17 EMORY

THE MORNING AFTER EMORY’S OATH-TAKING felt like waking up to a new world, a new her. She was a whetted blade sharpened by intention, and all she wanted now was to be worthy of the Selenic Order’s purpose, of Keiran’s belief in her abilities—all of it to see Romie again.

Waking the Tides. It seemed an impossible feat, yet how many impossible things had she witnessed and done herself since the start of the term?

She needed to master her magic, and fast. The problem, she realized, was the frayed state of things between her and Baz, the only one who might help her hone her power and keep her from Collapsing in the process. He wasn’t in the Decrescens library at their usual appointed hour, and after their little spat in the greenhouse, she feared he might no longer want to see her at all. She couldn’t blame him, really, but it hurt all the same.

No time to dwell on it. Now that Emory knew her Tidecaller magic didn’t come from her spiral mark, her thoughts were full of Luce, wondering why and how her mother might have hidden the true nature of her magic. This, at least, she could tackle on her own. It was easy to find where the lunar almanacs were kept in the archives. She pulled up the one from the year she was born and found her birth date—the second day of a new moon in the dead of winter, at the lowest point of a rising tide. She flipped to the day before it, the first day of the new moon.

There had been a total solar eclipse that day.

Her mother must have lied about the date to hide the fact she was born on an eclipse. It didn’t explain why she’d only ever had Healer magic until now, or why the selenograph confirmed her as such when she was younger. And though it only added to the mystery of Luce Meraude, here was a tiny morsel of truth, at least.

She truly was Eclipse-born.

This single, incomprehensible fact brought about a tangle of emotions she couldn’t begin to understand. Her whole identity lay shattered at her feet. How was she supposed to build herself anew?

In her early years at Threnody Prep, she’d been endlessly fascinated by all things Eclipse. Especially Baz’s magic. She remembered thinking how singular it made him, how desperately she wanted that for herself. She had wished she’d been born in House Eclipse then, with magic that would set her apart—until she realized such magic meant those of House Eclipse were doomed to remain on the sidelines because of it.

It seemed she’d gotten her wish.

“You look lovely with a frown, Ainsleif,” a voice murmured in her ear.

A delighted shiver ran up her spine. Keiran leaned casually against her table, mouth upturned in that dimpled smile. He peered at the almanac. “Research so early?”

“Just trying to make sense of all this.” She voiced the thought that had been nagging her all night. “What if my magic isn’t enough to bring back the Tides?”

“Nonsense. Power like yours was meant for greatness.”

“But how exactly am I supposed to wake them?”

Voices drifted to them as a few other students came into the archives. Keiran pushed off the table. “Let me show you.”

A suggestive lift of his brow was all it took for her to follow him deeper into the archives. Quiet footsteps offset the quickening of her pulse as she struggled to catch up with him. Keiran disappeared behind a shelf, and when she rounded the corner, she nearly collided into him, catching herself just in time. He was browsing old files and finally tugged one of them free.

Keiran skimmed the text. “The Selenics used to keep ledgers of their activities hidden in nondescript school files such as these, lost to us for years because of it. Until Farran and I started doing some digging. He always had a knack for unlocking old mysteries.”

Emory watched him flip to the next page. “You said the two of you grew up together?”

“We did. Him, me, Lizaveta, and Artem, we were practically family. Our parents were all part of the Order and remained close after their heyday at Aldryn. The four of us wanted so badly to follow in their footsteps.” A quick, sad smile. “Farran was the one to push this idea of waking the Tides, actually. Back when we were still at prep school. It was his way of getting us to focus on something other than our grief after what happened to our parents. A way for us to continue their legacy, ensure their deaths weren’t in vain.”

Even though she thought she knew the answer already, she asked, “How did you lose them?”

Keiran stared at the papers in his hand. “They were killed in a Collapsing accident.”

He said it tightly, in a way that made Emory uneasy thinking that she might Collapse one day. Yet he was putting all this faith in her anyway.

Before she could say anything, he handed her one of the papers, where an illustration of eight people forming a circle around a fountain had been drawn over the text of some nondescript administrative form.

“What am I looking at?”

“Look closer.”

She realized the lines of the drawing were formed of words—tiny, nearly illegible script, hidden in plain sight.

