Chapter 1: Emory

1 EMORY

EVERY DREAM EMORY HAD OF late inevitably turned into a nightmare.

There wasn’t a single peaceful memory that wasn’t marred by darkness. When she dreamed of home, her father’s lighthouse was swallowed by the sea, his bones sinking toward the Deep. When she dreamed of Aldryn, all the students who’d once been her peers clamored for her death, their hissed accusations of Tidethief and Shadow reborn like lashes against her skin.

When she dreamed of three kids laughing by the seaside, the gulls overhead plummeted lifeless into the water, and the sea dragged the kids into its depths. Emory screamed for Baz and Romie as water filled her lungs, but the current was pulling them all in different directions, and she knew they would never see each other again.

Tonight, Emory dreamed of the Hourglass. Not as it was in real life—the slender stalagmite and stalactite that melded into each other—but as it had often appeared to her in sleep. An actual hourglass, silver and towering and full of fine black sand that fell from one elongated bulb to the other.

She walked barefoot on the damp, slick ground of Dovermere as she approached it, feeling like she’d been here a thousand times before. Every step she took made flowers bloom in her wake. Narcissus, hollyhock, orchid, poppy. When she ran fingers along the cave wall, vines sprouted at her touch. A breeze played in her hair, the sound of it like music to her ears. Sparks danced all around her, like embers from a fire or lightning bugs in a summer field, illuminating the oppressive dark.

Emory, Emory.

The hourglass called to her. Inside it was a door set at the bottom, an opening through which the black sand vanished, sinking and swirling until it disappeared. Emory set her hands on the cool glass. Shadows gathered inside the bulbs, lifting the sand as if there were a sudden gust of wind trapped within. The black sand shimmered like stars in the dark, rearranging into something vaguely familiar. When the shadows dissipated, a tree was trapped in the hourglass, filling every inch of space. Its branches full of healthy green leaves filled the top bulb, and its trunk squeezed tight in the narrow space leading to the bottom bulb, where its dead-looking roots twisted and twined onto one another.

Emory’s hand moved of its own volition as it tightened into a fist and punched through the glass.

The tree dissipated into black sand and shadows once more, which burst out of the shattered glass like an exploding star. Emory wanted to shield her eyes but couldn’t look away, not as shadows and sand and glass pulled back, leaving her untouched, and remade themselves into a shape she knew well.

An umbra wearing a wicked crown of obsidian.

Sidraeus. The deity she’d once known as the Shadow.

Emory’s sleeping consciousness sharpened at his presence. This was no longer a mindless dream; she was dreaming, her Waning Moon magic making her suddenly lucid. Fear shot through her like adrenaline. She’d been trying to find Sidraeus in dreams for a while now, without any luck. Now here he was.

It was odd, seeing him in his umbra form. She’d become so used to seeing him wearing Keiran’s face. Sidraeus had possessed him to escape the sleepscape, where the deity had been imprisoned for centuries by the mighty god who ruled over the realm of sleep and death. Now Sidraeus was trapped again in the dark between stars, bodiless, after he’d lost his vessel.

That was the last time Emory saw him. When he, in Keiran’s body, had put himself between her and Cornus Clover, saving her from a killing blow that ended Keiran’s life—for good this time—and left Sidraeus as the crowned umbra that stood before her now.

He did not seem to recognize her. Or if he did, whatever tentative truce they had found vanished as his shadowed hand shot out to wrap around her neck.

Emory flinched, her body going rigid. She wasn’t sure if it was the deity towering over her she feared or the echo of Keiran the gesture conjured. “Sid—Sidraeus,” she sputtered as his clawed hands dug deeper into her skin. “Let go of me.”

Those fathomless eyes drank her in, a flicker of hatred burning deep within.

You’re the reason I’m here, Tidecaller. Why should I not kill you?

He had no mouth to speak with, the words echoing instead in Emory’s mind. He spoke in a tongue that was rough yet ethereal, something she felt certain she had heard before but never understood until now. His hold on her tightened, and she grappled with the arm choking her, her hands connecting with what felt like exposed bone, those swirling shadows making her fingers go numb with cold.

“Please,” she managed painfully. Pitifully. “You need me.”

