Chapter 58 Emory
THE THREE KEYS ON THE table called to Emory with undeniable force.
As Baz told them how he’d retrieved them from the past, everyone at the safe house seemed mesmerized by them—the rib bone stark white, the heart of solid gold, the cloudy wisps of a soul trapped in the strings of a wooden lyre.
The original keys that Clover had imbibed.
The one thing that might make Emory strong enough to face him.
Emory’s hands were tucked between her thighs, as if that might stop her from reaching out to grab the keys.
On the back of her right hand, the ugly U mark that had sullied her freshly combined New Moon and Eclipse sigils was gone, and with her magic returned, its floodgates open wide, it was hard to resist the keys’ pull.
Harder still to focus on anything that was being said around her.
Only a few minutes after Baz’s return, he’d taken Emory aside, his face white as a sheet. “Kai told me what they did to you. I’m so sorry, Emory. I should have been there, I should have—”
“Baz. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”
His mouth had been a tight, downturned line as he took her branded hand and ran a thumb over the jagged Unhallowed Seal. “I can unmake it. Like I did for everyone else.”
“Yes,” Emory had said eagerly. Not a trace of hesitation.
Baz had watched her fondly. “You’ve come a long way from the girl who wanted nothing to do with Eclipse magic.”
“Says the boy who used to be too scared to call on his magic for the simplest thing, and look at you now.”
They were no longer those people acting out of fear.
Baz had wound back the threads of time like it was nothing.
Barely a breath from him, and it was as if no brand had ever touched Emory’s hand, no seal had ever put her magic to sleep.
Her veins had run silver for a moment, her near-Collapsing no longer frozen in place by the brand.
She didn’t fall into a proper Collapsing, but as the full might of her power rushed through her again, so had theirs, their pull on her so strong she thought she might succumb to them right then and there.
She’d gripped Baz’s arm so tight he’d yelped. “What’s wrong?”
“I can feel them.” The words had been strained, her breath labored. “The keys.”
They bore a trace of Atheia’s power that called to her the same way Romie, Aspen, and Tol had called to her, inviting her magic to borrow from their own with a force that demanded attention, that asked to be claimed. To be devoured.
“I don’t want to turn out like Clover.”
At her whispered words, Baz had gripped her shoulders tight. “You won’t. Just hold off, resist the keys’ pull awhile longer.” Fierce determination had burned behind his glasses. “We’re going to bring Clover down for good.”
They had since been discussing plans to do just that with everyone at the safe house. There were too many unknowns surrounding how exactly the keys might help Emory defeat Clover. They didn’t even know where Clover was, nor the gods who wanted him dead as badly as they did.
An idea crossed Emory’s mind as she watched Farran.
He was properly healed now—as was everyone else at the safe house, Emory having used her magic as soon as she got it back to heal away any lingering injuries, including her own.
But there was a haunted look in his eye, an awkwardness to the way he held himself.
As if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself now that the gods had abandoned their emissary.
What are you thinking?
Emory’s heart somersaulted as she caught Sidraeus’s eye.
The telepathic connection between them had reopened with the return of her magic, and hearing him in her mind felt suddenly much more intimate than before.
She tried not to think of his lips on hers, the memory begging for as much attention as the keys, as she told him of her idea.
Do you think we can trust him? she asked, meaning Farran.
Your mother and the Nightmare Weaver seem to think so.
Emory recalled the words Kai had said at her bedside—that Farran had been manipulated by gods all his life, and they couldn’t keep blaming him for it.
Deciding to take the leap, Emory finally spoke, interrupting whatever conversation the others had been having. “I have an idea how we can get to Clover.” Her gaze swept the room and landed on Farran. “But it involves something you might not like.”
Emory, Baz, and Kai stood in the tall grass overlooking the beach below. Emory’s magic rendered them invisible in case the wards they stood behind didn’t suffice. On the outside of the wards, walking toward the water’s edge, was Farran—dragging a bound Sidraeus.
They heard Farran shouting at the skies. “Gods of the living! I’ve got what you want—so come and claim him. Use me as your emissary again, I implore you.”
The skies thundered ominously above. For a while, nothing more happened as Farran kept shouting his invocation of the gods.
And then something rippled on the wind, and Farran gasped, his head tilting up, his mouth open, the muscles of his neck tensing.
He stretched his neck in an odd, languorous motion, and when he opened his eyes again, they were the ever-shifting colors of the gods.
“Let’s go,” Emory whispered to the others.
Baz and Kai stepped out of the wards in tandem with her just as Farran—the gods—grabbed Sidraeus by the throat, a wicked, hungry smile on their face. Seeking their chance to grab the one half of the equation they needed to sacrifice to the fountain.
With Baz’s magic speeding up time, they were on them in a second, Emory lifting the invisibility around them just to see the shock register in the gods’ eyes.
The tattoos on Kai erupted in bright silver as he shoved Farran back from Sidraeus.
The gods snarled at him, at the three of them standing as a protective barrier in front of Sidraeus.
“You’re not going to lay a hand on him,” Emory said. “But you are going to help us lure Clover. And then I’m going to defeat him.”
They scoffed dubiously at her. “The keys won’t be enough for you to defeat Clover, especially now that he and Atheia are working together.
” They sneered at the shock on Emory’s face.
“So you see? Sacrificing Sidraeus and Atheia to the fountain so we can take our power back is the only option there is.”
“No. You’re going to do this our way.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because you’ll never be able to get to Atheia now,” Sidraeus said, “not when you don’t have your full power and she has allied herself with Clover.”
“And because I’m not the only one with the language of gods on me,” Kai added, “and we’re more powerful than you give us credit for.”
Out of the wards stepped Rusli and other Luaguan Eclipse-born, their own tattoos illuminated silver. Tala’s safeguard against gods, activated while in their vicinity. A threat to the gods, a way to show them they had power in numbers.
Emory grabbed hold of Sidraeus’s hand, feeling the souls of the Tidecallers all around her, alive as they had been when they’d ejected the gods from her at the Institute. “This is how we defeat Clover and put the worlds—your worlds—right again.”