CHAPTER NINE Now

We reach my house in silence. In the glare of the flashlight, the cottage seems innocuous and undisturbed. I’m holding my breath as I open the door, and the first thing I do is go to the stairs. Under my searching light, the stairs are dry, unmarked. The wooden banisters are unadorned. There is no pouring water, no strands of kelp.

Camille and Alastair follow me to the second floor. The bathroom is empty, the tub wiped clean. In my bedroom, everything is as it was before. The unmade bed, the piles of books, my dresser with its clutter of ribbons and cosmetics. I shove Eline under my pillow before either of the Felimath siblings can notice that I still sleep with a knitted toy.

I turn on the salt lantern beside my bed, one of the few left in the house: Most have been sold along with the rest of the furniture. Brightness spills into the hall, where Alastair and Camille are waiting. The Caedmon book Alastair gave me is on my table, the cover illuminated from the glow of the lantern. I see him looking at it and come quickly back out of my room, closing the door behind me.

Alastair points his flashlight down the landing, where the entrances to my brothers’ rooms lie in shadow. “Did you want me to look around? Camille, you can check downstairs.”

I can hear in the flatness of his voice that he doesn’t expect to see anything, that he thinks I’ve imagined it all. And I don’t want him searching through Henry’s or Oberon’s things. It feels like such an invasion of their privacy to let Alastair into their rooms.

“No,” I tell him. “I’ll look up here. You can both go downstairs.”

He retreats to the lower floor with a shrug, followed by Camille. Our cottage is so small in comparison to the labyrinthine rooms of Saltswan. I can hear the boards creaking under their shifting feet, Alastair talking to Camille before they split up to continue their search.

I make my way down to my brothers’ rooms. Oberon’s bed is hotel-neat. His window is closed. The air smells of the aftershave he uses, vetiver and cardamom, like the woods in autumn. I go inside and make sure the window is latched. A pair of trousers is slung over the end of the bed frame; I take them with me.

In Henry’s room, I find a shirt in the wardrobe. Standing behind the screen of the open door, I shed my tattered gown and put on my brothers’ clothes. It’s a foolish, comfort-seeking gesture, but it makes me feel safer. I tuck the handkerchief Alastair gave me into my pocket.

Then I notice Henry’s window has been left open. As I slide it closed, a flicker of movement outside catches my attention. Alastair is in the garden below. He’s near the arbor, standing with his arms folded and one shoulder leaned against the wisteria-wrapped post. The flashlight hangs in his hand, pooling a circle of light at his feet as he gazes toward the breakwater.

And a few paces behind him, half-hidden in the shadow of the vines—is another figure. I can make out the scuffed toes of boots, the swaying hem of a long, dark overcoat. It isn’t Camille. My chest goes tight. There’s someone here, someone other than the three of us.

I swallow down the rise of bitter dread that floods across my tongue. The phantom ache of a tugging hand pulls my hair, and I can smell smoke, hear the echo of an unfamiliar voice in the darkness. I think again of Alastair in the library, telling me how the Salt Priests didn’t want Therion betrothed to someone like you.

What if the boy from the mine never left? This isn’t a hallucination.

Alastair moves away from the stranger, walking in the opposite direction. The glow of his flashlight ripples over the ground. He doesn’t know the stranger is behind him.

I’m moving on instinct, hurrying downstairs and toward the back of the house. Everything is silent and shadowed. I go into the kitchen, where a single vase of flowers sits on the table, a scatter of fallen petals wilted onto the tabletop. I can’t see anything from the window here; the angle is all wrong. I creep up to the door, pressing my ear against it, but I can’t pick up any sounds.

Slowly, I ease the door open and tiptoe outside. The arbor is all in darkness as I edge closer. All I can hear is the sigh of the wind, the hush from the lapping sea. Then a sudden flash of light flares in front of my face. I stagger forward, disoriented by the brightness.

“Gods!” Alastair cries as I collide with him. He catches hold of my arm, steadying us both. “What are you playing at, sneaking up on me like that!”

“Shh!” I grab for the switch of his flashlight and shut it off. In the darkness, splotches of color dance before my eyes. Standing on tiptoe so I can whisper into his ear, I hiss, “I saw someone in the arbor. I think it was the Salt Priest.”

Alastair tenses. He steps in front of me, peering into the shadows. With a click, he turns the flashlight back on. I gasp, my fingers reflexively tightening against his arm. He glares at me, then sweeps the beam of his light across the garden. Everything is undisturbed, except for some fallen wisteria flowers, scattered by the wind.