Cold laughter in her mind. Lungs burning as they ached for breath. Her vision started to go dark, and she truly believed he would kill her then. Would she become an eternal sleeper? Her consciousness trapped among the stars while her body remained behind, vacant until it eventually withered?

All at once, Sidraeus let her go. Emory gasped for breath and grasped her neck, scrambling away from the umbra’s towering form. The shadows around him lengthened to follow her. They wound around her middle as if to keep her from escaping.

His voice sounded in her mind again: We’ve played this game before, and you had me captured. You betrayed me, yet still I chose to sacrifice myself for you.

“I never asked you to.” Her voice was raw, her throat burning with every word. “And you betrayed me first. You were going to make me siphon all the power of the gods’ fountain to you, knowing it would have killed me.”

A pity you still breathe, and I paid the price for it. Spin it however you want, Tidecaller, but you owe me. A clawed finger of shadow brushed against the bruises on her neck. A threat; a promise. Rest assured I’ll find a way to collect.

Fear settled in her bones. She was, perhaps for the first time, truly scared of him. It was as if whatever shred of humanity she’d come to glimpse in him had been filed away to nothing, stripped from him the same way his body had been. Before her stood not Sidraeus but the Shadow of Ruin, the ruthless deity she had always heard of in stories.

A chill went through her as she realized they were no longer in the dream-Dovermere but in the black, glittering sleepscape, empty save for the two of them. There was nothing but darkness and stars, but it felt to her like there were a thousand eyes on them, countless whispering voices on a nonexistent breeze. And it was her name they were calling.

The souls of the dead are restless, the Shadow said. How eager they are for you to join them.

Her gaze snapped to his fathomless one. The swirling shadows around him receded until she could see the bony outline of his ribs, the abyss that lived between them, the obsidian thing that beat in his middle. His heart. She wondered if all umbrae were like this beneath the billowing shadows, or if this was a particularity of his, a king amongst umbrae. A deity stripped of his body, reduced to this creature that was as much overseer as prisoner in this slumbering realm.

“Does this mean you’re back to ferrying the souls of the dead, then?” Emory asked.

I cannot help them so long as the fountain remains depleted. There is no resting place for them now.

Dread crept along Emory’s spine. If the souls of the dead couldn’t be put to rest, if all the power from the fountain had been extinguished by Clover, were they all trapped here in the place between worlds? A purgatory of sorts. Maybe they were overspilling, slipping through cracks between worlds. It would explain why Emory was still plagued by ghosts whenever she used magic, she supposed.

Tell me, have you been visited by his ghost yet, or can I assume his soul is burning in the infernal abyss?

His voice dripped with cold disdain, and Emory knew he meant Keiran.

“I haven’t seen him,” she said. She was grateful Keiran’s ghost seemed to be gone for good. She puzzled over Sidraeus’s cruel contentment over this. She knew there had been no love between Shadow and vessel, but surely the prison of Keiran’s body had been better than the one he now found himself in. “But it’s not him I care about right now. I need to know if you’ve heard anything from my friends. From the keys.”

Emory wasn’t sure how Sidraeus’s imprisonment here worked. Clearly, she could contact him through dreams. Perhaps Romie could as well, and he’d gotten to talk to her—something Emory hadn’t been able to do since the last time she’d seen her best friend, when Clover’s creatures had taken Romie, Aspen, and Tol to the sea of ash, where they would be sacrificed to revive Atheia—the deity known in Emory’s world as the Tides, the opposite of everything Sidraeus was.

They are shielded from me, as they are shielded from you, Sidraeus said. At the way she deflated, his voice became almost gleeful. You cannot stop what’s coming. Clover will sacrifice them. Atheia will be whole again, I will have my body back, and you—

“I won’t let my friends die. There has to be a way to stop Clover.”

A cruel, cold laugh. Even if you were to reach the godsworld in time, how do you plan to stop him? If his power is an entire sea of ash, yours is but a tiny speck of dust. You stand no chance against him.

He was right. And this was the conundrum they found themselves in, wasn’t it? Because the only one who might stand a chance against Clover was Sidraeus, but he was trapped here. The only way he could regain his true form was if Atheia came back to life, and for that, Emory’s friends needed to die. Which meant that as long as Sidraeus was in here, Romie, Aspen, and Tol still lived… but so did Clover.

