Chapter 52 Emory
SHE SAW NO ONE IN her sleep after that first visit from her ghosts. There was no reprieve to be found here from the pain she experienced in waking, no one to lean on but her own self and the darkness that was pressing in at the edges of this endless, empty nightmare.
Sometimes, that darkness taunted her with words meant to be encouraging. “Don’t give up hope,” it said. “We’ll find a way out of this.”
It was laughable, the way her subconscious wielded her loneliness against her. The way it made her crave the dark nothingness beyond the dream, made her wonder what it would be like to step into its embrace and simply disappear.
“WAKE UP.”
Emory jerked awake but found herself restrained by binds tying her to the gurney. Her own face was leaning over her, hands shaking her gently. Was this a dream, still? Or was she dead, seeing a copy of herself, her soul perhaps, as it left her mortal body behind?
Tears welled in the copy’s eyes. “She’s awake.”
Emory blinked away the grogginess of sleep and realized that this was no copy of herself. This was her mother, her features so similar to her own that it was no wonder she’d mistaken her. But surely this couldn’t be real.
A second face appeared next to Luce’s. Nisha. Another impossibility.
“How did you manage to get free?” Emory croaked, her voice broken from disuse.
“They had a little help,” a third voice piped in.
Vera. Vera was here, but she couldn’t be. Had she been captured that night everything went wrong, along with Jae and the other Eclipse-born?
Emory peered at the door, where her other friends stood.
Virgil and Ife and Javier. And—Rusli? The Illusionist gave her a wink.
It was hard to reconcile the Eclipse boy she’d come to know at the safe house with this version of him here, wearing a Regulator uniform. Vera, too, wore a similar uniform.
Emory felt the faintest hope blossom as she began to understand what was happening.
Help had come. She wasn’t alone after all.
“How did you get past Atheia?” she asked.
“I got through to Romie,” Nisha said while Vera tried to pick open the metal binds around Emory’s ankles. “She let us go.”
Romie wants you to know she’s fighting Atheia with everything she has, the ghost of Tol had said to her in a dream.
Her subconscious trying to find hope to latch on to, however false.
But could they really trust Romie’s good intentions if Atheia was still running things?
She said as much to Nisha, but Nisha wouldn’t hear it.
“We can trust her,” she said with conviction.
“Damn it,” Vera cried, still trying and failing to pick through the metal restraints. “I can’t—”
“Move over, darling,” came another voice, and suddenly Virgil was at Emory’s side.
There was a flash of something like pity in his eyes as he took in the sight of her, the blood vials next to her.
Pity turned to fury, his nostrils flaring.
And then, without a blink from him, without even the need for bloodletting to access whatever meager Reaper magic he might have left, he rusted through the metal restraints.
Emory gaped at him as she sat up, rubbing at her sore wrists. “How…”
“We sort of had to resort to synths. The Tidecaller kind made with your blood.”
The kind that let them access all magics.
Virgil made a face. “Sorry. If it’s any consolation, it’s really watered down. I can already feel it fading after using it just once.”
“It was either that or attempt this jailbreak powerless,” Vera said matter-of-factly. She grabbed one of the vials containing a Tidecaller synth and slipped it to Emory. “Take it. We need you powered up more than anyone.”
Emory stared at the vial in her hand. The U-shaped brand scarring her sigil glared back at her. She knew the synth would make any lunar mage super-powered, but the thought of having to resort to it now… this ghost of her own magic…
Her mother squeezed her hand, the gesture so full of understanding that it almost made the pain of losing her magic bearable.
“We’re running out of time,” came Ife’s voice. She stood in the doorframe with Javier, both of them throwing nervous glances down the hall. “We need to move. Quickly.”
With some help, Emory got down from the gurney.
She wobbled on unsteady limbs, holding on tightly to her friends, as Vera injected her with the Tidecaller synth.
Emory winced at the needle—then felt a trickle of magic go through her, familiar yet so wrong, twisted by Atheia’s own power.
Emory called on the healing magic she’d always known, willing strength back into her body.
Virgil was right: the power in the synth was incredibly diluted. This was nothing like the generous dose of power Atheia had given to her faithfuls back at Aldryn. Emory could already feel the magic slipping away, so she used it sparingly, keeping it for when it was needed.
