Chapter 63 Emory
THE LANDSCAPE AROUND THEM CHANGED as suddenly as the weather.
Gone was the beauty of the desert they’d traveled through, the red sandstone arches and spindly trees and ridges that overlooked miles and miles of curiously striated rock.
Here was a scorched land, charcoal rocks where nothing grew, sharp as a beast’s gnashing teeth.
A large volcano emerged from the soot-stained land, and Emory knew it had to be the Sunforge.
She only hoped it wouldn’t decide to unleash the sea of fire within its belly while they were here.
The sky had lost its dim sun and washed-out blues. A storm brewed, electricity forming in the depths of angry dark clouds.
“Are you certain you’re ready for this?” Sidraeus asked.
They stood shoulder to shoulder on a ridge, their backs to the Sunforge. Emory twisted her neck to look up at him. There was that appreciative glimmer in his ecliptic eyes again, twisting her stomach into knots. She swallowed thickly, returning her gaze to the horizon. “I am.”
The ley line crackled with anticipation under her feet, begging her to unleash her magic. But she managed to hold off, imagining the ley line powering her up the longer she waited.
At last they appeared on the horizon, specks of gold armor and gold swords and gold wings. The Knight Commander and her company.
Emory and Sidraeus had raced to get ahead of them so they could stop them before they reached the Sunforge.
They’d gotten here not a moment too soon.
At last Emory called on the Darkbearer magic she’d been waiting to use, opening herself up to the ley line’s power to make a grand spectacle out of it.
Darkness fell all around her, pitch as night, spreading across the barren plain between the Sunforge at her back and the knights moving toward her.
She wondered what they must look like: she and the Night Bringer, standing on a ridge together as darkness bloomed around them. Judging from the glint of swords being drawn as the approaching draconics got into formation, they must look terrifying enough.
Emory faltered slightly as power rushed from the ley line through her. Sidraeus’s hand on her elbow steadied her. She realized no ghosts had been called by her magic, thanks to him. She shook away the thoughts drawn up by his touch and focused on the task at hand.
The Knight Commander came to stand before them, hand on her sword. Hovering close behind her were three knights, as well as the sage Master Bayns, and his page Caius. Caius’s eyes were wide with fear as he looked at Emory.
“Night Bringer,” the Knight Commander said. “Did you receive my message?”
“I did,” Sidraeus said evenly. “You’ll be displeased to know the eldritch lived.”
“You won’t be so lucky.” The Knight Commander motioned to her knights. “Seize them.”
Emory studied Caius. He looked haunted—ashamed even—at the mention of the eldritch.
She wondered if his love of all beasts had opened his eyes to the cruelty of his masters, after what they did to the eldritch in the canyon pass.
Pointedly, she looked up at the darkened skies above them, where something moved in the clouds. Caius frowned as he caught the motion.
Emory could only hope the young boy understood as Sidraeus said to the Knight Commander, “It’s you and your knights who are out of luck, I’m afraid.”
Gwenhael emerged from the dark clouds above on silent wings, jaws open wide to reveal gold-white flames at the back of its throat. The Knight Commander barely had time to jump out of the way before dragon flame shot down toward her, lethal and precise in its trajectory.
The company of knights descended into chaos as they ran for cover they wouldn’t find.
Gwenhael’s flames razed the barren rock, and Emory desperately tried to spot Caius, hoping he’d made it out safely.
The sky above Gwenhael split open as a dozen armed draconics appeared bearing the crest of the Golden Helm.
Ivayne led these draconics with a fierce smile as they descended upon the Fellowship of the Light. With the dragon on their side, the Knight Commander’s company would be no match.
Emory turned to Sidraeus. He surveyed the chaos with grim satisfaction, and she knew what he must be thinking. That they’d gotten retribution for the eldritch. That the knights deserved to burn.
“You were right about the eldritch I healed,” she said in a conversational tone, drawing his attention away from the battle. She moved closer to him, pulling him into her orbit. “It did tell me something else. A truth it shared with me as a thank-you.”
She might have imagined the way his gaze flicked to her mouth. “And what truth was that?”
“Something I’d suspected but hoped would turn out to be false.”
His brow knit in confusion. Before he could realize what she meant, a magic-dampening collar like the one she’d freed him from only days ago was snapped shut around his neck. He whirled on the draconic who’d chained him, but Vivyan pointed her sword at his heart.
Emory stepped away from him. Vivyan gave her a curt nod. “You all right, girl?”
“Fine. The others are at the Sunforge?”
“Waiting for us as planned.”
Confusion slowly gave way to anger as Sidraeus looked between them. “What is this?”
Emory forced steel into her words. “The truth the eldritch showed me,” she said, “was about you. You omitted something from your story. You’d already tried wresting the gods’ power from them before they imprisoned you.
You got Tidecallers to stand before the fountain and siphon its power off to you.
Except it didn’t work. The Tidecallers burned out completely, too much power ripping through them, and they died.
And despite this, you were willing to risk it again on me.
The last Tidecaller who might do alone what four of them died trying. ”
“Emory…”
“But that’s not even the worst part, is it?” she added with a bitter laugh. “The worst part is that you were the one to sacrifice the Tidecallers in the end. You were the one to give them up to the gods so they could be bled dry.”