There had to be another way. Sidraeus had done it before, had escaped his prison by slithering into Keiran’s revived corpse. If all it took was another body…

That feeling of being watched slithered along Emory’s spine again. She felt properly cold now, goose bumps running along her skin. Or maybe that was the dawning of consciousness, the chill of where she lay asleep seeping into her dream. Calling her back to herself.

Emory, Emory, the unseen souls of the dead whispered, as if trying to tell her a secret. As if hungering for her own soul.

Sidraeus withdrew into the darkness. When you’re ready to pay your debt, Tidecaller, you know where to find me.

A trail of shadows caressing her neck was the last thing she felt before waking.

Storms raced across dark dawn skies like a grim omen of the day ahead. It hadn’t stopped storming since they’d gotten here, rain falling in sporadic bursts, then quickly turning to snow, before the skies cleared for a blissful few minutes of sunshine that never lasted long enough.

Emory tried to keep her mind off the bone-deep cold that seeped through her damp clothes, but the clacking of her teeth wouldn’t let her think of much else. This world was too quiet. There was only the howling wind, the distant thunder, and her own trembling. It was unsettling for a world that was supposed to be full of song.

Emory and the others had taken shelter under the sloped wall of a mossy cliff. Not quite a cave, but it offered enough protection from the elements. They’d managed to keep a fire going through most of the night, huddling next to it with woolly blankets they’d found in an abandoned village a ways back. They’d slept two to a blanket—Emory with Virgil, Nisha with Vera—too exhausted from the previous day’s journey to mind the fact that their clothes were still damp and their bellies mostly empty.

A noise had them all tensing, but it was only Vivyan and Ivayne returning to their makeshift camp. The mother and daughter duo had accompanied them to this world—the fourth and final one before they reached the sea of ash. And thank the Tides they were here, or Emory and her friends never would have made it this far. The two women were draconics, able to sprout dragon wings from their backs, and seasoned warriors, too. They’d taken it upon themselves to stand lookout and scout the surrounding areas. And best of all, to hunt.

Ivayne held up a dead rabbit with a wide grin. “Breakfast,” she proclaimed.

Emory felt her stomach rumbling at the sight, too hungry to despair over the cute bunny’s death.

Today marked a week since they’d first arrived in this world. They’d come into it with a splash, stepping through this world’s door, which had been a slab of ice-covered rock, only to fall into a scalding pool. For a moment, Emory had imagined they’d fallen into a fiery pit, the very belly of the sleeping volcano they’d left behind. But the warmth was actually pleasant and not flame at all but water a shade of turquoise so vivid, it looked unnatural. Steam wafted up in the air, which was, in contrast, completely frigid.

They’d all heaved themselves out of the steaming pool onto a mossy bank and immediately regretted leaving the warmth behind. The pool was set in a mountainous ridge of black rock and lush grass interspersed with patches of snow. In the distance, high, scraggy peaks glittered white against an angry sky the color of a deep bruise, all blue and black and purple. Lightning split the skies, the rumbling of thunder threatening to break the world apart.

Ever since, they’d been walking toward that distant mountain range. It was where the compass-watch pointed them to, and so they had to assume it was where they’d find the last door—the one that would bring them into the sea of ash where Clover had brought the keys. Where he planned to sacrifice Romie and Aspen and Tol to bring Atheia back.

It hadn’t happened yet. Emory would have known this with certainty even if she hadn’t just seen Sidraeus in the sleepscape, because whenever she used her magic, she could feel the pull of the keys from far away, as if her Tidecaller power were desperately seeking a source to fuel itself on. They were still alive. Which meant either Clover hadn’t found the guardian yet—the last piece of Atheia, the soul to bind her blood and heart and bones—or he had but was biding his time, for whatever reason.

As they ate a meager breakfast of grilled rabbit, Emory told her friends of her encounter with Sidraeus. All of them took it as proof that the keys were still alive, if Sidraeus was still without his true form. They debated, for what felt like the hundredth time, why Clover hadn’t sacrificed them yet.

“It’s almost like he’s waiting for us,” Nisha said ominously. Her face was drawn, her eyes red-rimmed. “Like maybe he’s luring us to the sea of ash, just like in the book.”