“It details the archaic rituals that were observed back in the days of the Tides,” Keiran said, “when people called upon them to use their magics. These rituals have been forgotten over time, no longer useful since magic was splintered. But the first Selenics still performed them, believing they might summon the Tides back from the Deep.”

“Clearly, they never succeeded.” She peered at the drawing. “What makes you think we’ll be able to do it now?”

There was a fierce glimmer in his eyes. “I’m sure they never had a Tidecaller in their mix. With you joining our ranks, lending your own abilities to this kind of ritual… our summons will be stronger than theirs ever could be.”

Emory frowned. “Did Romie know about all of this?”

Baz had been closer to the truth than she suspected he knew, with his talk of cults and songs and Dovermere. If Romie had known Keiran meant to summon the Tides back from the Deep, perhaps she’d likened it to the story in Song of the Drowned Gods. Maybe the note she left was her way of hinting at where she was going in case she didn’t make it back. A way for her to say, Romie Brysden is about to do something reckless (again) and here is where you’ll find her.

“No,” Keiran said, shutting that theory down. “The initiates knew about synthetic magics, but not this. We were going to let them in on it after Dovermere. Those who got the Selenic Mark, that is.”

Emory ran a thumb over her wrist. Keiran tracked the motion. “Aside from the fact that it allows us to communicate with one another, we don’t know much else about it. Clearly, the original Selenics knew enough of the power of Dovermere to craft their initiation ritual around the Hourglass. It’s the only ritual we’ve kept since the Order’s inception. Every year is the same: we round up the eight most promising new students, two of each of the four lunar houses, and have them undergo a series of preliminary tests to see who might have the countenance for synthetic magics. Only those who pass, if any, are invited to the final initiation: vanquishing Dovermere.”

“And those who don’t pass these preliminaries?”

“Memorists like Vivianne make them forget. They go about their lives unaware of the Selenic Order.”

Emory made quick calculations in her head. “So last year, every candidate passed the preliminaries, since there were eight of them in Dovermere. What about the rest of you? Were you all the same year?”

“All of us except Virgil. He’s a year younger than us.” He looked away, voice laced with something bitter as he said, “There were only seven of us who went to Dovermere my freshman year. Louis, Ife, Nisha, Lizaveta, Javier, me, and Farran. The other Waning Moon candidate didn’t make it past preliminaries, and Farran, as you know, drowned at Dovermere.”

A shadow fell on his face. “The four of us, Farran, Liza, Artie, and I, we grew up seeing firsthand the prestige that came with being a Selenic. We knew that once we joined, anything we wanted would be ours for the taking: the best postgraduate programs, the most exclusive internship placements, the highest-ranking jobs, access to synthetic magics. Artem was older than us, so he got in first, made sure to tap us for initiation when we got to Aldryn. We were riding a high then. Thought we were unstoppable. But when Farran died… I couldn’t shake this anger, at first. All of that hurt, and for what? Morsels of fabricated magic, the kind of power that wasn’t worth risking our lives for in Dovermere.”

“So why stay?”

“Because Farran had shown us the potential for more. We wanted to honor his memory by steering the Order back to what it used to be. To go beyond the glamorous parties and networking and do the one thing no Selenic before us had done.”

“Waking the Tides.”

“What could be more worthy an endeavor than that? When Artem’s cohort graduated and I took over the reins, we started going through what Farran had found, testing all these rituals and playing around with synths in the hopes of becoming powerful enough to summon the Tides. That first year I was in charge, I also wanted to ensure the preliminaries were harder to pass, hoping it would limit the deaths. Virgil was the only one who made it past his preliminaries; he survived Dovermere all on his own.”

Another Reaper to replace Farran, Emory thought, wondering if it were mere coincidence.

“The year after that,” Keiran continued, “all eight students we tapped for initiation made it to Dovermere. They were just that good.” A bob of his throat. “You know how that worked out.”

Eight names etched on a silver plaque at the Tides’ feet: Quince Travers, Healer. Serena Velan, Darkbearer. The twins, Dania and Lia Azula, Wordsmiths. Daphné Dioré the Wardcrafter and Jordyn Briar Burke the Soultender. Harlow Kerr, Unraveler. And Romie—the fierce, secretive, bright Dreamer.

