Chapter 15 Romie
ATHEIA BLEW THROUGH THIS WORLD she once knew so well, her heart breaking at the storm-wrought destruction.
She could feel the ley lines beneath the earth, these rivers of power that the fountain fed into.
Except the fountain was dried up, and the power that trickled here was foul, spoiling the magic she had created.
Everything had changed, yet Atheia still knew where to find the way to the previous world.
The door that stood there—locked by the gods to seal the way between realms—angered her.
She still remembered when the doors had been open, when the ley lines flowed freely between realms, the divine power of the fountain running like healthy bloodstreams. That was no longer the case.
Atheia blasted through the door with a scream that sounded like a howling of wind, calling on all the elements of this world to unlock the door.
She was not going to be kept out. She was the keys, after all.
And while, before, she would have needed Sidraeus to help her cross through the sleeping realm on an eclipse, she found she did not need him now.
As if being brought back together again had shattered whatever limitations had existed on her before.
Atheia forced herself to go through each world the same way.
In the Heartland, she moved through the unnaturally cold lands as embers on a breeze, lamenting the absence of dragons in the sunless skies.
In the Wychwood, she ran through the root systems beneath the earth, despairing at the rot that festered there.
And finally, she flowed into the world she had always loved best, where the moon and tides had always welcomed her home.
She fell to her knees in the wet sand, a sob slipping from her vessel’s lips as icy waves lapped over her legs, washing the blood from her hands. The blood her vessel had spilled to allow her to come back.
It was strange, being in a body not her own.
But the girl—Romie—had been right: the similarities between them coursed through Atheia as she let the girl’s memories, her very essence, wash over her.
Dreamers, both. Resentful, both, of those who carried Sidraeus’s magic—though the girl was trying very hard to pretend otherwise.
And most of all, both were grieving the loss of the others who had carried a piece of Atheia. The others she had sung to, calling them to each other, to the sea of ash that was once the godsworld, so that she could return to the realms of the living she so dearly cared for.
Aspen, Tol, Orfeyi, her mind supplied as Romie’s memories of them rose to the surface.
Atheia listened more closely to the faint trace of her vessel’s essence that still remained.
At the forefront of her emotions was a great, endless grief for these friends she had made.
The sense of loss was harrowing. Romie had felt such a strong sense of kinship to Aspen, Tol, and Orfeyi, and now they were gone. Killed.
If only Emory had listened to me. If only she hadn’t shown up.
A tangled web of emotions sprung up at the thought of her Tidecaller friend. On the one hand, Romie was relieved Emory had not been harmed. On the other, she couldn’t help but place part of the blame for the keys’ deaths on her. Emory hadn’t trusted her, and everything had gone wrong because of it.
The brunt of Romie’s rage, though, was reserved for Clover. He had been the one to kill the keys. He was the Tidethief Romie wanted to see destroyed.
Just as Atheia wanted to destroy Sidraeus—to eradicate the stain of his magic.
A millennia’s worth of feelings overcame Atheia at the thought of him. Her opposite. Her perfect match. Her lover.
Her betrayer and enemy.
Sidraeus had looked no different than when she had last seen him centuries ago, except for those spiral runes burned on his skin.
She had no clue what they were or how he’d obtained them, but one thing was for certain: they’d been hurting him.
And Atheia took no small amount of pleasure at the idea, even as her own heart twisted painfully with old, resurging feelings.
There was too much history between them. So much Atheia wished to take back, to forget, to burn from her heart. Her heart, which he had broken. Her trust, which he had shattered.
As the waves lapped around her, her vessel’s body shivering, Atheia was possessed with the sudden need to make Romie understand—to wash away the girl’s trepidation at the thought of what Atheia was setting out to do.
Atheia didn’t want to feel alone, didn’t want to fight for room with her vessel’s conflicting feelings.
They could inhabit this body together. Seek revenge against Sidraeus and ensure the preservation of her own creations together.
