Chapter 12 Emory
THE REACTIONS TO HER USE of Glamour magic were almost as bad as the ghosts it conjured.
Emory had no time to explain herself before Aspen dragged her sister back to the house with a lingering look of suspicion at Emory—who she believed to be nothing more than a Healer, not someone capable of magically compelling others.
Even Bryony, who’d warmed up to Emory last night, seemed fearful of her now, or perhaps she was just afraid for herself.
Romie watched her with that ever-present wariness that was beginning to fray on Emory’s nerves. “You shouldn’t have done that in front of them,” Romie admonished. “Now what are they going to think of us?”
With her ghosts pressing in, Emory didn’t have it in her to fight. She knew it was a risk to use her Tidecaller magic in such an obvious way, but she wouldn’t take back what she’d done to those boys. Not as she thought of what purging a hellwraith might entail.
She couldn’t fathom that Bryony might be evil. If the kind of magic she had used made her akin to a demon, what did that make Emory?
They’d only just gotten back to their rooms when a knock came at the door. Aspen pushed inside the parlor without so much as an invitation, a roll of parchment tucked beneath her arm.
“Is Bryony all right?” Emory asked.
“I told her to lock herself in her room. There’s no knowing what those boys will do after what they saw.” Aspen studied her. “What you did back there… You’re not just a Healer, are you?”
“No.”
Romie threw her hands up in exasperation, muttering something about how they’d be burned at the stake for this.
But the distrust in Aspen’s eyes faded as Emory explained how the Glamour worked. “Will this enchantment last?”
Doubt lanced through Emory. She had as much practice with Glamour magic as she did with Memorist. What if her mastery of it was just as mediocre?
As if sensing she wouldn’t get a clear answer, Aspen unrolled the parchment she’d brought, laying it out on the divan. “I found this the other day in my mother’s study.”
It was a map, beautifully detailed in sepia ink.
Emory recognized Amberyl House at the edge of the Wychwood.
There were other smaller houses all along the woods and, farther south, villages that did not border the woods at all, which must be where normal townsfolk lived.
The Wychwood itself stretched northward, on and on, engulfing the full top half of the map.
Curving lines of silver ink ran haphazardly through the entire parchment.
One such line was thicker than the rest, and hugged the side of Amberyl House, leading deeper north into the woods.
“What are these?” Emory asked, tracing the silver lines with a delicate finger.
“The ley lines,” Aspen said. She pointed to the tip of the thick silver line close to Amberyl House.
“This is where we found you. But as we know, whatever door you came through clearly isn’t here.
So it got me wondering… what if we can’t find it, because that was the door in?
And to leave, you must find the door out. ”
Aspen traced the line where it curved upward, going deeper into the woods before curving down again, as if circling back to the initial point. Then it looped inward again, and Emory understood that it was forming a spiral.
But the line Aspen was tracing cut off, leaving the spiral incomplete.
Her finger stopped where the line did, broken by a black smudge Emory hadn’t noticed before.
In fact, a whole section of the map had been smudged off, blotted out by what looked like a giant ink spill.
As if someone had wanted to erase an entire section of the world.
“I believe you’d find this door at the center of the woods,” Aspen said. “At the very innermost tip of the spiral ley line.”
A door in, a door out.
A descent through worlds, spiraling deeper down until they reached the sea of ash.
“If I stand on a point of power on the ley line,” Aspen continued, “it will amplify my scrying, and I can search for the door’s location. I can help you find a way out of here before…”
“Before your mother comes after us on the black moon?” Romie supplied in a mock conversational tone. “When is that, by the way?”
“Tomorrow.” Aspen didn’t look the least bit surprised that they knew about that.
There seemed to be a battle of wills raging on inside her.
“You have to understand… things are happening here that have our coven scared and looking for someone to blame. My mother believes this all started with your arrival. Others are more inclined to point fingers at my sister, after what happened. I worry things will escalate and lead to Bryony getting hurt.”
“You think with us gone, everything here will have a chance to go back to normal,” Emory said.
A nod from Aspen.
“So why won’t you come with us?” Romie pressed. “You and Bryony both.”
“And go with you on this quest through worlds?” Aspen gave a wistful smile. “The Sculptress chose us to be the next High Matriarchs, not to abandon the Wychwood.”