“It was such a promising group,” Keiran lamented. “The most powerful young mages the Order had seen in years. And with the strides we’d been making developing stronger synths, I thought we might finally have what it took to wake the Tides.” He shook his head angrily. “Their deaths weigh on me still.”

Emory felt a grim kinship with him, to know that he, too, blamed himself for their deaths. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t have done anything to prevent this, that only Dovermere was to blame. It was the lie she told herself every night she woke in cold sweats, plagued by this nightmarish guilt.

“At least their loss wasn’t entirely in vain,” Keiran said quietly. “It brought us you.”

Her cheeks burned furiously at the ardent look he gave her.

“I meant it when I said we’d try to get Romie back,” he asserted. “She and Farran and all the others. And if the Tides won’t grant us this one thing, then I promise we’ll pull them back from the Deep ourselves if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

Emory blinked past the sudden sting in her eyes, looking at the ritual drawn on the page. “And this will bring them back?”

“Not quite. Think of waking the Tides as opening a door. But that door is locked; the Tides barred from our world. So first we need to unlock it.” He rustled the page. “This is how we might do it. It’s a fall equinox ritual, where the first Selenics made offerings of their magic to the Tides. They believed there was power on the fall equinox, since it marks the beginning of the end of the cycle, a bridge between summer and winter. They thought the Tides would hear them and be inclined to answer their call.”

“The fall equinox is in less than a week,” Emory said slowly.

Keiran nodded. “And with the festival happening at the same time, the whole campus will be otherwise occupied. No better time to hold our first ritual with our Tidecaller, I think.”

The fall equinox festival was widely celebrated at Aldryn. Students gathered on the banks of the River Helene to cast boats out to sea, a way to entreat the Tides to guide them into autumn. A handful of students from each house were selected to stand upon their respective houses’ boats and perform feats of magic representing each of their lunar houses as they traveled down the river toward the sea. It was a grand spectacle, and an opportunity for the chosen students to showcase their talents to important dignitaries from grad schools and institutions that sought to recruit them.

House Eclipse was always omitted, likely for fear of its students Collapsing while performing their magic.

Emory watched Keiran as he pocketed the ritual drawing, thinking again of the stark difference between his and Baz’s reactions to her magic. How Baz, Eclipse-born like her, seemed more wary of it than Keiran, when it should have been the other way around.

“Why aren’t you scared of me?” she asked. For all he knew, she could Collapse at any given moment, yet there wasn’t a trace of fear in him. “I’m Eclipse-born. Surely—”

“Surely I must hate all Eclipse-born because one of them killed my parents?” Keiran finished for her with a snicker.

The words were too raw, slicing between them like a blade.

“Maybe I did once.” His brows scrunched together. “I was fifteen and looking for someone to blame, and it seemed so easy then to despise all Eclipse-born for destroying my family. But that was a long time ago, and I don’t think that anymore. I’m not afraid of you, Ainsleif.”

“Why not?”

A hint of his dimpled smile. “Would you prefer it if I were?”

“Of course not. But it would make a lot more sense than… this.” Whatever this was, this thing between them.

Keiran seemed to grasp her meaning. She wished to drown in his molten gaze.

He tugged on her hand then, and she had no choice but to follow as he pulled her deeper into the archives. She hadn’t even known the archives were this big to begin with, and the farther they went, the older everything got, a musty smell clinging like cobwebs to the shelves. He helped her climb up a narrow wrought-iron ladder to a hidden attic that was plunged in darkness.

Keiran’s hand left hers to flick on an everlight lantern. And suddenly dozens of the same light shone around the room, that single lantern reflected in a dizzying array of mirrors of every shape and size, all perfectly aligned to refract the light around them.

It felt more like an abandoned museum than an archive attic. Unhung frames lined the walls, great oak dressers and old bookcases and lecterns gathered dust, and in every corner were things that did not quite belong: swords and bows and arrows, scrolls of parchment so ancient they’d begun to disintegrate, broken clocks and chipped vases, golden string instruments, an easel with a half-painted canvas of wildflowers in a sunlit field.

