Chapter 2 Emory #3
Only once they were in the privacy of the small parlor that connected their conjoined rooms did Emory relay what she’d heard.
She found it hard to focus as Romie rattled on with theories of what it all meant.
She’d hoped the light filtering in from the large window might chase her lingering ghost away, but he was still there, smirking at her as if he knew the kind of hold he had on her, even in death.
He’s not real, Emory told herself, pressing her eyes shut. He couldn’t be. He was a figment of her imagination, called to the surface by the tangled web of emotions his death had weaved inside her:
Self-loathing at having let him play her like he had and not seeing the truth of him before she’d given him her heart.
Guilt at having let the umbrae kill him before her very eyes.
Relief that he was gone, that he’d gotten what he deserved.
Affection, still, despite it all, and this desperate need to understand why he’d done what he’d done, if only to justify her own part in it.
Emory wanted nothing more than to burn Keiran Dunhall Thornby out of her system. But his ghost would not let her, and maybe she deserved such a haunting.
After she’d hurt so many people she cared about, a small, ugly part of her took satisfaction in it—the pain of that pressure building in her veins when she resisted the pull of her magic, the ghosts it conjured when she gave into it. A twisted form of self-punishment.
“Did you use too much?”
Romie’s face was scrunched up in worry, mistaking Emory’s frayed state for the same post-magic fatigue she experienced. Something Emory was more than fine letting her believe.
She gave her a wan smile. “I’ll be all right.”
Romie leaned back against the window. There was that look in her eyes again that had Emory feeling inexplicably guilty.
Ever since Romie had found out about Emory’s Tidecaller magic, she’d been acting tense any time Emory used it or brought it up.
Emory would have expected her friend to be excited over such rare magic.
Instead, she had the distinct impression that Romie was afraid of it.
Or jealous.
Maybe both.
Whatever it was had Emory scared that the old rift between them might open again, and she would not let it, not so soon after getting her friend back.
So she hid the full scope of her power, let herself appear weaker than she was, let Romie take charge of things while she followed along like the old version of herself would have.
It felt odd to take a step back after having found such strength in herself in the wake of Romie’s disappearance, but if this was what was needed to keep the peace—to find a sense of normalcy in this strange place—then so be it.
“This wasn’t part of Clover’s story,” Romie said after a while. “Those who traveled through worlds… their magic was never affected like ours is.”
“That was a children’s story. I guess the reality is bleaker.”
Emory tried to shut out the small voice inside her that was begging her to use more magic.
Keiran’s ghost began to fade into the shadows, denied its only tether to this plane.
When he disappeared at last, the pressure in Emory’s veins returned like clockwork.
Her blood singing for more more more more more.
“You know, every time I see Aspen, I’m more convinced she’s the witch from the story.”
Emory didn’t know how to feel about Romie’s continued obsession with Song of the Drowned Gods.
Yes, they were in a world that seemed plucked from the book’s very pages, but while Romie was convinced their purpose was to play out Clover’s story to the end—and hopefully change its outcome—Emory had her doubts.
“There’s just something about her,” Romie continued, eyes unfocused and bright as stars.
“I keep finding myself in her dreams, even when I’m not trying to.
It’s like there’s this tug between us. A tether that keeps bringing me to her.
And it’s the strangest thing, but whenever Aspen is near, I swear I hear an echo of that damn song, like a phantom impression of it ringing in my ears. ”
“Could mean anything,” Emory said lightly.
“Or it could mean Aspen hears the song too. The call to other worlds. Maybe she’d be willing to help us get to the sea of ash, if only she could get out from under her mother’s claws for a second.”
Emory said nothing at that. Ever since Romie had found the lost epilogue in the sleepscape, which centered on two characters who were clearly a Dreamer and a Nightmare Weaver, her belief in the story had doubled.
She saw herself in the girl of dreams, more certain than ever that she had a grand part to play in this story. That her being here was fate.
But if that was the case, if Romie really was the girl of dreams and Emory the scholar on the shores and Aspen the witch in the woods, and they were all connected by this song woven between worlds, why then did Emory not feel the same tug between them, the same urgency to chase after this destiny and see the story through?
All she had were her ghosts and her guilt and her desire to go home. To see her father again. See Baz again. Laugh with him and Romie like they once did as children.
She’d done what she set out to do: she’d found Romie, alive and well. There was no need to keep going. No benefit to them seeking out the Tides in the Deep, to waking them as Keiran had wanted. Especially not if it meant Emory would become their vessel.
“Look,” Romie said, twisting around to peer out the window. “I think it’s starting.”
Emory joined her to see a dozen witches slipping into the woods, the setting sun elongating the shadows they cast in an eerie way. Two figures stood out in stark recognition: Mrs. Amberyl and Aspen.
Romie turned to Emory with a mischievous smile. “If no one’s here, what’s stopping us from going after them?”
The answer to that was nothing—except, of course, for the thicket of vines that barricaded the garden gate.
