Chapter 24 Emory
OUT OF HABIT, EMORY SEARCHED for Romie in dreams, but her friend’s sleeping consciousness wasn’t there. Perhaps Atheia had no use for sleep.
The dreaming mind she did encounter was Virgil’s. She expected to find him in the thralls of the worst sort of nightmare for how haunted he’d been since they’d left the sea of ash—since he’d used his magic to kill—but his dream was surprisingly peaceful.
Virgil was in the quad at Aldryn, sprawled on the grass, his face turned up to the sun.
A schoolbook lay open beside him. Laughter had him open his eyes.
Lizaveta was sitting down next to him, and it was a version of Lizaveta that Emory scarcely recognized.
Light and airy, without the coldness she’d known her by. It was Lizaveta the way Virgil saw her.
The scene changed, and Virgil now stood in front of an old, yellow-leafed tree. For a second Emory thought they were still in the courtyard, but a quick glance around showed they were inside.
The Decrescens classroom was just as Virgil had once described it to her: full of vines growing along the walls and ceiling, and delicate flowers, roses and poppies for the most part, preserved beneath glass domes or growing in clusters along the stone paths carved on the floor.
It was a great garden that felt like something that belonged to House Waxing Moon, not House Waning Moon.
Except for the tree that grew at the center of it.
The tree’s branches grazed the glass dome above their heads.
The soft light from outside hit the yellow leaves just so, making everything golden.
As Emory came to stand beside Virgil, she watched the leaves go from that rich gold to crisp brown.
In the silence, the dead leaves fell at their feet, and she understood that this dream-Virgil was using his Reaper magic to make the seasons turn, just like he’d told her, long ago, that Reapers did to this tree.
Practicing their Reaper magic on it in the way it was meant to be used.
Not to kill, not to end life, but to see the beauty in endings, how they paved the way for new beginnings.
Emory studied Virgil’s pained expression, the tears running down his cheeks. She was worried about him. There was a heaviness to him that even the promise of wine earlier at dinner hadn’t been able to alleviate, and now this.
Virgil met her gaze. Whether or not he recognized that she was the real Emory visiting him in dreams, she couldn’t tell.
“I’ve never taken a life, you know,” he said. “All this time, I took pride in being a Reaper because I saw the peaceful side of it. But now… now…” He hiccuped, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “It’s tainted now, isn’t it?”
“It’s not.” Emory slid her hand in his and rested her head against his shoulder.
He broke down at her side and finally told her what had happened.
How the Songless had attacked the cave as Emory was taken away by Clover.
How the draconics had fought them with everything they had, ordering Virgil, Nisha, and Vera to run.
How one Songless had slipped past, charging at them on his winged horse, lightning lance aimed at Nisha or Vera, Virgil couldn’t remember.
He hadn’t thought twice about sending a wave of Reaper magic to save them.
The Songless had fallen, and the now riderless horse had bucked wildly before taking to the skies, as if it had sensed the death magic and wanted to get as far away from it as possible.
It had given the other Songless pause as their own horses became skittish, and between that and Sidraeus’s sudden appearance and subsequent vanishing into thin air, it gave the others the chance to escape.
Virgil swept a hand over his face. “I can’t shake the image of the light leaving that man’s eyes. I took his life.”
“You saved lives, too.” Emory understood his pain, the guilt he must feel. “This might mean nothing,” she murmured, “and I don’t know how to take the pain away. But you have to know it wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to.”
Virgil didn’t look too convinced, but he composed himself, sighing deeply. With a half-hearted smile, he pulled her in close, and together they stood in the shadow of the Reaper tree, trying to keep the beauty of death magic alive between them.
Emory frowned at the tree. Where before, all its leaves had fallen, leaving only bare branches that cast eerie shadows, the tree was now lush and green; more alive than what it had first been when she’d walked in. “How does it do that?”
“Do what?”
“Grow back. Is there Sower magic imbued in it or something?” It would be the only explanation for the tree becoming full again after Reaper magic was used on it. Unless this was just the dream working its nonsensical magic, and the reality was different.