“Farran dubbed this the Forgotten Place,” Keiran said at her side. “We found it during our freshman year while scouring the archives for anything we could find on the Order. A lot of it is junk, but—”

“Are those the photographs you’re restoring?”

She reached for a silver plaque like the one she’d seen him working on, displayed on top of a claw-footed dresser. The surface was no longer mottled but polished enough to reveal the outlines of three people posing for the camera.

“One of them, yes,” Keiran said. “This one’s not done yet. I think with more work I can restore it enough that we see their faces.”

“It’s amazing, the things you can do with your magic.”

“I’m glad you think so. You know, I used to resent being a Lightkeeper,” he admitted with a bashful smile. “I wanted to be a Memorist or a Seer or an Unraveler. I thought there was only so much I could do with Lightkeeper magic, and I wanted more. That’s what drew me to the Order. We’re taught that there’s the magic we’re born with and ways to excel at it, to push this singular ability we have to its limits. But I wanted to exceed those limits. I wanted no limits at all.”

He looked at her like she was the answer to that dream. A way to attain all magics. She ducked her head, studying the shadows on the silver plaque. They were very clearly the outlines of three men dressed in an older fashion, sitting in what might have been a lavish taproom. Only their faces remained tarnished, rendering them featureless.

“My father’s a Lightkeeper,” she said quietly. “He tends a lighthouse for a living. He doesn’t have enough magic to wear the Full Moon sigil, but that’s what he does. And he loves it. It’s where I grew up, in this tiny lighthouse in Harebell Cove.”

The thought of home made her wish she were there. “I always feared I might end up like him. That I wouldn’t pass the tests, wouldn’t get to wear my house sigil, wouldn’t get to study here at Aldryn.” Emory laughed sullenly at the admission. “I always felt unremarkable as a Healer, and now I have this impossible magic and I’m afraid I’ll mess it all up.”

Keiran reached for her hand, his thumb brushing her marked wrist. “You won’t.” He drew her attention to a large painting propped up against the wall. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

It was strangely beautiful in the refracted light of the mirrors. Dark, muted colors in loose brushstrokes depicted a young man lying in a pool of water and blood and sea-foam, his hands folded neatly on his chest. He was smiling, even as blood ran from a wound in his middle.

“What is it?” It was an odd thing for him to show her, Emory thought.

There was something like reverence on Keiran’s face as he beheld the painting. “It’s a mystery. There’s no signature, nothing known about the painting or its maker, nothing in the technique that might echo another artist’s work. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to it. It’s exquisite in a morbid sort of way. The darkness of it, the featurelessness of the man. The way he’s smiling even at the end. I suppose it reminds me there’s beauty even in death. That’s what Farran always believed.”

Emory thought of what Virgil had said about Reaper magic. She studied the painting again, trying to see it through another set of eyes.

“My parents were in Threnody for work when they died,” Keiran said softly, still fixated on the painting, like it was easier to speak if he didn’t look at her. “Collecting pieces for their gallery. It’s part of why I like this place so much. It reminds me of them.” He cleared his throat. “There was nothing left of them for us to bury. That’s how strong the Collapsing blast was. I remember sitting at their funeral hating the person who’d done this. I didn’t care that it was an accident. I needed someone to blame and make into a monster for taking my parents away, and I was glad to see him sent to the Institute to receive the Unhallowed Seal.”

An impossible realization dawned on her. Blood pounding in her ears, Emory asked, “Who was it, the Eclipse-born who killed your parents?”

He met her gaze with a sad, knowing smile. The sorrow on his face broke her.

“Say it. Please.”

His throat bobbed. “Theodore Brysden.”

Baz and Romie’s father.

Emory shook her head, refusing to believe it. But it made sense—the timeline of it all, the way Baz had locked up at the sight of Keiran with her in the quad. The way Lizaveta had seemed to despise her from the start, even before she knew she was Eclipse-born, likely because she was Romie’s friend, and Romie was a Brysden as much as Baz.

“Tides, Keiran. I’m so sorry. Did Romie know?”

“She did. I never held it against her,” he added quickly, “nor her brother. It was an accident, after all. And we are not our parents.”