Emory could hear Mrs. Amberyl’s influence in her words, but Aspen’s eyes betrayed a longing for something she couldn’t have.
“That’s not how the story is meant to go,” Romie said with a tinge of exasperation. “There’s no point going through the door if the witch won’t come with us.”
Romie was clearly disappointed, but Emory wondered again if they were only grasping at straws, seeing meaning where there was none.
In their world, the entire Selenic Order bore spiral marks, yet as far as she knew, it didn’t mean they were chosen.
So what was it that tied them to the fates of Clover’s characters?
It was Emory’s Tidecaller blood that allowed her to open doors.
It was Romie’s Dreamer magic that let her travel unscathed between worlds.
And it was presumably Kai’s Nightmare Weaver power that made him hear the song that called to all three of them, and he didn’t even have a spiral mark to speak of.
Maybe Aspen’s mark was purely coincidental.
“Please tell me I’m not imagining things, at least,” Romie said. “That you do hear the call of other worlds.”
Aspen seemed to chew on her next words. “When you first arrived, I did feel this instant sense of kinship toward you. I didn’t know why then, but now… I think it’s because you’re not the first souls from other worlds that I’ve encountered.”
Romie’s eyes widened. “What? How—Who?”
“Like I said, my scrying is different from other witches’.
Oftentimes, the eyes I see through… they see things that are too strange and inexplicable to be of this world.
There is one mind in particular I keep coming back to.
” A small smile played on her lips. “Tol, his name is. His world is so unlike this one. And his magic… I can only describe it as shifting into a beast of sorts, and I can say with the utmost confidence that there is no such magic in these parts.”
“Tides,” Romie exclaimed, “that’s what I saw!
Last night, you were in the place where I normally see dreams. Except you weren’t dreaming—you weren’t asleep at all.
You were scrying, weren’t you? Wherever your third eye travels to when you scry—the astral plane, right?
—it must be the same as the place where dreams are. ”
The sleepscape. The astral plane. A realm beyond realms, full of unseen possibilities.
“Your face transformed,” Romie continued. “You were you one second and a boy the next—a boy who then turned into a beast. You think he’s from another world?”
“Yes,” Aspen breathed wistfully.
It dawned on Emory that Aspen might actually want to go with them through the door. To find this boy she shared an inexplicable connection with.
But it seemed the woods had roots in her that would not let her go.
“I can’t go with you,” Aspen reiterated. “But my offer stands. Do you want my help or not?”
Emory and Romie exchanged a wordless conversation. They wanted out: here was their out. Whether the door led forward to the next world or back to their own remained to be seen.
The sun had almost set when the three of them headed into the garden with provisions for the road. The inside of Amberyl House had been eerily quiet. The outside was quieter still. Not a single witch in sight.
Aspen blanched as they reached the garden gate. It was open, and lying before it was an unconscious Mrs. Amberyl.
“Mother!”
Emory readied her healing magic, but the High Matriarch’s eyes were already blinking open as Aspen knelt beside her. In a daze, she sat up, hand coming away bloodied from a wound on the back of her head.
“What happened?” Aspen asked, voice pitched high in worry.
“They took her,” Mrs. Amberyl muttered faintly, clutching something to her chest. She repeated herself, stronger now, as Aspen helped her to her feet. “They took Bryony.”
As if on cue, a cry pierced the night, deep in the woods.
Mrs. Amberyl tore toward the sound without a moment’s hesitation. Emory saw what she’d been clutching as it fell from her hand.
A pale green ribbon, flecked with blood.
They raced through the woods in a panic. It had gotten dark enough that it was hard to see anything, but both Mrs. Amberyl and Aspen seemed to know exactly where they were going.
They found Bryony at the site of the ascension, surrounded by at least half the coven. She’d been gagged and bound against the yew tree. A circle of white powder had been drawn around her, complete with small animal bones and skulls and candles that flickered in the breeze.
They were clearly going to try to exorcise the demon out of her.
“You fools,” Mrs. Amberyl breathed.
