Chapter 22 Baz
BAZ CAME OUT OF THE shower feeling better than he had in a long time.
When he was in the god’s workshop, whatever magic lived there seemed to keep him clean and fresh in perpetuity, but there was nothing quite like a warm shower and a change of clothes that weren’t from two centuries ago.
Bless his parents for anticipating his return and bringing some of his things with them; Baz hadn’t expected to find such comfort in wearing one of his favorite knit sweaters.
He ran a towel through his wet hair—he’d have to ask his mother to give it a trim later—and put on his glasses, staring at himself in the old mirror above the rickety dresser.
They’d all been assigned a room. Thankfully, there were plenty to go around, what with this having been the old boarding facility.
Someone must have spruced the space up a bit, because the bed was surprisingly comfortable, with sheets that smelled freshly laundered.
Baz let himself sink on the pillow he propped up against the headboard, releasing a long sigh as the events of the day replayed in his mind. After the reveal that the Shadow now walked among them, Jae had filled them all in on what had happened during their absence from this world.
As Baz had seen with his own eyes, the tides had grown wild and destructive, affecting not only their infrastructures, but their magics, too.
Lunar mages could only access their magic with bloodletting now, even on their moon phase.
Some reported being less powerful than before, feeling like they were depleting their magic every time they bloodlet, without it regenerating the way it should have.
It was as if magic were slowly becoming extinct—except for the Eclipse-born, most of whom had all deliberately forced their Collapsing after realizing how it would expand their limits.
They did so under the watchful eye of Jae and with help from Baz’s own father, whose Nullifying magic helped attenuate the force of their Collapsing.
It came as no surprise that this power imbalance had fueled hatred toward the Eclipse-born, feeding into the Regulators’ narrative of them being the cause of all this madness.
The Tidelore faith had made a resurgence as a result, with more people than ever believing in the myth that portrayed the Tides as good and the Shadow as evil.
“It’s become a bit of a widespread cult,” Jae had explained bitterly. “A perverse movement spearheaded by the Regulators.”
“And the Selenic Order,” Ife Nuru had added with a glimmer of guilt in her dark eyes. “Which is why I left them.”
The Selenic Order was riding this wave of hysteria too, using it as a blanket excuse to take silver blood from Eclipse-born held at Institutes without threat of repercussion, all so they could make more synthetic magic.
“The Order distributes it widely within the Tidelore cult,” Ife had said, “and sells it to whoever else can get their hands on it. With lunar magic dwindling, you can see how valuable it’s become.”
“The synths are a weapon,” Baz’s father had gravely pointed out. “They’re meant to level the playing field between lunar mages and Eclipse-born.”
Baz was sick to his stomach knowing where those synths came from. It was especially vile and twisted on the Selenic Order’s part to be taking Eclipse blood to make weapons to use against those whose blood was taken.
Kai would have ripped them all to shreds if he knew.
He would also have loved to see this band of Eclipse rebels hiding from the law, forcing their Collapsing here under Jae’s watchful eye.
Baz could imagine it so plainly, the pride Kai would have felt at being here with Eclipse-born from all corners of the world, old and young, fighting to enact real change.
Baz had been introduced to most of them earlier.
There were the dozens of Collapsed Eclipse-born that Jae had been training in secret before all this, as well as students who’d come to Aldryn for the Quadricentennial, like Rusli, the Luaguan student Baz had met briefly before going through the door.
Rusli had been reunited with the Luaguan friend of his that had Collapsed and whom Jae had been training.
Her name was Sana, her magic akin to Nullification, like Baz’s father, though it was an odd variation of it that nullified not magic, but senses like sight and smell and hearing, which she could negate for a time or suppress entirely.
Most others were Illusionists like Jae, though some had the kind of magic Baz hoped wouldn’t be needed, like a Poisoner who could turn any liquid fatal, and someone who called himself a Festerer, able to make sickness take root inside someone.
There were non-Eclipse-born, too. Some were familiar faces—Alya, Ife, Emory’s father, Baz’s mother—but others Baz had never seen, like the powerful Wardcrafter who was responsible for keeping the safe house untouched by the destructive tides.