Emory couldn’t fathom what it must be like, to lose one’s parents like that. To be torn between blame and acceptance, rage and forgiveness, at the thought of the person who’d taken their lives. It made even less sense to her that he’d accepted her—fought for her—with such eagerness. An Eclipse-born he was putting all his trust in after living through such horror.

But maybe, she realized, he wished to bring his parents back from the dead too.

Your magic is the very answer I’ve been seeking.

Keiran frowned at the painting. “I couldn’t stay in Trevel after their deaths. Too many painful memories. Dean Fulton was a good friend of my parents. She offered to take me in, so I continued my prep school education right here at Aldryn under her tutelage. When I first got here, I was so angry. I couldn’t understand why Eclipse students were allowed within these sacred halls, why institutions like Aldryn would put everyone else at risk like that. Then my first year staying with Fulton, a Reaper undergrad killed another student. It was a gruesome accident. A slip of magic, the heat of the moment. A mistake. But it made me realize that a Reaper could just as likely cause death and destruction as any Eclipse student might. That any one of us could slip up at a moment’s notice. Maybe not in the same way as those who Collapse, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are exempt. Magical accidents can happen to anyone.”

He turned to her once more. “You asked me why I’m not afraid of you.” His fingers brushed her brow, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “The truth is, I am. But only because I see your potential. Your power. Only in the way all of us both fear and are enthralled by death, this inevitable, unconquerable force we’ll all bow to in the end.”

Such a force might have scared Emory, once. But standing here before him, as enthralled by him as he claimed to be by her magic—by her—she found she did not fear it in the slightest.

---

It was on her way to the greenhouse that evening that Emory finally caught sight of Baz. He looked even less put-together than he usually did, hair disheveled and glasses skewed and shirt only half tucked in his pants. He didn’t notice her even as she sidled up next to him, his eyes trained on the book in his hands.

“Hey.”

His head snapped up. “Oh.” He slipped his book under an arm. “Hey.”

“I didn’t see you in the library this morning.” She gave him a demure smile, hoping whatever this thing was between them wasn’t yet broken.

Baz averted his gaze, his face shuttered. “Yeah. Sorry. Long night.”

His shortness made her falter. There was something different about him. A heavier weariness to him than usual. She wanted so badly to tell him everything would be fine. That she would bring Romie back and they would both see her again, hear her laugh. But she couldn’t, not when she’d just sworn an oath to the Selenic Order. It felt dangerous to involve Baz in something she herself did not yet fully understand, especially given his and Keiran’s history.

If she managed to do this—wake the Tides, have them bring Romie back to life—Baz would understand and forgive her lies. He had to.

“I was heading to the greenhouse,” she said, “but if your offer to train in Obscura Hall still stands…”

Baz watched her over the rim of his glasses, a tightness in his jaw, as if waiting for her to say something else. Finally, he let out a long sigh. “I can’t right now.”

It felt like a punch to the gut. “Oh.”

“Sorry. I’m late meeting Professor Selandyn.”

“Of course.”

If Baz heard the disappointment in her voice, he didn’t let it show, only left with that distracted look in his eyes. Emory tried not to let his dismissal sting too deeply. She couldn’t expect him to always be at her beck and call. She’d been the one using his feelings for her to get what she wanted, and maybe he’d finally come to realize it.

So why did it bother her so much?

And how in the Deep was she supposed to practice on her own?

Power like yours was meant for greatness, Keiran had told her.

Maybe she didn’t need Baz at all. If she’d performed magic without incident last night in front of the entire Order, she could do so again in the privacy of the greenhouse.

But someone was already there. Nisha could have been Anima herself, standing in the middle of all these dead plants, head tilted up to the sky as if to implore the moon. She wore a burgundy pinafore dress over a cream turtleneck, her black hair unbound and lips unadorned.

Her eyes, Emory saw as they met hers, glistened with tears.

“Are you all right?”

Nisha wiped furiously at her cheeks. “Sorry. Yes. I was just on my way back to Crescens Hall when I finally mustered up the courage to come in here.” She looked around the space with melancholy. “I miss Romie. It feels strange being back here without her, doesn’t it?”

Bitter defensiveness rose in Emory’s throat. What did she know about missing her? She hadn’t known Romie like Emory had—her grief couldn’t compare.

