Chapter 55 Romie
ROMIE COULDN’T HELP BUT MARVEL at the Wastes they traveled through.
“Wastes.” Ivayne scoffed at the name. She’d been listening intently as Romie and Nisha spoke of this world’s fictional depiction in Song of the Drowned Gods, drawing similarities to this real version they found themselves in.
“These lands may be harsh and barren and strange,” the draconic continued, “but they are not wastes.”
Virgil snorted at that. “What else do you call a never-ending desert? We’ve been traveling for days now, and it’s all the Tides-damned same. Nothing upon nothing. It’s unsettling.”
Ivayne looked like she might shove her sword through him for insulting her homeland. Thankfully, Tol jumped in with a more tactful approach.
“It’s not unsettling if you care to see past the apparent nothingness,” he said.
“Look at how vibrantly the colors shine beneath the sun, even dim as it is. Look how the dew on these cacti catches in the morning sun, like glittering gems that dissolve before our eyes and return to us in the night. This is no wasteland. It’s delicate and ethereal in its beauty. ”
Virgil huffed. “Well, when you put it like that…”
Romie caught the wistful look in Aspen’s eye as the witch hung on Tol’s every word.
She’d been like this ever since they’d freed Tol, always listening to him wax poetic about the land and the beasts they encountered, hovering in his orbit, stealing glances his way when he wasn’t looking, but never actually speaking to him.
The one time Romie asked her about it, Aspen had looked miserable.
“It’s complicated. This connection I had to him, all these intimate details I know about him…
How does one bring that up? He might hate me for it. ”
Romie doubted that. The witch might not have noticed the way Tol’s gaze lingered on her, but Romie sure had. So had Nisha. It had become a bit of a running joke between the two of them, to count all the times Aspen and Tol secretly made eyes at each other.
Nisha caught her gaze now, a knowing smile playing on her lips. If Romie were the blushing type, she would have combusted right then and there at the thought of the heated kisses they’d shared that morning while everyone else still slept.
“What should we call your world, then?” Vera asked.
“I’m not sure it has a name,” Tol said with a frown.
It does, Gwenhael’s voice chimed in their minds. We dragons call it the Heartland.
“The Heartland, how fitting,” Virgil singsonged.
“Would this be a good time to address the fact that we’re heading to a door that requires a heart for a sacrifice?
Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t really matter anyway, because someone let the one person who can open the door leave in the middle of the night, and another someone is too stubborn to contact her in dreams to make sure she’s safe. ”
Vera rolled her eyes. “This again?”
Romie crossed her arms. “Emory chose to leave. She can contact me if she needs to talk.”
Her anger at her friend simmered close to the surface. It wasn’t just that Emory had left without saying anything to anyone—except Vera, apparently—when they needed her most. It was the fact that she’d gone to him.
Romie wanted to trust that Emory knew what she was doing.
Both Virgil and Vera seemed to believe she went to the Shadow to get a better understanding of her magic.
And while Romie appreciated Emory’s initiative to get this power that was hurting her and the other keys under control, she couldn’t help but fear her friend would be seduced by this god that wore her ex-lover’s face.
That instead of controlling her Tidecaller magic, she would slip further into its dark depths.
Emory was right about her. Maybe she’d always been distrustful of Eclipse magic—and with good reason after what had happened with her father.
And then to find out that Baz was the one who’d Collapsed, who’d killed those people…
Tides, she’d always thought Baz was in utter control of his abilities.
That he’d never let himself cross that line like their father had because he was always so careful. Too careful.
But this new version of Emory was nothing like Baz.
“Virgil’s right, though,” Nisha said, concern etched into the lines of her face. “If a heart is the sacrifice the door needs to open, how in the Tides’ name is Tol going to survive it?”
Romie hadn’t wanted to consider it until now, too focused on getting to the door first. “Any chance that gold heart of yours can be taken out and put back in again without killing you?”
Tol winced. “I’d rather not find out.”
Romie’s mind raced. There had to be a way to open the door without Tol having to die.
“I might have an idea,” Aspen said, a small crease forming between her brows as she looked between Romie and Tol.
“When we were on the ley line and Emory drew on our power… I felt your pain as my own. It’s almost like I was scrying without trying to, like a conduit had been opened between the three of us so that I was in my own breaking body but also in yours.
And the song was clearer than it’s ever been, before it started to fade too.
If we were to stand on a ley line again, without Emory there to hinder our connection… ”
Romie caught on to what she was saying. “You think joining our power on the ley line would be like bringing the pieces of her back together?”
Aspen nodded. “That’s what she seems to want, isn’t it? Why we all feel this pull to one another.” At this, her eyes flitted to Tol, who met her gaze with something charged.