Bryony cried around her gag as she spotted her sister and mother. The two boys from earlier held Mrs. Amberyl back, and a few other witches stepped in to keep Aspen, Emory, and Romie away from the circle. The sour-faced Hyacinth stared down Mrs. Amberyl. “You know it must be done, Hazel.”
“You gave me until the black moon to handle the matter my way.” Mrs. Amberyl flung a hand out to Emory and Romie. “They are the ones who need to be purged from—”
“Be quiet, Hazel. The problem is your hellwraith of a daughter. We all saw her at the ascension, and what my boys witnessed today…”
Emory blanched. So her Glamour hadn’t lasted after all.
“I understand this need to protect your daughter, I do,” Hyacinth continued, “but as High Matriarch, your duty is to the coven first.” The witch squared her shoulders. “Since you won’t do what needs to be done, we will.”
As one, the coven began to chant. The flames around the circle intensified. Bryony screamed, her head tilting up to the skies. Mrs. Amberyl and Aspen fought against the witches who held them back as Bryony’s screaming grew to a crescendo—and suddenly stopped.
When Bryony looked at them, her eyes were entirely black, just like they’d been during her ascension.
With an unnatural jerk of her neck, she twisted out of her gag. When she spoke, it was in that deep voice that was not hers.
“Where is it? I can feel it on you—where is it?”
She was looking at them all without seeing them, talking aloud but not to them.
She squirmed against the ropes keeping her in place, slipping between languages.
Without effort, she managed to free herself, then ripped the side of her dress open and began clawing at the spot where the spiral scar marred her skin—as if to tear open her own flesh.
Aspen lunged for her sister, begging her to stop.
Bryony set her black eyes on Aspen, sniffing intently. “You have it too,” she said in that strange voice.
And then Bryony’s hands were around her sister’s neck, strangling her.
Emory opened her senses wide, calling on a mixture of magics—Healer, Glamour, Wardcrafter, Purifier, Unraveler—to try to exorcise whatever demonic entity had its claws in Bryony’s essence.
Using so much power opened the floodgates for the darker alignments Emory shied away from.
Her ghosts pressed in as they tended to, but it was more than that now, the earth around her festering, turning black and oozing, as if she were killing it herself.
Still, whatever she was doing seemed to be working: Bryony screamed in pain, letting go of Aspen and recoiling back on herself. Emory couldn’t tell if it was Bryony’s screams or the demon’s, couldn’t tell if she was hurting Bryony more than the hellwraith possessing her.
But Emory couldn’t stop. In truth, she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop.
It was as if finally allowing herself to plunge into her magic after days of only dipping her toe in it had opened up a chasm inside her.
She remembered how power tasted, how good it made her feel.
That unbearable pressure in her veins was gone.
The ghosts around her faded from view until all there was was her and her magic and this thing inside Bryony whose attention was wholly on her now.
Recognition flashed white-hot in those unnatural eyes, like they were suddenly ablaze with luminous flames.
“Tidecaller,” Bryony said in that deep voice that didn’t belong to her, a certain hunger in it.
Like whatever possessed her wanted Emory’s power, like it craved this silver surge that was threatening to consume her.
Because that was silver dancing along her veins, heralding her inevitable Collapsing.
And yet… Emory didn’t feel like she was burning out at all.
She caught the fear in Romie’s eyes as she watched her glowing silver.
And though she could hear her friend begging her to stop, to let go of the magic, Emory could not.
She had the sudden thought of reaching for Romie’s Dreamer magic and using it to will Bryony to wake, to pull herself from the astral plane that was also the sleepscape.
Her veins rippled silver with the effort, but still there was no sudden blast of silver, no feeling that she was teetering on an edge about to drop into the vast unknown of her Collapsing.
She should have Collapsed, just as she should have back in the sleepscape. She was right there, exhibiting all the signs, diving too deep into her power, and yet she still wasn’t erupting the way Eclipse-born should.
Emory leaned into it, fearless and free.
She could sense the ley line crackling beneath her, energy that was begging to be used.
It vibrated through her, making her blood sing, and she couldn’t help but revel at the power that flowed from her and through her, this incredible, heady rush it brought, as the black slowly receded from Bryony’s eyes.
Emory smiled at the demon. He was no match for her with all this power at her fingertips.
Mediocre no more. Now she was limitless.