Chapter 8 Kai
KAI WAS IN THAT DAMN printing press again.
It was the printing press one minute, with Baz held in his father’s arms, and the next, it was Dovermere, with Baz holding Emory in his.
The scenes bled into one another, making it hard for Kai to follow.
Baz’s father taken away by the Regulators.
Emory disappearing through a door. Baz alone in the rubble of blasted machinery, then in a crumbling cave filling with water.
Through it all: Baz’s fear, which Kai tasted as his own.
Kai called out to him. And when Baz twisted around at the sound of his name, it was not Baz at all but an umbra, featureless and empty eyed.
This wasn’t Baz’s nightmare. It was Kai’s.
Kai backed away from the umbra but realized it was not real as it faded away suddenly, and the whole scene shifted before his eyes.
A room he recognized from his time at Trevelyan Prep. A chess board. Farran Caine smiling at him with that brilliant smile of his, blue eyes crinkled in laughter.
“You’re such a sore loser,” Farran teased as he captured the king on Kai’s side of the board with nothing but a humble pawn.
Farran’s smile dropped, eyes locking with someone across the room—Keiran Dunhall Thornby, his teen face etched in grief. Farran’s chair grated loudly against the floor as he rushed toward his friend, not even throwing a glance back at Kai.
“Don’t leave me,” Kai heard himself say, his voice soft like his younger self had been.
It was a dream that was a memory that was a nightmare. The beginning of the end of an era, ushering in Kai’s understanding that Eclipse-born were on their own, that loyalty among the other lunar houses would always come before loyalty to theirs.
Kai picked up a knight from the board, the only piece of his left standing, and vowed to build matching armor around his heart.
The scene shifted again. Kai found himself pulled back to Dovermere, watching Baz watch Emory leave through the door. Except… no. Emory was the door, and she was begging the students closing in around her to leave her alone.
Again Kai found himself puzzling over whose nightmare this was. He certainly didn’t care enough about Emory for this to be one of his own fears. Baz was there, but this didn’t taste like his nightmares.
He focused on Emory, something inside him tugging him to her like she was an anchor in a dark, stormy sea.
He focused on the very real tears in her eyes.
The plea that slipped past her lips as Keiran Dunhall Thornby’s hand wrapped around her throat, begging to be released from the torment of these students’ accusations.
“You know they’re not real, right?” Kai said.
Emory’s eyes cut to his. The scene dissolved around them until only the two of them remained.
“Are you real?” Emory asked.
Kai frowned, noting the dress Emory wore that looked centuries old. Something, perhaps, from another world.
Was this real?
This was not, as he’d told Baz, the first time he’d seen Emory in his sleep. But it was the first time they’d spoken to each other, the first time it’d felt like the real her.
Before he could figure it out, darkness exploded between them, a great big wave of it looking to drown them both.
Only it didn’t—it merely swirled around itself like a spiral, growing darker as it did.
Fear cut through Kai as umbrae materialized in its shadowy folds.
He swore, looking at Emory. If this was really her, she couldn’t get overtaken by the umbrae. Baz would never forgive him for it.
“Wake up,” he said. “NOW.”
Her eyes widened—and then she was gone.
And not a moment too soon. From the center of the darkness emerged a towering umbra with a crown of obsidian atop its head.
Nightmares rippled around him like a billowing cloak of shadows.
It spoke in a tongue Kai did not understand.
It felt old, guttural and melodious all at once.
And though he could not distinguish the words, he knew their meaning, deep in his soul.
Open the door.
The umbra launched itself at him. Kai fell backward, holding his hands above him to fend off the umbra—only for it to dissipate at his touch, like dust blowing on a breeze. As if it’d never been there at all.
In his hand was a crown of obsidian.
And then the nightmare was crumbling around him.
Kai was in the printing press again, in the caves again, with Farran again, machinery and rock falling on him, chess pieces clattering around him, the sea rising up to swallow him, even as darkness pressed in from all around, the sleepscape seeping in, looking to dig its claws into Kai’s subconscious.
Kai screamed himself awake.
At least, he thought he was awake. It was hard to tell in the dark, in this room that was not his.
A light switched on, and then Baz’s face was hovering over him, big brown eyes open wide.
He wasn’t wearing his glasses. He spoke words Kai didn’t understand.
Fear surged in him, wild and uncontrollable.
This wasn’t Baz.
Kai lunged out of bed and wrapped a hand around the umbra’s neck, shoving him against the wall. “I’m not afraid of you,” he hissed in its face.
“K-Kai,” the creature sputtered, claws seeking purchase on Kai’s wrist. “Stop. It’s me.”
Not claws, Kai realized. Fingers.
Not an umbra, he registered, but Baz.
Kai let him go at once, stumbling back. Something slipped from his other hand and clanged at his feet, but Kai paid it no mind. He stared horrified at Baz, who rubbed at his neck, where the beginnings of a bruise had already appeared.
“I’m sorry,” Kai panted. He slumped on the bed and grabbed his head between his hands. “I’m so sorry.”
The narrow bed shifted with Baz’s weight as he sat next to Kai. Their shoulders brushed ever so gently, the only tether Kai had to reality.
“It’s all right,” Baz said. “It’s over now.”
On the bedroom floor before them was a crown of obsidian. Kai did not understand. He could take others’ fears out of their nightmares, pluck them from their heads and conjure them in real life, but he’d never brought an object out of his own dreaming.
The crown remained for a time before it disintegrated, as all dreams eventually did. And then it was just a memory.