Chapter 19 Emory
THEY LEFT BY MIDDAY, WITH Aspen guiding them into the woods, her mother’s map of the ley lines tucked safely in her pocket.
They were cutting across the spiral ley line to get directly to its center, where Mrs. Amberyl confirmed the door should be.
After what happened with Bryony, they all thought it best to remain off the ley line, in case what had possessed her turned to one of them next.
Emory had thought Mrs. Amberyl might come with them, or maybe try to convince Aspen not to go.
But it seemed she was finally trusting her eldest daughter to set off on her own.
As they said their goodbyes, Emory couldn’t help but overhear Mrs. Amberyl saying she wouldn’t leave Bryony’s side, and that was why she wasn’t coming.
She wondered if, deep down, Mrs. Amberyl was staying out of self-preservation.
If watching Aspen go through the door would only break her heart further, thinking how she might not see her again.
“Don’t sacrifice too much of yourself,” Mrs. Amberyl said as she gripped Aspen tight.
Sacrifice: that was the only thing the High Matriarch knew was needed to open the door.
Emory thought back to Dovermere and the ritual that the Selenic Order did around the Hourglass.
A slice of their palm, an offering of their blood.
Blood—which was a key element to their lunar magic.
An unsettling thought came to her, but she dared not voice it.
Not if it meant risking Aspen backing out or Mrs. Amberyl deciding she didn’t want to grant Emory and Romie leave after all.
The deeper into the forest they went, the worse the rot became.
Trees here were completely decayed, and the very air around them was putrid.
Dead animal carcasses littered the ground, full of maggots.
Flies droned around them like bad omens.
Death lingered, and any magic that might have thrived here once seemed depleted now, affected by this blight.
“It feels like something is watching us,” Romie said at one point, even though there was nothing but them and the rotting woods for miles around.
Aspen perked up at that, frowning. “You feel it too?”
A chill ran through Emory. “Let’s just keep going.” She sensed it too. Something looming near, like a predator on the loose. She thought of the demon that had possessed Bryony and couldn’t help but wonder if it had escaped somehow, slipping into this world to claim them next.
With how on edge they were, making camp for the night in these dark woods seemed like the beginning of an all-too-real nightmare.
Even with the fire Aspen built—painstakingly so, for every other piece of wood they found was rotted through—they couldn’t help but jump up at the slightest noise, glancing over their shoulders to peer into the darkness at the edge of the firelight.
As they ate cheese and bread, Emory noticed Romie stealing glances at her. She’d been doing so all day, as if monitoring Emory’s every movement.
“Okay, out with it,” Emory snapped.
“What?” Romie asked with her mouth full.
“You’ve been staring at me like you think I might grow a second head or burst into flames.”
Romie kept chewing quietly, as if delaying her response. “I guess I’m still trying to figure out why you didn’t Collapse.” Her eyes were trained on Emory’s wrists and the bluish veins at her pulse point. “I saw the silver. You should have Collapsed.”
It was Emory’s turn to go quiet. She had been mulling it over all day, and the only explanation she had was this: “I think being on the ley line stopped me from Collapsing. Like it lent me some of its power or something.”
“Or something,” Romie muttered, voice laced with doubt. She eyed Emory with suspicion. “What about if you use magic now that we’re off the ley line? Will it throw you over the edge?”
“I used Memorist magic yesterday and was fine.”
Romie cocked a brow. “Fine? You threw your hands over your ears and looked like you were under the worst sort of torture. And it’s not the first time you’ve acted so strangely after using magic.”
So she had noticed. Emory sighed and decided on a sliver of the truth. “After the ley line, all that magic… it made me see ghosts.”
“Ghosts.”
“I figured I must have tapped into my Shadowguide magic and drawn them up. Or maybe I was imagining them. I’m not sure. But I swear, I have it under control.”
“Do you?” A harsh laugh slipped from Romie’s lips. “Tides, you don’t even realize what you did.”
Emory tried to fight the embarrassed flush that rose to her face.
Suddenly it felt like she was back in the past, nothing but a mediocre Healer sulking in Romie’s shadow.
Except the stakes were higher now that she was a Tidecaller.
An Eclipse-born who might Collapse at any moment just like Romie’s father had.
A pang of understanding hit her. Of course Romie was wary of her, after seeing the devastation her own father’s Collapsing had brought on, and then seeing Emory nearly Collapse the same way.
Still, the lack of faith hurt her more deeply than she could say. She was compelled with a desperate need to prove herself capable, but fear kept her from calling on her magic here in these woods, so close to the ley line they were tracking.
Romie watched her carefully, expectantly. When Emory couldn’t find whatever words her friend waited on, Romie’s mouth thinned. She turned her back to the fire and said, “I’m going to bed.”
They were so close, yet this rift between them seemed wider than it had been when they were worlds apart.
The embers of their fire were all but spent when Emory woke with a start.
Soft cries punctuated the darkness, which Emory first mistook for the sighing of leaves in the wind, or the creaking of branches.
But then she saw Aspen’s face, illuminated in the dying light.
Her eyes were open, tears staining her cheeks.
Emory lifted herself up on an elbow. “Are you all right?”
Aspen wiped furiously at her eyes. “Yes,” she said in a clipped tone.
But just as Emory lay back down to give her some privacy, the witch spoke again, so soft she barely heard her. “She was the best thing in my life. It’s all my fault. I should have known they’d come for her. I should have done more to protect her. I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t—”
Emory’s heart twisted as Aspen sobbed quietly. They both knew there was nothing Aspen could have done to prevent what happened to Bryony.
Emory wanted to tell her as much, but she remained quiet. She herself was well acquainted with guilt, so she knew such words wouldn’t appease Aspen. Instead, she said:
“Before coming here, back in my own world, people died because of me. I’ve been carrying that guilt with me ever since.
I think about the million things I could have done differently.
I play out all the what-ifs in my mind. Sometimes I…
I wish it had been me instead of them.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat, surprised at her own admission.
At how true it was. “But the thing I’ve learned, or rather the thing I’m still learning, is that we can’t keep blaming ourselves for something we had no power over. ”
The words were spoken as much for herself as for Aspen. For so long, Emory had wished someone would tell her those exact words, absolve her from the deaths she carried with her, but the only person who had such power of absolution and forgiveness was herself.
Yes, it all started when she first went into Dovermere and unlocked her Tidecaller powers.
But everything after… She couldn’t have known her presence at Dovermere would draw Travers and Lia back to meet such cruel ends.
She had done what she could to avoid the same fate for Jordyn, but she couldn’t have predicted he would become an umbra.
She wasn’t the one who drove the knife through Lizaveta’s throat.
And as for Keiran…
She recalled that brief moment in the sleepscape when he was overtaken by the umbrae, when she might still have done something to help him. The desperate, pleading look in his eyes. The sound of her name on his lips.
Perhaps she should have saved him. Prevented one death, at least, from staining her hands. But she would not allow herself to feel guilt over this one. Not when helping Keiran would surely have meant the end for her. Not when his ghost still had her in a choke hold.
But then, she hadn’t actually seen his ghost, or any other, the last time she called on her magic. Only heard them. Perhaps these ghosts of hers were only tied to her guilt, not her use of magic. Perhaps all it took for them to leave was for her to forgive herself.
Emory thought Aspen might have drifted off to sleep until she heard her murmur, “I don’t blame you either.”