Chapter 41 Emory
CLOVER AND THE SOULS WERE gone. Baz and Kai, too—taken away by the god of balance to Tides knew where. There was Emory and Sidraeus and her mother, left on this path that was nearly gone too.
Sidraeus found her in the chaos, holding her steady. “We need to go through the door, quick.”
“I can’t leave without Baz and Kai.”
“Then I’ll stay. I can find them, bring them back.”
Emory saw the lie on his gaunt face. He was as drained of power as she was.
Silver still danced faintly beneath her skin.
She didn’t trust herself to use another drop of magic.
Her eyes caught on her mother, trying to hold herself steady against the altar as the path came crumbling around them.
If they didn’t get out now, all of them, they would die here.
So Emory made a decision. She grasped Sidraeus’s wrists tight. “I’m not leaving you, either.”
He looked almost relieved. And it broke her heart to realize that he’d been willing to stay behind for her even knowing he might never come back out. This might be his domain, but it was crumbling before their eyes. There was no knowing if he’d survive it.
She pulled him toward the portal, let him go only to take hold of her mother’s hand instead.
The three of them ran through the gust of glass and dust and wind and stepped through the doorway, unimpeded, as if hell no longer had a hold on any of them, as if this place that was falling apart was glad to see them go.
Emory fell on the floor of the Reaper room, wrists smarting as she hit the ground.
Her mother lay on one side of her, Sidraeus on the other.
She sat up and spun back to the tree, where the doorway was still open, the chaos within threatening to spill out.
But then, all at once, the portal shut. As if, without anyone left on the path, it knew the ritual to be complete.
Emory helped her mother to her feet. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Luce panted. She eyed the muted silver veins on Emory’s wrists. “It’s you I’m worried about.”
“I’ll be all right.”
Luce reached a hesitant hand to Emory’s cheek, a soft smile gracing her features.
“Where are the others?” Sidraeus asked, breaking the moment.
Only then did Emory realize her friends weren’t here to guard the portal like they were meant to. Virgil, Nisha, Ife, Javier… where had they gone?
Sidraeus suddenly doubled over, his runes flaring bright silver. Whatever pain he was feeling brought him to his knees. Emory fell with him, hating that she couldn’t help him, that she was the reason he felt this pain to begin with.
“Emory!”
A man in a charcoal uniform was suddenly behind her, pulling her roughly off Sidraeus. There was the cold sting of metal at her wrists. She looked down in bewilderment to see damper cuffs there. Her mother screamed her name again as she fought against another man’s hold.
The Regulators had found them. There were at least a dozen of them, dragging along Virgil, Nisha, Ife, and Javier, who were clearly Glamoured to stay silent and docile.
“Let my daughter go,” Luce growled, fighting with everything she had.
“Daughter? Well, isn’t this a lovely reunion,” cooed a familiar voice.
Appearing in the Regulators’ midst was Romie, eyes shifting like all the colors of the universe, like diamonds refracting light.
She was dressed in sparkling white, a beaded gown that made her look like moonlight on water, like the moon itself, shining at its fullest. At her feet, writhing in pain, was an Eclipse-born Emory recognized from the safe house.
Tortured by Atheia to bring Sidraeus to his knees.
The smile Atheia wore was victorious and full of malice. There was no hint of Romie in sight.
Four people wearing porcelain masks, one for each of the Tides, filed into the room after her. They were all dressed to the nines, and though their faces were covered, Emory recognized Leonie Thornby among them—Keiran’s great-aunt—and knew this was the Tidal Council.
“I hope you enjoyed the gift I sent you,” Atheia said to Sidraeus. “She was a dead ringer for Tala, wasn’t she? I’m sure the pain was excruciating.” She eyed his runes with hunger. “I’m looking forward to seeing you suffer in person.”
Sidraeus remained silent and unmoving, a storm growing behind his eyes.
“Nothing to say?” Atheia smirked. “I forgot how much I enjoy the magics of this world. The compulsion especially. Perhaps I’ll lift it only to hear you scream.”
She gave a jerk of her chin to the Regulators holding Emory, who shoved her to her knees right in front of Sidraeus and splayed her tattooed hand out so it was palm down on the floor. One of them crouched next to her wielding what looked like a hot iron.
A U-shaped brand.
Panic seized Emory. She tried to fight back against the Regulators’ hold, but whatever compulsion Atheia was working on Sidraeus must have extended to her, too. She couldn’t move a muscle.
“You know,” Atheia said, coming to stand between the two of them, “Clover did have one decent idea, wanting to make everyone into a Tidecaller. Of course, that’s not exactly what I want.
I want to make magic unlimited as it once was, so that those who worship the Tides can touch all the magics at their disposal once more.
” Her fingers hooked under Emory’s chin, tilting it up to look at her.
“Your blood is going to help me achieve that. All the power you stole—I will spill it to restore lunar magic to its fullest.”
Emory wanted to tell Atheia it had never been like that with her magic.
The only people she had ever taken from were the keys, but that was when she didn’t yet know how to control her magic.
That was before she realized she could borrow from them if only she asked.
