Chapter 52 Baz
THEY FOUND THE SECRET LIbrARY room completely engulfed in shadows, as if Kai had brought back the entire sleepscape from his dreaming. Thick vines of lunar flowers climbed along the walls, spreading like wildfire even as they decomposed, turning black and putrid.
Then Baz saw the cadavers.
They were piled at Kai’s feet where the Nightmare Weaver stood with Luce, trying to fend off the umbrae that formed from the gathering shadows and drew tighter around them.
Baz thought at first they were like the reanimated corpses Kai had pulled from Freyia’s dreaming, but these were clearly lifeless, with rotten lunar flowers sprouting from their empty eye sockets and open mouths.
And they were faces Baz knew: Travers, Lia, Jordyn, Lizaveta, Keiran…
Romie.
His sister’s body was as withered as Travers’s had been, as pale as the Ilsker girl who’d tried to break through the wards and the Vanished Four that had just been found. As if void of blood, magic, life.
Someone moving closer to the shadows snapped Baz out of his stupor. Thames, trying to help Kai and Luce. But there were too many umbrae, and the nightmarish flowers seemed to grow and grow, as if trying to swallow everything in rotting darkness.
Clover came to stand beside Baz, face drawn with horror. He looked like he wanted to help, to draw on his own mighty power to stop all of this, but with the students at their backs watching the scene with dreaded curiosity, he couldn’t.
But Baz could.
He stopped time. The umbrae stilled, the flowers became immobile, the students gathered outside the door and in the library beyond froze.
The only ones he left untouched were the people in this room.
Kai met his gaze with a mixture of relief and—fear?
—before turning on the umbrae and becoming the Nightmare Weaver, the lord of nightmares, his voice quiet and commanding as he willed them to sleep.
The umbrae fell away to nothing, dissolving into dust around them like any other nightmare thing that Kai took with him into waking.
Then the flowers, too, and finally the cadavers, until the room was just a room again, if a bit ruined.
They all stared at each other in the resounding quiet. Baz didn’t let go of the threads keeping the other students immobile, too scared to let time resume just yet.
Luce was panting as she looked between Baz and Kai and the frozen students with suspicion. “That kind of power… how are you two not Collapsing?”
Clover’s eyes glimmered with intensity, seeming to share none of Luce’s trepidation. “I believe, dear Luce, it’s because they already have.”
“It’s not what you think,” Baz said quickly at Luce’s and Thames’s fearful expressions. Clover alone seemed unperturbed as Baz explained the truth about Collapsing, that it was not a curse at all but an expansion of their limits.
Luce was hugging herself, glancing nervously around the room as if she expected the nightmarish scene to return any moment. “Does Emory know about Collapsing? When she said she was Shadow-cursed…”
Baz whipped toward Kai. “What about Emory?” Understanding bloomed in his mind as he realized whose nightmares they’d just seen, the mind from which Kai had pulled such horrors. “You found her, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Kai avoided his eye. “I’ve spoken to her twice now.”
Twice. And this was how Baz found out. He glanced at the spot where his sister’s corpse had been and felt his knees buckling. “Romie…”
“She’s fine, Brysden. It was just a nightmare. Emory’s worst fears drawn up.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“We’ve got company,” Thames muttered, jerking his chin at the door.
Outside the secret room, the students had started moving again, Baz’s grasp on his time magic having slipped without his notice.
They blinked, peering into the room with puzzled expressions as they no doubt wondered if the darkness they’d glimpsed had been a hallucination.
“All right, everyone, let’s clear out,” Luce said, affecting the authority of the librarian she was posing as.
She shooed everyone out, throwing a look back at Baz and Kai as if to say, We’ll discuss this later.
Clover and Thames followed after her and shut the door behind them, as if knowing Baz and Kai needed a moment.
“Tell me what happened,” Baz said once they were alone.
Kai told him everything—how he’d seen both Emory and Romie that first time, and now Emory alone in this one. Anger and hurt simmered inside Baz. He’d thought he could count on Kai for the truth, always. But apparently not for this.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Kai let out a sigh. “Because Emory asked me not to, and I agreed to keep it quiet so that you wouldn’t be thrown off your game during the Bicentennial.”
That protective side again. Baz didn’t find it quite as endearing now. “Are you sure that’s the only reason?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You get all worked up whenever Emory’s name is even brought up. It’s like you’re jealous of her.”
Something like hurt flashed in Kai’s eyes at the insinuation, but he masked it with sarcasm. “Sure. I’m jealous of the girl who used you to get what she wanted, who you’re still pining over like some pathetic, lovesick puppy.”
“I am not. I don’t—I don’t think of her that way. Not anymore.”
Baz realized it was the truth as he spoke it.
What he’d felt for Emory… there would always be something there, but it was friendship more than anything.
He could genuinely count on one hand the times he’d thought of her that way since she left.
Because his mind was otherwise occupied. His feelings turned to someone else.
But Kai didn’t seem to believe him. He snickered at him, saying, “You’re telling me Emory is not who you’ve been drawing over and over again in that sketchbook of yours?”
Baz huffed a disbelieving laugh. “So you are jealous.”
“I’m concerned. Because you don’t want to hear that your precious Emory might bring about the end of the fucking worlds, but you have to face the facts, Brysden. She was never good to you, so why are you so quick to defend her?”
