Chapter 47 Romie
ROMIE WAS USED TO SEEING the most absurd things in dreams, but none of them came close to riding on the back of an actual, real-life, fire-breathing dragon.
They flew away from the Chasm and Heartstone, the red-hued barrens beneath them moving at a dizzying speed.
The dragon landed in the middle of a crop of odd rock formations that looked like teeth, jagged in parts and smooth in others, forming dark crevices that would be hard to get through if they were on foot.
A few shrubs grew between them, as well as those odd, spindly-looking trees.
But otherwise, it was as barren as the rest of the land.
The sun was setting, casting the world in soft purples and blues. Gwenhael perched itself at the top of the rocks, spreading its wings wide as it lavished in its freedom.
The Golden Helm will come, it said to them. They will have been alerted to our presence by now. They have eyes everywhere.
The words were said in a placating way, but only succeeded in putting everyone on edge.
Tol sat atop a rock opposite the dragon, sword balanced on his knee as he kept an eye on the horizon.
His draconic wings were unfurled after Virgil had rusted off the metal band around his neck that prevented him from shifting.
Romie saw Aspen eyeing the wings with pure wonder, and maybe something else too.
As everyone settled around a fire that Gwenhael generously lit for them, Romie heard Virgil asking Emory where in the Deep she’d disappeared to back there. Emory had the good sense to look remorseful, even if she made no apology.
“You went after the demon, didn’t you?” Romie guessed.
The way Emory avoided her gaze confirmed it well enough.
“He’s not exactly a demon,” Emory said. “He’s the Shadow.”
The world tilted beneath Romie’s feet and didn’t stop as Emory recounted what she’d learned.
The Tides-damned Shadow himself was after them, and Emory wasn’t the key they thought her to be, and Romie and Aspen and Tol apparently each carried a piece of the Tides, the Sculptress, the Forger—the singular deity found across worlds—inside them.
“If you’re not our world’s key,” Romie said, “then that means the Hourglass didn’t open with your blood but mine.”
Emory nodded. “He said my Tidecaller blood is what’s needed to fit each key into their lock. That’s why the door in the Wychwood didn’t immediately open with Aspen’s bone. It needed my blood to activate it.”
“Then how were you able to open the Hourglass a second time when I was in the sleepscape?” Romie asked. “And each time the door opened to let Travers and Lia and Jordyn through. You would have needed my blood as key.”
Emory seemed at a loss. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe once a door is unlocked, Emory can open it at will,” Nisha suggested.
“Hold on,” Virgil said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“How do we even know for sure that Romie’s our world’s key?
” He pointed to Aspen and Tol. “They have a spiral mark. But so do all of us.” He pointed between himself, Romie, Emory, and Nisha.
“Does that mean anyone who survived the Selenic Order ritual can be a key?”
“Romie’s the only Selenic who hears the song,” Emory pointed out. “And there’s the connection she shares with Aspen and Tol.”
It would explain why Romie heard an echo of that song in the witch and the warrior. The Tides, the Sculptress, the Forger—whoever she was, she was pulling on the three of them, trying to bring the pieces of her back together. Romie’s blood, Aspen’s bones, Tol’s heart.
Still, Virgil’s question stuck with her.
She couldn’t make sense of why, in their world, the entire Selenic Order was marked with the spiral, yet only she appeared to be the key.
While in the Wychwood, only one witch per generation was meant to bear the Sculptress’s mark and the title of High Matriarch that came with it—which meant Aspen must have something that Bryony and Mrs. Amberyl did not possess, if she alone was her world’s key.
And Tol… Romie looked at the spiral mark burned on his breastbone, visible beneath the jacket Virgil had graciously lent him. Like a brand that had healed over time.
“How did you get that?” Romie asked him.
“It’s the Sun Forger’s mark. At least, that’s what the Knight Commander had me believing. The mark appeared when I was remade into a draconic.”
Death and rebirth. Just like Romie had nearly drowned in Dovermere.
Just like Aspen had survived being buried alive.
Even Emory, though she may not be a key, had lived through a near-death experience to unlock her Tidecaller abilities—and maybe with that came the ability to turn keys in locked doors.
Romie studied her friend. “Did the Shadow have anything to say about what happened on the ley line?”
Emory couldn’t meet her gaze.
