Chapter 59 Emory #2
“As for Atheia,” he said, grinding out each syllable of her name as if they cut his tongue, “she was meant to be punished by the gods too, for she was the one to bring me into the realms of the living to begin with. The gods planned to confine her to their godsworld, never allowing her to set foot in the worlds she cared so deeply for. But Atheia foiled the gods at the last. She escaped their punishment by splintering herself into pieces to keep her magic—her very life force—alive in each of her worlds.”
Blood, bones, heart, soul.
“So it’s revenge you’re after,” Emory said. “You don’t want Atheia to be put back together again.”
The golds and silvers in his eyes flared bright in answer.
“I have had a long time to contemplate what was done to me and my Tidecallers,” he said.
“The retribution I seek is for them. Atheia might as well have led them to the slaughter. She chose her worlds over me and found a way to keep her magic alive while mine was sacrificed in the name of balance.”
Emory thought she understood the pain he carried, the choices he’d made. He’d been betrayed by the one he loved, forced by cruel gods to see his creations die, and imprisoned in the sleepscape for ages as punishment.
His story didn’t exactly paint him as a saint either. But if she were him, she’d want retribution too.
“When the god of balance confined me to the sleepscape,” Sidraeus continued, “he kept me in stasis so that time lost all meaning, and I became nothing. I could feel the nightmares of mortals, but my consciousness could no longer slip into them as it once could. And I could still feel the souls of the dead pass through, but I was no longer able to ferry them to their resting place.”
“How did they find their way to the godsworld, then?”
“Most souls manage well enough on their own, following the source of magic that calls to us all, that created life itself. It’s the stray souls that I dealt with.
The ones unwilling to go.” He frowned, as if only now considering the question.
“I don’t know if another was appointed to take my place as ferrier of lost souls.
All I knew was darkness. And then… you.”
Her face heated at the quiet intensity in his words. “Me?”
“When you came into the sleeping realm and healed the umbrae, it broke through this stasis I was in. Suddenly I could move freely within the sleeping realm, could feel the souls of the dead again and slip into nightmares as I once did. I didn’t know what you were then.
I didn’t even know Tidecaller magic had lived on before I saw you using the very powers I’d created.
This dream I thought had been extinguished. ”
“What does that have to do with your desire for revenge?”
“Everything. I told you all magic comes from the godsworld. From the fountain of the gods, the source of all their power, of all magic, of the universe itself. It spills into all worlds, drawing paths through them. Lines of pure energy.”
“The ley lines,” Emory breathed.
“You feel them, as the Tidecallers that came before you did, because your magic is liminal, transcendent. Just as you can cross through worlds, this thing that the gods themselves never thought possible, you can also harness the power of the ley lines in a way no other being can. Not even Atheia and me. But what you feel in them now pales in comparison to the power the ley lines once held. Because when the gods sealed the way between realms, these doors became dams, allowing only a small trickle of the fountain’s magic into each world.
A meager resource that grows thinner and thinner until it is bound to die out entirely.
” He motioned to the dim sun. “It’s already begun. ”
Understanding dawned on Emory. “That’s why the worlds are rotting? Because magic is dying?”
“Ironic, isn’t it? That the gods’ solution for restoring their precious balance ended up causing an imbalance so great it will inevitably destroy us all. Unless we break the dams open.”
“But I thought opening the doors between worlds is what caused this rot to spread in the first place.”
“Only because opening them takes magic away from the ley lines. Every time a door opens, this finite resource grows ever thinner, taking longer and longer to get replenished by the minuscule trickle allowed to come through from the fountain. It’s not supposed to be this way.
When all the doors were open, the ley lines could never be depleted, because magic flowed straight through them from the fountain, and the fountain is infinite.
But now the gods sit in their precious godsworld, a place so perfect that none of this sickness can ever get to it, because the fountain spills freely there, a source of eternal life and power.
Magic powerful enough to heal all worlds if it were to flow freely through them once again. ”
He leaned toward her. “You have the power to make that happen. If you learn to tap into the ley lines, you can blow the dam wide open and heal these crumbling worlds in the process.”
“But that’s not all you’re after, is it? You want to wrest the power from the gods—and you need me for it.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “If you can tap into the ley lines, you can tap into the fountain. And you can siphon that power off to me.”
Emory crossed her arms. “And what about my friends? The pieces of Atheia you want so badly to destroy?”
“I do admit I sought to destroy them at first. But they are needed for us to reach the godsworld.” He didn’t seem pleased about it.
“And yet you still tried to kill them multiple times.”
“It’s difficult for me to sense these pieces of Atheia nearby and not want to kill them.
I have spent a millennia in the sleeping realm stewing in my rage and revenge.
Those feelings don’t go away so easily. You learn to live in the dark when you have no choice.
Can you blame me for making the darkness mine? ”
His words resonated within her. Emory had been in the dark herself for so long, she was adapting to it against her will.
Becoming someone who hurt her friends because she couldn’t help herself wanting more power.
Becoming someone who would do anything to protect them—even let herself become a killer.
If it weren’t for the unnatural color of his eyes or the otherworldly power that thrummed from him, Emory might believe she had gone back in time, to a bonfire on the beach with that same boy staring at her.
But this was not Keiran. He might look like him and sound like him and have his memories, but it was not him.
And yet she hated him all the same.
So why then did her blood sing at his proximity? Why did she relate to Sidraeus’s story in such a way that she believed him, despite all the warning bells in her mind?
Emory didn’t want to trust him, didn’t want to feel even the tiniest fleck of kinship toward him.
She tried to find the faults in his story, to see where he might be twisting the truth to dupe her.
And yet she couldn’t deny the power she’d felt from the ley lines.
Couldn’t deny the trepidation she felt at the idea of Atheia being brought back and what that might mean for her friends.
Sidraeus was offering a solution to the dying worlds—and to her own twisted magic. He was offering answers, and a way to master herself. She couldn’t pass up such an opportunity.
When the time came, she could choose whether or not to do what he wanted of her.
He might be a deity, but he needed her, perhaps more than she needed him.
He couldn’t cross through worlds without her or the keys.
He couldn’t even use all his powers while in Keiran’s body.
And though she couldn’t truly trust him, wouldn’t let herself, she could use him as long as it suited her, just as he would use her as it suited him.
At least this time, they both knew where they stood.