Chapter 6 Baz #3
“You taught me that magic was like breathing. That the key was using it in short, measured breaths. And all my life, that’s what I did.
But now that I’m Collapsed, suddenly I’m told I can use it in big, heaving bursts, and I’m—I’m scared, Dad.
I don’t know what I’m capable of. What if I take it too far?
” He stared off into the distance, surprised at this outpouring of honesty.
But he couldn’t stop. “I have all this power at my fingertips, and I don’t know how to use it.
I don’t know that I… that I deserve it. Not after what I did. ”
Theodore clasped Baz on the shoulder, forcing him to look into his eyes. “Listen to me. What happened is not on you.”
“How can you say that when I have blood on my hands? When I stole years off your life?”
“Oh, Basil.” His father’s eyes were bright with tears. “Don’t ever think that. I chose my path, and I don’t regret it for a second. This strength you have, it’s precisely why I did what I did all those years ago. So you could thrive, and fight to free yourself and others in the process.”
Baz wasn’t able to fight back the tears that fell on his cheeks. It was everything he didn’t know he needed to hear. His father drew him in for a hug, and Baz broke down against him, letting all the years of resentment and fear and this newer guilt pour out of him.
“I love you, Dad,” he whispered. Resolve replaced what had been crumbling inside him. He wanted nothing more now than to make things right—to succeed and be worthy of his father’s sacrifice and belief in him. For the first time, he believed himself capable.
They watched the rhythmic waves lap to and from the shores for a time, until cold seeped through their bones and the warmth of the lighthouse called them back inside. Kai wasn’t there, and Baz was suddenly desperate to seek him out. Apologize for snapping at him earlier.
He found Kai upstairs, but not in his own room. The Nightmare Weaver stood by Baz’s bed, his back to him, hands hovering over his bag.
“What are you doing in here?” Baz asked quietly.
Kai turned at his voice. His mouth was tight. “Thought I should apologize for being a jerk earlier.”
“Funny, I was looking for you to do the same thing.”
Kai’s expression didn’t change. He looked slightly on edge. It was then that Baz noticed his sketchbook had been pulled out of his bag and now lay open on top of his folded clothes.
Baz’s stomach dropped. “You went through my things?” He grabbed the sketchbook.
The page it was open to was full of quick sketches of Emory, scenes he’d pulled from his memory.
Her laughing. Her standing before the Hourglass.
The moment before they’d kissed—her tearstained face, his hand cupping her cheek, her lips parted.
“These are good,” Kai said, dodging the question. “I didn’t know you were such an artist.”
“I can’t believe you went through my things.
” Baz shoved the sketchbook into his bag, a flush creeping up his cheeks.
He was acutely aware of Kai watching him.
Of the fact that Kai had been looking at his most intimate recollections of Emory.
He didn’t know why he felt a surge of guilt when it was Kai who’d been caught red-handed.
“What was she to you?” Kai asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Everything, Baz wanted to say, just as a more doubtful part of him thought, Nothing at all.
An elusive sunset, a ship in the night, a comet he was less certain he’d seen with each day that came and went without her in it.
That was Emory to him. She was a door he’d once thought shut creaked open again, for the briefest moment in time.
A fissure through which he’d glimpsed all the golden-hued might-haves and could-bes, before they slipped from his hands like water as the door sealed shut again.
She felt more and more like a dream as concrete memories escaped him in a flight of fancy, leaving him to wonder what was real and what was but a romanticized version of reality.
Was Baz misremembering things? All the hours they’d shared in the library, heads bent over textbooks.
The day he’d drawn blood from her, the sound of her laugh as she asked him to distract her.
The night they’d found Lia on the beach.
All the times they’d saved each other, the broken ache he’d feel whenever he watched her slip into dreaming.
That kiss…
The more he thought of it, the less certain he was that it had meant anything at all to her, even though it had meant everything to him at the time.
But she’d gone through that door, and Baz knew that even if—when—she returned, things would never be the same between them.
He wasn’t sure he’d want them to be. Between the sting of finding out she used him and the desperate fear of watching her slip through worlds, he hadn’t quite resolved his feelings for her.
Missing her was an ache that hadn’t yet dulled, that might never leave.
And yet, in his starkest moments of loneliness, it was not Emory he thought of, or even his sister.
It was the boy staring at him now with such disarming vulnerability, the one whose absence had always weighed on his heart, even when Emory was still here.
What was she to you?
Baz didn’t know how to articulate any of this, especially not to Kai. So he said nothing at all.
Silence stretched on. When Kai finally left, muttering something about going to bed, it felt like another door closing before its time.