A pit of sadness opened in Baz as he stared at his empty room. Kai should be here. And all Baz could do now was hope with all his being that the god’s apprentice was right; that there was something here in the present that would help Baz bring Kai back.
Baz reached for the paper folded up in his pants pocket. He unfolded it carefully, studying the odd-looking tree and the words in that strange language. It was the first time he’d done so since the god’s ex-apprentice had given it to him.
“So you met a god.”
Baz startled, hiding the sheet of paper from view on instinct alone.
Emory stood in his doorway, leaning on the frame.
She’d clearly also just gotten out of the shower, her damp hair drying in soft waves, her cheeks rosy, looking comfortable in loose pants and a too-big sweater that might have belonged to her father.
Seeing she’d startled him, she gave Baz an apologetic smile.
“What was that like?” she asked.
Baz rubbed at his neck where the Shadow had grabbed him. “Well, he didn’t try to kill me, for one.”
Emory grimaced. “Sorry about that. He has… issues… with this god of yours.”
“He’s not my god,” Baz said weakly. His eyes flicked to her. “Though you and the Shadow seem…”
“What?”
Baz flushed. “I don’t know.”
Part of him felt uneasy that some people here suddenly decided to worship at the Shadow’s feet.
The other part of him… well, it hadn’t slipped his notice that a lot of people remained wary of the Shadow’s return.
Maybe they’d all internalized the myth that painted the Shadow as evil and the Tides as good, something they would need to unlearn if they were to work with him.
“Can we trust him?” Baz asked.
“He’s saved me more times than I can count.
” Emory crossed her arms. There was an edge of defensiveness to her voice.
But then she seemed to consider the question, and she admitted, “But he’s a deity with an agenda of his own.
He wants revenge on Atheia. The Tides, I mean. And your god, too, I suppose.”
Equilibris, the Shadow had called him. A fitting name, Baz thought.
“Why does he want revenge?” he asked, all the different versions of the myth of the Tides and the Shadow converging in his mind. He needed the truth.
Emory sighed, uncrossing her arms and stepping into his room. “It’s a long story.” She eyed the bed uncertainly.
Baz motioned for her to sit. And as Emory launched into the story of Atheia, Sidraeus, and the gods, and how Sidraeus came into her life by way of possessing Keiran, Baz thought how strange it was to be here with her.
On one hand, it felt completely normal to be discussing deities and magic the way they had before.
As if no time had elapsed at all. But on the other…
there was no denying how different they’d become.
The things they’d gone through had molded them into different versions of themselves, unrecognizable from the people they’d been before she’d gone through the door.
“I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault again,” Emory admitted when she was done recounting her tale. “If I had listened to Romie and stayed away…”
“Don’t go down that path. Trust me, dwelling on all the things you could have done differently helps no one. You trusted your gut, managed to keep the Shadow out of Clover’s hands and wrangle him to our side. I have no doubt we’ll figure out a way to fix things and bring Romie back.”
Emory gave a half-hearted nod, her gaze drifting as if she were already planning ways to do just that.
Baz had seen the way she carried remorse before, but this was different.
Like she was taking responsibility instead of wallowing in shame.
Swimming with purpose in the ocean of guilt that had tried to drown her for so long.
“What happened to Kai?”
The question came out quiet, hesitant, like Emory knew there was something Baz wasn’t saying. Something that hurt too much to talk about.
Baz heaved a long, shuddering sigh. “It’s a long story too.”
“I’m all ears if you want to tell it.”
And Baz did. He told her how he and Kai had ended up in the past, how they’d befriended Clover and been burned by him. How Baz had found himself in the god’s workshop, and what he’d done to try to reverse Kai’s fate.
Tears welled in Emory’s eyes as he recounted Luce’s story.
He answered all the burning questions she had about her mother, told her, too, of the real Clover ancestor the Kazans hailed from—not Cornelius, as they’d been led to believe, but Cordelia.
By the end, he couldn’t tell what Emory felt.
She wiped at her cheeks and stared off into the middle distance, a crease forming between her brows.
“All this time,” she breathed, “I thought my mother didn’t want me.”
Baz’s heart lurched. “She wanted to save you.”
The truth should have been a comfort, he thought, but Emory looked shaken, her whole life put into a new perspective, one she didn’t know how to make sense of.