Virgil watched the tree contemplatively, as if he’d never wondered before. “Must be.” He looked at Emory with an attempt at a crooked smile, at his chipper self. “I told you I’d bring you here and give you lessons one day. We have time—want to try your hand at using your Reaper magic on it?”
Emory had only ever let herself lean in to this darker strand of magic as a last resort, a knee-jerk reaction.
Like when she’d killed one of the eldritch creatures that had attacked them at the Chasm.
She wasn’t even sure she could use other magics while dreaming in the sleepscape.
And maybe it was because of this that she let herself try.
She sent a wave of Reaper magic toward the tree and watched its leaves turn golden once more.
There was something vast and depthless about the tree.
It was marked by death right down to its core, as if all the years of Reaper magic being used on it had left scars, lending it power that was at once ancient and dark, calm and serene.
Emory withdrew her magic, cold licking up her spine, as the first brown leaf fell from the tree, dancing a slow, arcing death through the air. The tree was turning dark and rotten, until suddenly it dissolved into black sand and swirling shadows.
Whispers grew in her ears. Darkness pressed in at the edges of the dream. A nightmare looking to devour it. Emory needed to leave lest she put Virgil’s consciousness in danger.
She stepped out of his dreaming and into a familiar scene. Trapped inside the hourglass was the very same tree that had been in the Reaper classroom. It had rematerialized, black sand and shadows becoming wood and leaves once more.
And she recognized this tree, had seen it earlier, drawn on the ritual Baz was trying to decipher.
What is above is reflected below. What is on one side is mirrored on the other.
A chill went through her as she realized she was no longer alone.
Those words were spoken in the same strange tongue Professor Selandyn had used, though it was not her voice that said them now, nor even Sidraeus in his umbra form.
The voices were many and layered. They whispered the words over and over, swirling around Emory until she was dizzy from the overlapping sounds.
There was sudden silence—before the hourglass shattered.
Emory shielded herself from the shards of glass and sand and shadows.
Pain tore through her, sending her falling to her hands and knees as she coughed up oozing black water and silvery blood.
She felt something move inside her, pushing against her lungs, climbing up her throat.
A vine emerged from her mouth. Barely able to breathe, she pulled at it and found narcissus and hollyhocks and orchids and poppies growing along it, the lunar flowers slowly turning to glass.
She pulled and pulled but felt her bloodied hands slipping and the glass flowers breaking inside her, a thousand tiny shards cutting her up from the inside until she wanted to die.
She curled up on her side to do just that.
Flowers sprouted all around her, as if growing from the shards of glass, multiplying and crawling along her skin, digging their roots in her.
She would be buried under a mound of them, here in this nightmare version of Dovermere.
And just when she couldn’t handle any more pain, she screamed—glass shards cutting along the columns of her throat—as names were branded in bright silver on the skin of her bare arms. Travers.
Lia. Jordyn. All the other initiates who’d lost their lives in Dovermere because of her. Lizaveta. Keiran.
Aspen. Tol. Orfeyi.
Romie.
“How does it feel,” a voice behind her said, “to wear your guilt on your skin?”
Sidraeus had appeared in the nightmare, not as his umbra self but in his true form. His features were cast in shadows, his outline limned in the soft light that emanated from the stars beyond. And his eyes held a hard cruelty that had Emory understanding this was his doing.
Retribution for the pain she’d been putting him through thanks to the bargain she’d made.
“I may not be able to hurt you out there without hurting myself,” Sidraeus said, “but in the dark confines of your mind, you alone feel this pain.” The shadows around him seemed to spread toward her, climbing over her, twining with the lunar flowers to wrap around her limbs, to keep her rooted here.
“I own the realm of nightmares, Tidecaller, and so in here, I own you. Remember that the next time you mean to threaten me.”
“Please,” she heard herself whimper as Sidraeus began to fade against the darkness.
A sardonic smile was the last thing she saw before he disappeared, his voice echoing inside her mind with grim finality. Sleep well.
She was being buried beneath lunar flowers and shards of glass and tendrils of darkness, and there was no way to stop it.
Part of her knew none of this was real, that this was just another nightmare.
But it wasn’t. This was Sidraeus in all his divine power, giving her a taste of just how strong he was, showing her exactly the kind of deity she was dealing with.