Emory’s heart lurched as their gazes met over the fire. If anyone here understood the desperation and premature grief she herself felt, it was Nisha, who had only just rekindled her romance with Romie. Some days, it felt like there was no point to keep going; that they would never be able to reach Clover in time to stop him from killing Romie and the others. And then they would have to mourn Romie all over again. Only this time, she’d be gone for good.

“If he were luring us to the sea of ash,” Virgil said darkly, “you’d think he’d help us get there, not try to hinder us at every turn by sending his ash monsters after us.”

They all glanced at the open wilderness outside their shelter, as if expecting said monsters to appear, conjured by Virgil’s words. The ash-umbrae, they’d taken to calling them. The same creatures Clover had manifested back at the Sunforge, umbrae-like wraiths he’d created out of a mound of bones and dust.

Ever since they’d gotten here, ash-umbrae would sprout from the storms and the darkness, as if born of the lightning itself, and attack them relentlessly. Clover was nowhere in sight, but surely he had to be commanding them from afar.

And because the creatures were made of ash, no blade or physical weapon of any kind could impede them. Virgil’s Reaper magic was useless too—ash itself was dead, so what good was it to try to kill what was already lifeless?

Only Emory’s magic seemed to have any effect on them, and even that took a while to get right. She used the same principle as when she’d healed the umbrae in the sleepscape the first time she’d gone through the door in Dovermere. Unmaking them. Returning the ash to where it came from.

Without Sidraeus here to alleviate the dark side effects of her Tidecaller magic, without the keys nearby for her to borrow power from, Emory let herself dive fully into the depths of her power. No holds barred, side effects be damned. There were no limits to what she would do to reach that Godsgate in time. And she didn’t mind the ghosts that appeared after she used magic anymore. Keiran’s ghost was gone. She still saw Lizaveta, Travers, Jordyn, Lia, and all the other Selenic Order initiates who had perished in Dovermere, but most ghosts that flocked to her were faceless, unknowable. She found their presence comforting. Almost.

The souls of the dead are restless.

Sidraeus’s words prickled unpleasantly along her skin.

As they erased all evidence of their camp and prepared to leave for another long day of trekking under hostile skies, Vera held the compass-watch in her lap, fixated on it as if to engrain the direction they needed to go in her mind. The compass had belonged to Emory’s mother, and though it was technically Emory’s now, she’d let Vera have it, thinking her cousin was more attached to it than she was.

Her cousin. Emory still couldn’t wrap her head around it. If one good thing came out of this ordeal, it would be this expansion of her family. Getting close to Vera and hearing all about the Kazans had awakened a sense of belonging in her that she hadn’t realized was lacking before.

It had always been just her and her father, but now, not only did she have a cousin, she had three aunts, too. Thanks to Vera’s vivid stories, Emory felt like she personally knew Alya, Agata, and Ava, the three older Kazan sisters. Agata and Ava, the latter of which was Vera’s mother, both still lived in Trevel, while Alya lived in Cadence, steps away from Aldryn College. It was a wonder Emory had never crossed paths with her—or maybe she had without even knowing.

Vera had also told her what little she remembered of Adriana, the youngest Kazan and Emory’s mother, whom Emory knew as Luce Meraude. Though knew was putting it mildly, since she’d never met her mother and probably never would. This way, at least, she was no longer something so mythical.

“We’ve veered off path again,” Vera noted, her eyes lifting to Emory. “I swear, each ash-umbra attack pushes us farther away from where we’re supposed to go.”

“It’s a good thing we have that compass to stay the course, then.”

As soon as they left their shelter, rain fell upon them, thunder rumbling overhead. Even without the ash-umbrae to impede their journey, it seemed the world itself was always against them: landslides, flash storms, anything to slow down their progress.

“I hate this place,” Virgil grumbled as they walked, miserable and cold and already exhausted at the thought of another long day ahead of them.

Emory had to agree with him. This world might have been beautiful if it weren’t so desolate. During the week they’d been here, they hadn’t come across a single person. They’d stumbled upon one village, and it had been abandoned, most of it destroyed by some storm, or perhaps by something worse, like the ash-umbrae.

The silence, the emptiness, the raging storms… it was crushing their spirits. Especially since the mountain range still looked so distant.