“Wait, what happened on the ley line?” Nisha asked.
Romie pursed her lips, waiting for a reply from Emory that never came. “You have nothing to say to that? No apology for the power you took from me and Aspen and Tol, or the fact that the Shadow saved your ass—and ours in the process by severing your connection to the ley line?”
“What in the Deep are you talking about?” Virgil snapped.
“She’s a Tidethief,” Romie gritted out. “Every time she’s been on a ley line, I’ve felt her sucking out all the magic from my veins, turning my blood to ash. Only this time she did it to Aspen and Tol too.”
“Is that what I felt?” Tol’s brow furrowed. “I thought my heart was going to stop.”
Aspen looked at Emory with disbelief. “My bones breaking—that was you?”
This at last had Emory meeting their gaze, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to stop. I don’t even know how I did it in the first place. It’s like the ley line opens this conduit between us that I can’t avoid and don’t know how to close.”
Romie crossed her arms. “I guess it makes sense that the Shadow would be able to stop it for you, since you owe him your Tidethief magic.”
“Will you stop calling her that?” Virgil snarled. “She never stole anyone’s magic back at Aldryn.”
“What about Travers and Lia? They died when Emory called them back through the door after suffering some odd reversal of their magic, didn’t they?”
“Romie, come on,” Nisha said. “That wasn’t Emory’s doing.”
Romie blinked at Nisha, hurt that she wasn’t siding with her on this. Romie didn’t want to believe Emory would do any of this either, but the facts were all there, and the memory of her magic being drained was too close to the surface of her mind for her to ignore it.
“It’s only the keys, I think,” Emory chimed in at last. “And only when we’re on a ley line. Which we’re not at the moment, don’t worry.”
“Still. Probably best you don’t use any magic from here on out.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Emory snapped. “I don’t want this to ever happen again. That’s why I went after the Shadow. He knows things about my magic that might help me control it.”
Romie raised a dubious brow. “And how do you suppose you’re going to get his help?
He wants to kill us, Em. You can’t trust him.
He might wear Keiran’s face, but he’s the Shadow.
The reason the Tides disappeared. And not just the Tides but the Sculptress and the Forger too.
He’s the evil at the source of all this. You should have let the monster die.”
Emory flinched at that. “I never pegged you for someone who bought into the whole ‘Eclipse magic is evil’ thing.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Isn’t it? You’ve been afraid of my Tidecaller magic ever since you found out about it.”
“Can you blame me?” Romie yelled with a laugh bordering on tears. “My whole life has been shaped by Eclipse magic going wrong. My dad, Baz, now you. I just—I can’t do it anymore.”
They’re here.
All of them turned to where Gwenhael perched. The dragon had lifted its head, alert to something only it could see in the inky night that had fallen.
There was movement in the dark, and before they knew it, Tol had his sword pointed at two women armed to the teeth.
They wore gilded chain mail beneath rust-colored surcoats that bore a crest similar to the Fellowship of the Light’s—an ouroboros, though this one featured both a gold dragon and a black winged beast that called to mind the corvus serpentes, all twisted up together.
Leather baldrics were slung across their chests, leaden with a brutal assortment of knives.
And from their backs sprouted wings exactly like Tol’s.
“You’re a long way from Heartstone, draconic,” the younger said with a voice rough like stone.
She had umber skin and long tresses that fell to the middle of her waist, and she looked to be around the same age as Romie.
Her eyes cut to Gwenhael with thinly veiled suspicion.
“We have not seen a dragon traveling freely with the likes of your order for a long time.”
The draconic and his friends freed me from the Fellowship of the Light, Gwenhael said as it moved to stand behind Tol, the gesture at once threatening and protective.
“Deserters?” the other warrior exclaimed with a raised brow. She had the same rich tone as the younger one, short-cropped hair, and must have been in her forties. She narrowed her eyes at Tol. “What made you break your oath to the Light?”
“Gwenhael.” Tol motioned to the dragon. “I found the alchemists torturing it for its flame. I didn’t know this was the alchemists’ method, capturing dragons and taking their flames against their will. They sentenced me to die because I opposed them. We escaped with Gwenhael.”
“Impressive,” the younger warrior said, though her eyes were hard and untrusting, and she did not lower her sword. “Or maybe that’s what you want us to believe in the hopes that we lead you to more dragons you can imprison?”