His gaze turned stony. “I did what I had to.”
No denial. No remorse. Emory shouldn’t have expected any different. “You’re just like him,” she muttered, studying Keiran’s face. Someone else who’d meant to use her. Suddenly they seemed like a single person.
Sidraeus’s eyes flared, a reminder of the deity beneath.
“I am nothing like him.” He pulled on his chains to no avail, reduced to human frailty under the magic damper.
“If I didn’t give up the Tidecallers,” he seethed, “the gods were going to destroy everything. Wipe clean the realms of the living and the dead, burn everyone and everything in them—myself and Atheia included—just so they could build something better out of the ashes.”
“And why would they do that?”
“Self-preservation, fear, spite—does it matter? They saw Tidecallers as something that was never meant to exist. The one threat to their godhood. That’s the kind of power the gods have, to end us all in the blink of an eye if they choose. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you offered your Tidecallers as sacrifice.” Their blood on his hands. “And now me.”
His jaw tightened. “Believe me, if I had known—”
“I’m done believing you.” The sounds of battle raged on around them. Emory motioned to Vivyan. “Take him.”
The draconic tugged on his chain, but Sidraeus dug his heels into the ground, trying to fight back. Vivyan yanked him to her with ease, Keiran’s body too frail with the deity’s power dampened.
Sidraeus stilled, seeming to accept his fate despite the feral edge of his scowl. To Emory, he asked: “What will you do to me?”
“I’m not sure yet. Maybe we’ll leave you in the sleepscape where you belong. But I’m done being used and lied to.”
Anger brewed in Sidraeus’s gaze, a storm on the brink of violence. But there was something else there too. Something like hurt, and betrayal. Maybe even… pride?
“You see?” he murmured, a note of appreciation in his voice. “We’re the same, you and I.”
“We’re nothing alike.”
“We could have set these worlds right together. Now I’m afraid we’re doomed to remain rivals.”
She walked up to him, anger roiling in her stomach. “Let me make something very clear. There is no world that exists in which we could be anything but rivals. I despise this body you wear, and I hate the monstrous soul that fills it. Rivals doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
Something heated flashed in his gaze.
Emory stormed off ahead of him and Vivyan, barely sparing a glance to the battle still raging.
Most of the Fellowship of the Light had been rounded up by the Golden Helm, kept alive for now.
Gwenhael had landed amid the golden flames and bloodshed, munching on something Emory didn’t want to consider.
Suddenly Ivayne was catching up to them, blood splattered on her face, her smile a flash of brilliant white. She clasped Emory on the shoulder. “You did good.”
Emory tried to smile back, tried to be proud she’d successfully duped Sidraeus, but all she felt was hollow.
After the eldritch had shown her the truth of him, she’d found Romie in dreams and told her everything.
They’d devised this plan for Emory to make Sidraeus believe she was still on his side.
He knew of Vivyan and Ivayne calling on the help of their fellow knights-errant to ambush the Fellowship, but he hadn’t known it was meant as a distraction to capture him.
She would not die for him, would not play into his quest for revenge.
She’d gotten what she needed from him, and now she had a door to get through.
When they caught up to the group, Virgil was the first one to greet her, arms crossed and lips pursed in a way that was almost comical.
“You have some explaining to do, young lady.” He threw Sidraeus a narrow-eyed look as Vivyan drew her captive past him.
To Emory he said: “You know I would have come with you if you’d asked me, right? ”
Emory’s heart went out to him. “I know,” she said, squeezing his arm in a gesture she hoped conveyed how sorry she was to have left without saying anything, and how much she valued his friendship—especially as she spotted Romie looking at her with a guarded expression.
Giving Virgil one last squeeze, Emory went over to her.
“Glad to see you went through with it,” Romie said. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually turn on him.”
The iciness in her tone sliced as much as the words themselves.
Even after all this, Romie’s wariness about her remained.
Emory felt unmoored, wondering if there was anything left to save or if she’d destroyed their friendship beyond repair.
Maybe it had always been doomed to come to this, the nature of their magics pitting them against each other in some predestined way. A key, a Tidecaller. Atheia, Sidraeus.
“I’m on your side, Ro. That’s never going to change, even if I’ve changed. Even if we’ve changed. I know I’ve hurt you, but I’m trying here, I really am.”
Romie softened at that, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. She gave Emory a wobbly smile. “Things were so much easier before, weren’t they? I wish we could go back.”
It was so very Romie to want to hold on tight to who they’d been, the version of themselves that existed in a perfect bubble, thinking it would make it easier to face the hard things. But the bubble had burst a long time ago. They were no longer those people, and Emory didn’t want to be.
She thought of what Sidraeus had told her.
That when forced to live in the dark, he’d had no choice but to become the darkness itself.
Maybe that’s what Emory had done. She’d been molded by darkness, and some of it had taken root inside her.
Maybe it had always been there, waiting to be let out.
Whatever the case, that darkness—her selfishness, her hunger for power—didn’t mean she was beyond forgiveness.
All she could do was be her best self, darkness and all, and hope that was enough for the people who loved her. True friendship would survive such darkness.
She just wasn’t sure Romie saw it that way.