But today, it seemed, they were given a bit of a reprieve.

Around midday, Ivayne returned from scouting ahead, her draconic wings unfurled, with a smile on her face. “There’s shelter up ahead, not very far. Some kind of ruins.”

The discovery couldn’t have come at a better time as hail started pelting them. The ruins in question were at the foot of a waterfall, half-submerged in the flooded river that wound through the desolate landscape. The site was impressive: great carved pillars and broken sculptures, what could have been some sort of shrine, part of a wall that still stood with carvings of winged horses and great peaks among the clouds.

“Looks like this might have been a temple,” Vera said with awe.

Emory could feel the ley line beneath them, corrupted as it was by Clover. It would have made sense to build a temple to the Celestials—this world’s version of the deity that was Atheia—atop such a source of power. Part of the ceiling was still there, protecting them from the hail. The howling wind seemed not to reach them here either. True silence reigned, making Emory realize the constant wind had become so normal to her ears that she hadn’t really heard it anymore. It was eerie. In her mind she heard those whispers from her nightmare, the souls of the dead calling her name.

Emory, Emory.

There was a sudden, earsplitting crack like the earth was splitting apart as a shaft of lightning hit the waterfall a mere few feet away from the temple. Ivayne already had her sword drawn in case the ash-umbrae showed up, despite it being useless against the monsters. Emory hurried to the draconic’s side, magic at the ready. Another fork of bluish lightning split the skies, but not a single ash-umbrae appeared.

Something else did.

Across the river, a man sat astride a horse of pure white. Emory’s first thought was that it was Clover, but the man’s stature was too bulky, the frame of a seasoned warrior. He wore a navy jacket embroidered with silver details of lightning bolts and wind gusts, and had a heavy cloak draped over his shoulders, the hood drawn over his head. Gloved hands gripped the reins of his steed, which had feathered wings just like the creatures carved on the temple ruins. As beautiful and ethereal as Emory would have imagined a winged horse to be.

Except for the eyes. They were gaping, dark hollows ringed by knotted veins of black that spread all along its face and neck, marred its beautiful wings, too. As if it were corrupted from within. A ghostly, tainted version of what it once might have been.

The man held a hand to the skies and caught a bolt of lightning that fashioned itself into a wicked lance. In one swift motion, he threw the lance at the temple. It whirred past Emory, so close she felt it singe her cheek, and embedded itself in one of the carved pillars, crackling and sparking until the lance disappeared in a wisp of smoke. From that smoke appeared another man dressed in a similar outfit, holding a sword of lightning and moving on silent feet. They hadn’t noticed him coming into the temple from the opposite side.

Vivyan threw herself at him with a battle cry, her metal sword meeting his lightning one in a thunderous clash. The man’s lightning sword pierced through Vivyan’s shoulder, making her scream. The smell of burning flesh filled the air. Before Emory could think of helping Vivyan with magic, before any of them could go after the man, a horde of ash-umbrae descended upon the temple swifter than the wind. The man disappeared among them, only to jump across the river with inhuman strength and settle behind the other warrior astride the winged horse.

As Ivayne and Vivyan swung their swords to no effect at the dozens of ash-umbrae that encircled their group, Emory opened herself up to the power of the ley line. Silver veins danced along her skin. She felt it burning inside her, power coursing through her like the cold burn of a distant star, and she unleashed herself to unmake the ash-umbrae.

She tried to reach farther still to the two men across the river, but she was burning out, depleting herself too quickly. Ash-umbrae fell around her, but more seemed to rise in their wake. Distantly, she felt the call of the pieces of Atheia, blood and bones and heart and soul, but they were too far away and felt shielded from her somehow.

The ley line tore through her. Ghosts sprung up around her. She tasted blood in her mouth, heard someone screaming in her ears—her own screams?—and felt her vision blur as unconsciousness pulled at her, seeking to plunge her into the dark.

Suddenly there was music.

A voice singing loud and clear, achingly beautiful. The dark skies above them split open, sunlight piercing through to chase away what was left of the ash-umbrae, which seemed to disintegrate to dust under the light.

Emory fell limp to the ground. Before darkness could claim her, she searched the riverbank, but the two men were no longer there, their infernal steed carrying them toward darker skies.