“You know she spoke of you all the time?” Nisha said with a tentative smile. “She always said she wished she were more like you.”

“Me?” Emory sputtered, taken aback. She had always wanted to be more like Romie, so self-assured in her skin and in her dreams, so vibrant and easy to speak with.

“She said she wished she had your drive and focus.” Affection warmed Nisha’s voice. “You know how scattered she could be.”

It was true; Romie wanted everything so much, but she always got distracted by the next big idea, the shinier dream. Nothing ever truly satisfied her. She’d leave things behind without a look backward if she no longer felt the desire to pursue them, her goals always shifting. It made for very little follow-through on her part.

Emory was the opposite. When she set her mind to something, she didn’t waver.

“She once told me she felt like she didn’t entirely know herself, because she was always changing, just like her interests and dreams,” Nisha continued. “But she could always count on you to remain the same. She saw you as this force to be reckoned with, someone who stayed true to herself and her friends no matter what. She loved you for it.”

Tears prickled at Emory’s eyes. Could Romie not have told her any of this herself last year, instead of pulling away from her in favor of Nisha? Anger and jealousy sharpened to something ugly inside her.

“She didn’t say much about you,” Emory said, perhaps a bit too viciously. To temper her words, she added, “Then again, she didn’t say much to me at all in the end.”

“That makes two of us.”

“I thought the two of you were close.”

“She became distant with me too. It wasn’t just about the Order. There was something else preoccupying her that she wouldn’t share with me.” Nisha swallowed with difficulty, tucking her hair behind her ears as she eyed Emory. “Did she ever tell you about us?”

“The Order? Of course not.”

“Not the Order. Me and her.”

Emory frowned incomprehensibly. And then it dawned on her.

“Oh.”

Oh.

Nisha smiled sadly. “I’ll take that as a no. But yeah. We were seeing each other.”

All the pieces fell into place so quickly that Emory wanted to smack herself. Romie had always liked both boys and girls, that much Emory knew. But she’d never suspected Nisha might be more than a friend, so clouded by her own jealousy of their friendship that she couldn’t see the truth behind it.

Nisha ran a finger along a dead leaf. “This is where we’d sneak off to. The Order sort of frowns on present cohort members dating initiates—favoritism and all. And then, of course, I knew a bit about Keiran’s and Lizaveta’s history with Romie’s father.… But I didn’t care. I couldn’t keep away from her. She was so… magnetic. So full of life. It’s a wonder she wasn’t a Glamour.”

Nisha’s open vulnerability caught Emory off guard. “I know what you mean.”

“Anyway. She kept talking about how she wished she could wield other magics, and here I was sitting on the secret of synthetics. So I gave her a push in the right direction, told her if she wanted in, she’d have to convince Keiran, since the Order already had their two Waning Moon candidates in mind. She barged into his dreams, and that was the end of it. We picked her over the other Dreamer candidate.”

Nisha’s smile twisted into a frown. “Do you hate me? For introducing her to the Order?”

Emory pondered the question. She had hated Nisha for taking her friend away from her—but she wasn’t any better herself. They both dealt with guilt, she realized, wondering what they might have done differently to save Romie from her fate.

At last, she said, “I think Romie would have found a way to do what Romie wanted, as she always did.”

“She did have a mind of her own, didn’t she?”

A smile, like they were sharing a secret. Because that was a little bit how it felt to be close to Romie—like being let in on a secret, holding the key to the mystery she was to everyone else.

“Well. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Nisha made to leave, but Emory stopped her with a whispered “Wait.” She fiddled with a loose thread on her sleeve. “Do you think… Do you really believe we can bring her back?”

A fierceness shone in Nisha’s eyes. “I have to believe it. I love her too much to accept a world without her in it.”

They looked at each other from across the wilted space, understanding blooming between them.

“I’m scared I’ll fail,” Emory admitted quietly.

A twinkle of mischief lit Nisha’s face. “You know what Romie always said of failure.”

“Fear of failure’s the bitch that holds you back from success?”

They both laughed, all hostility between them now dissipated. Nisha grew serious again, voice soft as she said, “You’re not alone in this, Emory.” She trailed a hand over a dead plant, cocking a brow at her. “Do you want help practicing?”