But first Romie needed to see things as Atheia did. And so, with the Memorist magic of the Waning Moon, Atheia shared her memories.
Atheia had always embodied the human’s ability to dream. As the hand of the four gods she served, a conduit for their power, she was able to dream up magic in different ways and mold it as a true visionary.
Her life revolved around creation, imagination.
She took pride in what she built in these worlds that were like a blank canvas, the magic she shared with these humans who worshipped her.
She was the divine breath that blew through them at their behest, and she thrived on the love they gave back to her.
It was her whole reason for existing—to be seen as benevolent and beautiful, loved by these people who saw her as their god and whom she loved so deeply in return.
She had never gotten that love from anyone else.
The gods she answered to had all but cast her out, leaving her to do their bidding on her own.
They never cared enough about her to love her; they only wished for her to carry out their will.
Atheia was a god in her people’s eyes, yet she was still doomed to be her gods’ puppet while they languished in the divine gardens they called home, barely sparing a glance for the worlds they’d created.
At least Atheia had her people’s love, and for a time this was all she needed.
Yet nothing could ever quite sate this loneliness she felt.
Until Sidraeus.
A mirror soul to hers, as lonely as she was, as abandoned as she felt by the god he answered to.
In those early days of their courtship, when Atheia first brought Sidraeus into the lunar world as his shadow self and his presence created a new brand of magic, she saw it as the missing piece to her own creations.
A balance that she alone could not conjure.
It completed the work of art she’d started and made a masterpiece of it.
They had created such beauty together, with these two magics.
And when Sidraeus spoke of wanting more—of wanting to see the other worlds, create other magics; of wanting to come into the realms of the living freely and in his true form, not this bodiless, nightmare version of him that he had to settle for—Atheia found herself wanting the same things.
She yearned to be with him fully, body and soul, and keep creating masterpieces together without the limitations set by their gods.
She had never wanted anything more in her life, until the jealousy and resentment crept in.
Atheia had always been alone, but now she found herself sharing the limelight—her people’s devotion split between her and Sidraeus.
She wanted to share all of it with him. But these worlds, these people, this magic…
they had been hers and hers alone for so long that sharing them now proved difficult.
Especially as Sidraeus gained more and more favor, and the natural divide between their powers began to create divides between their people.
Especially as she started to feel the toll of his creations on her.
The magic born of Sidraeus’s presence could not survive in this world without Atheia’s own magic. They were intrinsically entwined. Eclipse magic was its own thing, but it fed on lunar magic—on her.
She didn’t mind at first. Sidraeus always said she was the answer to all his prayers, the answer to his call for help, for freedom, for the chance at creating something of his own.
You called, and I answered, Atheia would say fondly.
It had given them the idea to call his creations Tidecallers.
These people born of the eclipse, who called on the Tides to sustain the magic of both the moon and the eclipse inside them.
Atheia was fond of them as she was fond of Sidraeus. They were hers as much as his, and she loved them as deeply as she did her lunar mages, none more so than a girl she could have called sister for how close they’d become.
Until that resentment set in. Until ugly thoughts wormed their way into her mind, making her see these creations as cheap copies of her own, copies that twisted the pure magic she had spent so long building in this world, made it darker, impure.
That resentment grew until she viewed Sidraeus as a thief.
Someone who took what she graciously offered and tried to make it all his, to make it better than hers.
Still, Atheia stomped away that jealousy.
She and Sidraeus had a dream, a shared vision: to elevate themselves to the godly status they were always meant to have.
To be gods in their own right, ruling over every realm the way they saw fit and sharing their power widely and without limits.
To rule over the realms of life and death, together.
But all these desires would be their downfall.
She knew this for certain when her gods began to whisper of the chaos that loomed over the worlds.
They said the god of balance had seen it in the tapestry of fate, this havoc that would spread across the realms of the living until there was nothing of them left.
Atheia knew it for what it was: divine retribution.