“Someone’s coming,” Javier whispered. Looking at Emory, he asked, “You ready to run?”
She gave a weak shake of her head. “If Atheia’s out there, we’re not making it out of here.” Especially not if their escape plan hinged on this diluted magic.
“Oh, we’re getting out of here,” Virgil said with a forced airiness in his tone. “And then we’ll have a nice meal and the rest of that moonbrew back at the safe house and pretend all this unpleasantness never happened.”
A shout echoed down the hall. Rusli blanched. “Let’s go.”
Adrenaline shot through Emory, enough that she could keep up the pace with Nisha and Virgil, who were still holding her upright as they darted out of the room.
At one end of the corridor were Regulators coming their way, forcing them to head in the opposite direction—only to come face-to-face with more Regulators.
Vines shot forth from one, wrapping around Ife’s ankle and making her fall. When Javier swung at another, his fist connected with a protective ward that the Regulator put up. And yet another told them to “stop moving,” his voice laced with Glamour magic.
A quick glance at the Regulators’ hands was proof enough that none of them should be able to wield these powers that did not belong to their lunar houses. They must have taken synths. And now Emory and her friends were unable to move.
Another Regulator appeared, his walk slow and deliberate as he advanced on them. There was an air of authority about him, and his beady eyes shone with gleeful malice as he called magic to him.
Emory would recognize the cold power of death anywhere. A Reaper’s touch, even if a fabricated one. He was going to kill them—and the other Regulators were going to stand there and let it happen.
She didn’t pause to think. She might have been Glamoured not to move, but no one said anything about not using magic.
And so, before the beady-eyed Regulator could unleash death upon her and her friends, she called on every bit of synthetic power inside her, molding it into her very own Reaper magic, and sent it flying toward the man.
He fell with a grunt, clutching at his chest. And as the other Regulators flocked to him in concern and shouted for help—he wasn’t dead yet, the synthetic magic not strong enough to give him a swift death—Emory waited for remorse to seize her, but all she felt was numb.
I did what I had to, she told herself. She caught Virgil’s eye and knew he understood.
Everything happened too quickly then as more Regulators surrounded them.
Someone compelled them not to use magic, but it didn’t matter now anyway, because Emory had no fight in her, not a drop of synthetic power left.
All she could do was watch, defeated, as one of the Regulators reached for damper cuffs, knowing she would be brought back to that sterile room, and her friends to wherever prison they’d been held in.
And if it was true that Nisha had broken through to Romie, Emory doubted she would be able to do so again.
They were going to die here, she thought.
Her eye caught on a sign that pointed toward the Eclipse wing—the one where those who’d Collapsed were held. She knew others must be here. Maybe even those she’d come to see as allies and friends. Had Baz been taken? His father? Jae? Kai?
And what of Sidraeus?
If her fate was to remain here with them all, then so be it. She was one of them, and she wouldn’t leave them behind even if she could.
Before the cold metal of the damper cuffs could touch her wrists, chaos erupted around them, the floor beneath their feet trembling and sending them all tumbling.
The power went out; darkness swept over them, the air full of dust. It had Emory thinking of Clover’s ash-umbrae.
But as a familiar face materialized in the chaos, a man she recognized climbing out of the dust and dark holding an everlight lantern, she knew these weren’t allies of Clover.
Baz’s father heaved a sigh as he spotted them.
“Thank the Shadow.” His mouth tightened as his eyes landed on the Regulators who’d been knocked by the blast. The beady-eyed one Emory had used Reaper magic on apparently refused to die; he was already up on his feet, still clutching painfully at his chest.
Theodore blanched. “Drutten.”
The Regulator blinked at the name, gaping at Theodore. His dazed expression sharpened into one of fury. “I know you,” he said. “Eclipse scum—”
Before he could utter another word or reach for his damper cuffs, a dagger embedded itself in his chest, drawing a muffled whimper from his lips as he toppled to the floor.
Behind Theodore, arm still outstretched from where she’d thrown the dagger with lethal precision, was a girl armed to the teeth, draconic wings tucked close against her back. And at Ivayne’s side stood Kai in armor of his own, looking like a vengeful warrior pulled from a nightmare.