere Cove for the fifth time, he headed not for Obscura Hall, but for the library.
To meet the boy he suspected had been the god’s apprentice before him.