Slowly, he moves forward. I go with him, still holding his arm. We move as quietly as possible, listening intently for any sounds. With aching slowness, we make a circle around the entire cottage.

The clifftop fields are quiet, nothing but gently swaying grasses and the chirp of insects drawn out by the crisp air. Past the breakwater, moonlight catches on the cresting waves and turns them to silver lace against the dark water. The beach is empty, the sand unmarked by footprints. There’s no sign of anything amiss.

I let out a sigh, and Alastair turns toward me. We both realize how close we are to each other: I’m still holding his arm, pressed against his side. I snatch back my hand; he steps quickly away from me.

He scowls, running his light back over the arbor once more. “Lacrimosa, when was the last time you slept?”

“Are you going to tell me I’m sleep-deprived as well as concussed?”

“No. I was just—” He scrapes his foot across the path, scattering gravel. “Camille and I can stay here with you tonight, if you like.”

I look around the garden again, then down at the undisturbed beach. I’m certain that I saw someone. But everything else I was so sure of—the faces at my window, the veil on its hanger, the flood of water from the upper floor—hadn’t been real, either.

Frustrated, I rub my hand over my eyes. “I don’t need to sleep. What I need is to go back to the mine. Or Therion’s altar, in the caves. I have to try and speak with him, to tell him I didn’t mean to break my promise.”

Alastair gives me an unreadable look. “Come back inside. I have something to show you.”

I follow him into my cottage. He closes the door behind us and locks it. I watch, annoyed at the sight of his long-fingered hand turning our iron key. Camille appears from the front room, her flashlight scanning over the kitchen. She raises her brow in question; Alastair shakes his head.

He points to the kitchen table, motioning for us to sit down. I pull out a chair, too nervous to argue. “What did you have to show me?”

Camille sits opposite me, scrubbing at her cheek as she yawns. Alastair turns on the kitchen lantern, and the room fills with softened light. He reaches into the pocket of his overcoat and takes out my mirror, which he lays down on the table. “You left this behind. I don’t want you to accuse me of being a thief again.”

“Thanks,” I say flatly, not moving to pick it up.

From his other pocket, he takes out a book. It’s the same one he was reading at the beach, the ancient poem written in Tharnish.

Camille snorts when she sees it. “Do you really carry The Neriad with you everywhere?”

Ignoring his sister, Alastair leafs through the book until he finds the section he wants. “Read this,” he orders, handing the book to me.

He stands at my side as I look at the page, leaning down with his elbows on the table. Some of the phrases have been underlined, and there are tiny penciled sketches in the margins. An unfurled leaf, a cresting wave, a delicate feather. A peculiar emotion rises in my chest.

“Did you draw these?” I glance at Alastair. We’ve shifted unintentionally close together again, just like in the garden. I can make out a spray of freckles across his cheeks, patterned like a constellation. I draw back, needing to widen the distance between us. I hate that I’ve let him in like this, to my life, to my house. That I need his help.

He doesn’t answer my question. Tapping the page, he says again, “Read it.”

It’s discomforting, to be so close to him. I try to focus on the line he’s indicated, ignoring the way our arms are touching, the rising warmth from that small point of contact. “Sennvh devlient, fume devlient.”

Alastair laughs, but there’s no unkindness in his tone. He seems more amused than anything. “Your Tharnish is dreadful.”

I shoot him an irritated look. “We can’t all be experts in dead languages.”

“Go on, then,” Camille says to her brother. “Show us all how to pronounce it, I know you’re desperate to.”

“Sennvh devlient, fume devlient,” he says, and in his mouth, the Tharnish words are like music, beautiful as an incantation. I’m so caught up by it, the cadence of his voice and the way his face turns softer when he reads, that it takes a moment for me to realize.

This phrase—it’s the same as the strange boy’s chant from the night of my betrothal. “What…,” I ask slowly, turned cold with foreboding, “… does it mean?”

“As the smoke vanishes, so let him vanish away.”

The words echo through my mind like the ringing of the iron Saltswan bell. I feel as though I’m hallucinating again. I wait for the rush of pounding darkness, but this is strikingly, terribly real. My hands begin to shake; I close the book and press it to my chest. Thinking of smoke and chants and howls. The chamber at the bottom of the mine, the toppled brazier, spilled liquor, an echoing silence.

Alastair gently takes the book from me and sets it aside. “Did you know there’s a pivotal moment in The Neriad where Naiius—the hero—rages at the gods?”