“That’s not—” Tol started.
“Maybe that’s also why there’s a company of knights at your back,” the girl continued, “lying in wait while you weasel your way into our midst.”
A muscle feathered in Tol’s jaw. “I can assure you we’re not with them.”
I vouch for the draconic, Gwenhael said. Is my word as dragon not enough to convince you?
“Forgive us,” the older woman said with a reverent bow.
The younger one seemed reticent to show such deference, if only because she couldn’t tear her gaze from Tol.
“We are of course in your service, mighty Gwenhael,” the older woman continued. “But you will understand our distrust of the Fellowship of the Light. Too often have they captured dragons whose freedom it was our duty to safeguard. The Golden Helm will not fail again.”
“What is the Golden Helm, anyway?” Tol asked.
“Your masters really tell you nothing, do they?” quipped the youngest. “The Golden Helm are knights-errant, loyal only to the dragons. Those who haven’t been captured and tortured and killed by your Fellowship.” She spat on the ground at Tol’s feet.
“Ivayne,” warned the older woman, just as Gwenhael emitted a low growl.
The girl glared at Tol. “We were the original draconics. Those to whom the dragons chose to give their heart-flame. Our oaths are truly sacred because they were made to the dragons themselves. Unlike your Fellowship. Thieves, the lot of you.”
“Trust me, no one hates their methods more than I do,” Tol said, lowering his sword.
“But it’s not like I was ever given a choice.
That’s how the masters trick us. They find us as children on the brink of death and turn us when we’re too delirious to know what we’re agreeing to.
They claim to want to save us, but really, they only seek to add numbers to their ranks. ”
The older woman finally lowered her sword, considering Tol. “What is it you’re after, then?”
“We seek the Sun Forger. Gwenhael told us you might know where she slumbers.”
Ivayne laughed. “Even if we did know, what makes you think we would tell a supposed deserter of the Fellowship and his strange companions?”
If the Golden Helm truly serves all dragons, then you must share this secret with me if I request it of you.
The women exchanged a glance.
“Look,” Tol said, taking a step toward them, “we just want—”
Both women thrust out their swords in warning. Tol stepped back immediately.
“Careful, draconic,” the older one said, eyes ablaze.
Something had come loose from her tunic, dangling from a chain around her neck. Romie blinked in recognition.
“That compass,” she said. “Where did you get that?”
It looked exactly like the one Vera had—the compass Emory’s mother had left her.
“What is it to you?” asked the older woman.
Vera pulled on her own chain to reveal the identical compass.
The two women lowered their swords at the sight of it. The older one strode up to Vera and examined her compass. “You’re part of the Veiled Atlas?”
“Yes?” Vera replied uncertainly.
The Veiled Atlas—the cult that believed Cornus Clover had truly gone to the other worlds he wrote about. A truth that was becoming more and more plausible. Did this cult exist here as well after Clover passed through?
“You must be Travelers, then,” the woman said. She looked between them all. “Who of you bears the Traveler’s mark?”
“You mean this?” Romie lifted her sleeve so the silver spiral on her wrist was visible. “Most of us here have it.”
“But not all of you are keys.”
“That would be the three of us,” Romie said, pointing between her, Aspen, and Tol. There was no reason to hide the truth now.
The older woman put a hand to her heart. “Apologies, then. If you’re keys, we’re at your service.”
“Mother,” Ivayne whispered furiously, clearly unconvinced.
“How do you know about us?” Romie asked.
“The Golden Helm knew of Travelers, once, when the doors between realms were still open and keys were not needed. We’ve been waiting for you ever since.
You seek the Forger to save our world from the darkness that has befallen it, yes?
It was like this, long ago, after the Forger and the Night Bringer vanished and the doors were shut. ”
“Those are but stories,” Ivayne snapped.
“Every story has a morsel of truth,” her mother said.
“We’ll bring you to the place where the Forger was rumored to have gone, where the door to another realm once stood.
We call it the Sunforge, an old mountain surrounded by rivers of fire, so inaccessible and hostile it has not been visited by any human as far as memory serves.
” She studied them, then the dragon. “But if Gwenhael agrees to escort us, we may just find our way.”
I accept, Gwenhael said, lowering its head.