If they lent her their magic willingly, they didn’t experience the deadly leeching they had when Emory had forcibly taken from them.
But with lunar mages? There had never been such taking of power. Whenever she used lunar magic, she was manifesting the magic as her own, not pulling it from others. She was a mirror. A mimicker. Not a thief.
But not according to Atheia. To her, Emory was the reason lunar magic was so limited.
Because, with Atheia’s return, lunar magic should have been restored to what it once was—accessible to all, no matter their ruling lunar house or tidal alignment.
That wasn’t the case. And so surely, the Eclipse-born must be to blame, the Tidecaller in their midst enemy number one.
The Regulator holding the Unhallowed Seal came close, and the panic inside Emory grew until she found her voice, able to talk through Atheia’s compulsion.
“Please, Ro,” she begged, hoping Romie was still in there the way Keiran had been when he was possessed—and that she might have more influence over Atheia than Keiran had over Sidraeus.
“Begging mercy from Romie won’t help,” Atheia said with that vicious tilt of her lips. “She wants to eradicate Eclipse magic as much as I do.”
Emory shook her head. “Romie wouldn’t want that.”
Not if it meant the death of her brother, her father. Of Emory herself.
And yet… hadn’t Emory seen Romie’s growing disdain for her Tidecaller magic?
Atheia smiled at her knowingly, as if seeing the doubt plainly across her face. “It’s time you gave back what you took, Tidethief. All the power you stole—I will spill it to restore lunar magic to its fullest. But first, this.”
Emory heard Sidraeus in her mind, calling out her name like a lifeline thrown hopelessly in a stormy sea, as the Regulator brought the hot iron down on her hand. The Unhallowed Seal singed her skin, and then Emory’s own screams drowned out every sound.
The pain alone, she might have endured—she had suffered worse before—but it was the knowledge of what this was, what it meant, that drew tears from her eyes and hollowed out her very soul.
The pain lasted less than a minute, but the loss she felt when the Regulators released her was unending.
Like a part of her had forever been put to rest, and she was left a shade of herself.
On the back of her right hand, marring the surface of her newly modified tattoo, was the Unhallowed Seal.
She could no longer feel her magic.
She could no longer hear Sidraeus in her mind, either. And when she tilted her face up to look at him, the bleak horror in his expression reflected how powerless she felt.
But then—a flare of his ecliptic eyes, the whisper of a crowned shadow behind him.
In a blur of motion, Sidraeus broke through whatever Glamour Atheia had held him in and launched himself at her.
He was a vengeful storm of shadows that took Atheia by surprise.
Her eyes bulged as the clawed hands of the umbra extended out of Sidraeus like a separate entity and closed around her neck.
Regulators tried to stop him, but shadows shot them all back.
Emory didn’t have to hear his thoughts to know he was going to kill Atheia for this, and part of her was resigned to it. Romie was gone, after all, and Emory was powerless. Neither of them could stop this now.
I’m sorry, Ro.
But just as Atheia was about to succumb to Sidraeus’s power, he was forced to let go of her, shoved back by a strange rippling barrier that appeared between the two of them. It seemed to take both deities by surprise, as if this hadn’t been either of their doing.
In a swift, furious motion, Atheia produced a dagger that had been strapped to her leg and swiped at Sidraeus’s neck—only for the same ripple of energy to deflect the dagger.
She tried again, aiming the dagger at his heart, but it stopped inches from his chest. And as she called on what must have been Reaper magic, as Sidraeus’s own shadows transformed into a piercing blade arcing toward Atheia’s head, that barrier stopped every one of their attempts.
They couldn’t kill each other no matter how much they wanted to.
Some fault in the design, perhaps, or maybe this was just as the gods had always intended.
The fate and the ruin, made to balance each other out and thus unable to exist without the other.
Destined to circle each other in a lethal dance but never come close enough to end the other.
All the fight winked out of Sidraeus, as if he came to the same realization. Atheia seized the moment to conjure a damper collar and snapped it around his neck, making his lethal shadow disappear. Rendering him powerless once more.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he was shoved to his knees beside Emory again.
If he was apologizing for trying to kill Romie despite his promise not to or for failing to do so, she couldn’t tell, nor did she have time to consider how she felt about it, because suddenly the room was trembling with such force that part of the tree was uprooted and the glass dome over their heads cracked and burst, sending lethal shards flying toward them.
Emory shielded her face, but the glass never reached her, Atheia standing tall to erect a ward over their group. The Tidal Council and Regulators and their still-Glamoured captives had all been knocked around by the powerful quake and were now righting themselves, looking at one another with alarm.
From somewhere outside, screams drifted to them.
“No,” Atheia breathed. Her mouth was agape, a storm of emotions flitting across her face, as if she could sense something the rest of them could not. “It can’t be.”
“What is it?” asked one of the Tidal Council. “What happened?”
“Clover has done the unthinkable.” Atheia’s kaleidoscope eyes homed in on Sidraeus. “Can you feel it? The chaos he has wrought, the mess he’s created? The fault lies with you, Sidraeus.” To the Regulators, she said, “Bring them to the quad. It’s time we put an end to the eclipse.”