But without the watchful presence of Mrs. Amberyl, it was easy enough to get through, with a little help from Emory’s Sower magic.
The vines parted for them, and as they slipped into the woods proper, Emory tried to ignore the unsettling shadows that followed them.
The woods were thick with damp, smelling faintly of rot.
They found the coven gathered before an ancient yew tree.
At its foot was a grave being dug up as the witches chanted a low, humming tune.
All of them wore flowing, diaphanous gowns and billowing shirts with ample sleeves, garments that were unseasonable and much folksier than their usual stiff skirts and suits and high-necked blouses.
They were barefoot and wore bones around their necks and atop their heads like crowns—everything from massive antlers to tiny bones so fine they must have come from something no larger than a mouse.
The forest seemed to have quieted around them, so that the only sound was the strange hissing and murmuring of the witches’ song. The sun disappeared, shadowing the clearing in the cold hues of twilight, and the chanting came to a sudden stop.
A weighted, anticipatory sort of silence settled over the witches. A shiver ran up Emory’s spine, making the hairs on her arms rise.
And then a hand emerged from the earth, seeking purchase on the edge of the grave.
The corpse of a girl rose from it. She wore a once-white dress that clung in tatters over her small frame. Beneath the dirt streaked across her face, the warm tone of her skin held no trace of death. She was not a corpse at all but a girl very much alive.
“The earth has received you and sculpted you anew,” Mrs. Amberyl intoned. “Arise, Bryony Amberyl, for now you are a witch.”
Bryony was helped out of the grave by Aspen.
It was then that Emory noticed the strange marking on Bryony’s exposed rib cage, the skin visible through a tear in her dress.
It looked as if the earth itself had torn her open and stitched her back up again, leaving a slightly raised pink scar on her skin.
A spiral scar.
Exactly like the one both Emory and Romie bore on their wrists.
“The Sculptress’s mark,” an old witch gasped, pointing at the scar.
“Another Amberyl daughter blessed with the Sculptress’s favor!” someone else exclaimed, drawing a spiral over his forehead.
Bryony smiled up at her sister, her face mirroring the coven’s apparent elation. And then her eyes went black, as if her pupils had been blown out.
She took a sharp intake of breath, opened her mouth, and let out a guttural sound.
For a terrible moment, Emory saw herself on Dovermere Cove, seeing Travers’s would-be corpse spewing up water before he withered away, and Lia as she screamed and clawed at her throat, mouth burnt to a crisp by some invisible magic.
It felt like déjà vu, like she was reliving those nightmares that haunted her sleep.
But the sea was not here. Dovermere could not touch them.
And Bryony did not appear to be disintegrating into dust or clawing at her throat.
In fact, she let out a strangled laugh that had Aspen jerking back from her and then began to speak in a strange tongue, her voice too deep to belong to a teenage girl.
Romie gripped Emory’s wrist tight. A twig snapped, and Bryony whipped her head in their direction.
There was no way she could see them hiding behind these bushes, yet it felt to Emory like those impossible black eyes were boring into her own.
An odd sense of recognition settled in her bones—a kinship to the bloodthirsty wickedness that blazed in the dark depths of those eyes.
But then Bryony blinked, and whatever twisted spell she’d been under stopped. Her eyes were normal again, the whites flashing plainly in the moonlight. With a whimper, she fell limply into her sister’s waiting arms.
An unsettling quiet fell over the witches until one of them hissed, “Hellwraith.”
The word slithered from tongue to tongue, somber and chilling. Aspen’s grip on her sister turned protective at the fear and violence radiating from the witches.
“You know what must be done, Hazel,” said a sour-faced matriarch who stared down her prim nose at Mrs. Amberyl. “She will have to be exorcised.”
Mrs. Amberyl stepped in front of her daughters. “Don’t be foolish, Hyacinth. You all saw Bryony’s mark. The Sculptress has blessed her.”
“Then how do you explain this demonic possession?”
The High Matriarch swept a hand over the woods.
“We’ve all noticed the changes in the air of late.
The trees are rotting. Streams are running black.
Leaves are festering and roots are moldering and branches droop as if they are too weak to hold up their thinning canopies.
Putrefying animal carcasses are found in droves.
The woods that are sacred to us, the very source of the magic we wield, are dying.
There is a sickness running beneath the earth, spreading through roots like poison through veins.
And all of it started when they arrived.
Those who falsely bear our Sculptress’s mark. ”
Romie’s nails dug into Emory. There could be no question as to whom Mrs. Amberyl meant.
“We have seen this before,” the High Matriarch continued. “The netherdemons finding their way out from their realm beneath the earth. And just like before, evil will be purged.” Steel laced her every word. “I will see to it myself on the black moon.”
Above, a pale waning crescent shone. Emory and Romie stared wide-eyed at each other, their hearts beating in tandem as cold, bone-deep fear set in.
This was no fairy tale.
It was a waking nightmare—and one with no escape.