“Look, yes, she did use me, and I did have feelings for her, and it did push me to do things I might not…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“But you have no idea what that time was like for me, Kai. I was alone. Romie was gone. You’d gotten yourself into the Institute.
Emory was the only one there for me. She understood me and made me grow, and I refuse to give up on her now.
If defending her makes me weak in your eyes, then so be it. I won’t apologize for it.”
“I’m not asking you to. And I’ve always known what it’s like for you, Brysden.
I’ve seen your deepest fears, remember? Witnessed all the horrors inside that head of yours.
I know the demons you fight against, and I know what you could do if you just let yourself accept that you’re more powerful than anyone I’ve ever met.
I know every part of you, and I’m here waiting for you to understand that. But you can’t see it, can you?”
“See what?”
“If you don’t know by now, then you never will.” Kai scoffed, blinking rapidly as he looked anywhere but at Baz. “I don’t know why I expected any different from you.”
As Kai turned to leave, desperation smacked into Baz. He reached out a hand, gripping Kai’s shoulder to keep him at his side, because he knew that if Kai walked away now, things between them would break irrevocably.
But Kai shoved him away with a snarled “Don’t,” taking Baz aback.
Their gazes met. There was nothing guarded about Kai’s expression now, only a stark vulnerability that took Baz’s breath away and made his heart ache in a way he couldn’t explain.
He’d been starting to see the cracks in Kai’s armor, but nothing quite like this.
This was Kai at his core, without any of the barriers he usually hid behind.
Not the Nightmare Weaver, not the fearless fighter he’d made himself out to be, but simply a boy.
A version of himself he showed to no one.
Except for Baz.
And Baz had been such a fool.
He took a step toward Kai and reached tentatively for his hand.
Kai stood very still, breathing fast, that heartbreaking vulnerability still darkening his eyes.
Baz wove his fingers through Kai’s, palms flush against each other.
He grabbed Kai’s other hand, so that their hands were clasped on either side of them.
Baz didn’t know what he was doing. His mind was blissfully blank and his movements so strangely assured, as if his body had taken the reins and were acting on pure instinct.
He drew closer to Kai until he was in his space, breathing his air, discovering all the shades of his dark eyes, the hints of navy and brown and gray that could only be seen from up close.
They did not touch save for their entwined hands; there was a hairsbreadth between them, crackling with possibility.
“What are you doing?” Kai whispered, voice strained. His chest heaved with each quick breath, brushing slightly against Baz as it did.
“I don’t know,” Baz murmured in answer. He bowed his head toward Kai, eyes fluttering shut as he breathed him in.
He pressed his mouth against the crook of Kai’s neck.
A plea, a sign, the only way he knew of to say I think I finally understand.
Maybe he’d always known, but it was only now that he saw it plainly. That he felt it so completely.
“Baz…”
Kai’s voice was hot against his ear, and there was a note to it that Baz had never heard. Hope and anguish and fear all tangled up together. Baz pressed another tentative kiss against Kai’s neck, feeling Kai’s throat bob against his mouth as he swallowed and said, “You don’t have to do this.”
I want to, Baz thought, and was surprised at how true the words rang in his mind.
He untangled his hands from Kai’s and reached for his collar, eyes searching Kai’s desperately, thinking those words again.
I want to. And because they were the truth, plain and simple and beautiful, they gave him the confidence to tug Kai closer, bringing his mouth down to his.
There was no hesitation in Kai. He grabbed Baz’s face in his hands and deepened the kiss as if he’d been drowning until now, a man deprived of breath finally breaking though the surface and eager to fill his lungs.
A small sound rumbled at the back of Baz’s throat.
There was a want inside him that he’d never felt before, a desire that was clearly echoed in Kai.
It left no room for questions. No burdening thoughts of, Did I misread the signs?
or Have I made a horrible mistake? Nothing but a sense of rightness that blossomed and bloomed and expanded in Baz’s chest. It was as if he and Kai had been heading here since the moment they met, two opposites beached on the same island, tortured souls learning to fill that space together and make it their own. Their home.
And now they were each other’s only tether to that home, that sense of belonging. It was familiar and safe just as much as it was invigorating. Baz wanted to cling to this feeling and never let go.
Kai pulled away suddenly. Baz chased after his lips, wanting to keep melting into his kiss, but Kai leaned back farther, stopping Baz with a hand to his chest.
All the doubts and questions surfaced then, piercing through the blissful haze in his mind.
Baz saw them reflected in the midnight depths of Kai’s eyes.
The Nightmare Weaver never doubted himself.
He didn’t show fear or hesitation or regret.
But this was not the Nightmare Weaver. This was Kai, staring at Baz without all those layers of bravado.
Only a boy, vulnerable and unsure of himself.
A mirror reflecting back all that Baz felt.
Just as Kai was about to say something, a stern-faced librarian came bursting into the secret room, staring open-mouthed at the damage.
Baz and Kai let go of each other, but not before she saw them entwined.
She pursed her lips with displeasure, just as Luce appeared behind her with an apologetic wince.
“Out,” the older librarian barked. “The library is no place for… this.”
As Baz and Kai rushed out the door, they heard her grumbling to Luce. “Secret library rooms for secret rendezvous. Humph! Not on my watch.”