“It’s worth the try,” Tol said. “Maybe the Forger—well, whoever she is—will make herself known to us then.”
“Let’s go,” Romie said excitedly with a clap of her hands. As they moved in the direction of the ley line, she leaned into Aspen and said, “Will you tell him the truth already? He’s clearly as infatuated with you as you are with him.”
Aspen shushed her, affecting the stern look of her mother. “Don’t you dare breathe a word of it to him. I’ll tell him eventually.”
Romie’s gaze drifted to Nisha. “Take it from me: there are some things you don’t want to put off saying, in case eventually never comes.”
Standing on the ley line together did absolutely nothing—until they used their magic.
They started with Tol, who could see bright threads binding the three of them together, tethering Romie’s veins to Aspen’s rib cage to Tol’s heart.
Threads that sought a fourth part far down the ley line, on the other side of a distant door.
These threads were visible only to Tol’s eyes, but Romie felt them all the same, in the faint hum of the song that passed between them like a current.
Then Aspen scried into Romie’s mind. Romie felt nothing at first save for a tingling sensation up her spine.
She realized she’d felt this before at Amberyl House: an odd feeling that something was there, an instinct that had her glancing at her Selenic Mark thinking someone was calling her through it.
Then she felt it: this presence inside her that was at once foreign and familiar, a song that hummed louder in her ears, as if the Tides—the Sculptress—found strength in the union of two of her pieces.
As Aspen blinked out of the scrying, Romie was left with a hollow feeling, like she was missing a piece of herself.
Aspen looked at Tol with hesitancy. “Do you mind if I try it on you?” she asked.
He gave a nod of approval, something like anticipation in his eyes, but still Aspen hesitated.
Romie understood why: if she had felt Aspen scrying in her mind, then surely Tol would, too, and realize that it was her he’d been feeling all along, not the Forger.
Aspen met Romie’s gaze, a call for help. She wasn’t ready.
“Why don’t we switch it up,” Romie suggested. “We’ve already determined we can hear the song in each of us, and it’s definitely stronger on the ley line. But I want to try it where that song is strongest. In the sleepscape—the astral plane. Like that time I saw you there while you were scrying.”
Aspen frowned. “But Tol can’t access the astral plane.”
“No.” Romie gave them a crooked smile. “But I can bring you both there with me.”
Romie had attempted a buddy-sleep only once before, but she wasn’t called the brightest Dreamer of her generation for no reason.
Guiding Aspen’s and Tol’s sleeping consciousnesses into the strangeness of the sleepscape was easier than anticipated, probably since their sleeping bodies were on the ley line.
As the three of them stood together on the path of stars, Romie couldn’t help but smile at seeing the awe with which Aspen and Tol looked at their surroundings.
“It’s like the space between worlds that we traveled through,” Aspen murmured.
“Do you hear that?” Tol said, frowning down the path. “The song is so clear here…”
Indeed, the song was a voice, layered and feminine. A star appeared before them—a dream burning brighter than all the rest. Romie touched it without question, taking the other two with her.
It was a strange dream, like they were at the center of a kaleidoscope, in a world flooded with dancing lights.
There was a woman, ethereal in beauty, with long iridescent tresses and eyes of ever-shifting colors—silvers and blues and greens and reds and violets, like a diamond in the light.
She smiled upon seeing them, opened her arms wide—
And suddenly it was like they were in her mind, listening to her story, this goddess of whom they each carried a piece.
She had always admired the mortals’ ability to dream.
She felt a kinship with them over this singular quality, for she, too, was a dreamer of sorts, in tune with the endless possibilities that came of this ability to dream, to manifest, to imagine.
The mortals loved her for it, and she loved them back.
They were her whole world, and she would do anything to protect them.
It had been an easy decision to splinter herself into pieces for their sake. A necessary sacrifice. So long as a piece of her lived on in each world, the gods could not wipe clean the board. Evil would be kept at bay.
But oh, how she burned to be restored. She felt them, all her splintered parts.
The blood she’d poured into the seas of a world flooded with moonlight.
The bones she’d buried in the rich soil of the witches’ woods.
The heart that burned ever on in the fires of a sun-soaked land.
The soul that kept singing in the storms between the peaks at the farthest reach of the universe.
If they would only answer her call, pour themselves into the mold from which she could reenter these worlds she had helped build.
But there was the small matter of his creature, a thorn in her side from the start. The dark deity that drove her to this splintered state, and the faithful servant of his that sought to diminish her power now.
Such thieves could not be trusted.
The woman’s multicolored eyes met Romie’s with a warning. Light flooded through the dream, the song growing fainter as it chased them back to waking.