I shake my head. “I only know the scene where Naiius goes into the forest; there was a Caedmon sketch of it in the gallery. It was an alternate panel for The Dusk of the Gods, but he never used it in the final version.”

Camille looks between us, her mouth twisted in amusement. “I can’t believe it,” she says to me with a teasing grin. “You’re almost as much of an embarrassing nerd as Alastair.”

But I’m trembling, my blood has become ice. “What does this phrase mean?”

“It’s an ancient idiom, and Naiius uses it in that scene. He condemns the gods to be gone—not just from the mortal world, but the chthonic realm as well. The Salt Priest at your betrothal has done the same to Therion. You can’t speak with him. He’s been banished. Permanently.”

I stare at Alastair, wishing hopelessly for a way to dismiss his conclusion. Even Camille looks stunned, the teasing smile wiped from her face. I knot my hands into the too-long sleeves of my brother’s shirt, thinking of the visions I’ve seen—Therion, trying to reach out to me. If he is truly gone, how could that be? “I don’t believe you, Alastair. I have to try to speak with him again. I have to know—”

Shakily, I pick up the obsidian mirror. I’ll take it to the altar in the grotto caves, sip from the chthonic liquor there, call to Therion just as I did on the day I promised to marry him. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go to the mine.

My fingers close around the handle of the mirror. The polished surface is flat and opaque, featureless as a becalmed sea. But when I touch it, the glass begins to ripple. A slow hum starts up within me, echoing against my bones.

I clasp a hand to my mouth. My fingers come away stained with indigo. Noise fills the room, a buzzing static. Pain spikes at my temples. It’s the same way I felt at the entrance to the mine when I touched the new salt. And I can’t let go of the mirror. I can’t move.

I sit as still as carved marble. The light around me darkens piece by piece. Alastair tries to take the mirror from me. I tighten my hold, the motion involuntary. He clutches my wrist as he tries to work my fingers from the silver handle.

“Lacrimosa,” he says, choked. His head bows forward. His eyes shutter closed. When he looks at me again, his irises are bright as amber. Like the eyes of a swan. Like the eyes of a god. “Lark.”

The world seems to speed and slow all at once. His features shift—boy to swan to god—the planed lines of Therion’s mortal guise slipping back and forth into Alastair’s features.

Distantly, I hear Camille crying out—but it’s as though she’s far away, back at Saltswan, calling our names from the library window. The space around me begins to soften. Like the world is melting away.

With a sound like an indrawn breath, water cascades into the room. It pours down the walls and covers the floor, rising and rising. I struggle, trying to stand up, but tangling strands of kelp are around my chest, my waist, my throat, trapping me in place.

Alastair leans over me. Everything is blurred and brushstroked, like we are in the heart of an oil painting. His teeth are clenched, his eyes bright as flames. In Therion’s voice, he says, “You are mine, Lacrimosa. I refuse to let you go.”

A wave crests, soaking us both. I fall to the floor, the mirror still clutched in my hand. Water pours into my mouth. It tastes of chthonic liquor, of the bitter herbs I burned on the brazier. I am sinking, the room is an ocean, and the waves are closing over my head.

Breathing harshly, Alastair kneels on the floor beside me. Camille takes hold of my wrists, holding me still as her brother pries my fingers away from the mirror. Together, they wrench it from my hands.

I sprawl out on the floor with a gasp. Alastair collapses on top of me. We’re crushed together, his elbow in my ribs, my cheek against his shoulder. He looses a ragged breath and my arms go reflexively around him. I can feel his heartbeat, racing, where his chest is against mine.

Then we’re both scrambling away from each other, caught by the frantic need to put as much space between ourselves as possible. Camille gapes, clutching the mirror to her chest. “What was that?”

I look around, caught up in hopeless confusion. Everything is just as it was before: no rising sea or snaring kelp or overwhelming noise. The only sign that anything was wrong lies in the way that everywhere Alastair touched me—as himself, as Therion—feels like it has been burned.

Then I notice the bandages on my arm have come untied. There’s something strange beneath, pale and silken. With shaking fingers, I tear the bandage away. My stitches are gone. In place of the healing cut is a smooth, neat scar and three silken feathers. Trailing and downy, silvery white.

Like the feathers of a swan.

I turn toward Alastair, my arm outstretched. I’m trembling, though I don’t know if it’s with fear or anger. “Now do you believe me?”

His head is bowed forward, his face hidden by the fall of his hair. He doesn’t move, doesn’t respond. Camille touches his shoulder. Sharply, he looks up. One of his eyes has changed, the iris cut by a slice of brilliance, like a spark of fire has caught there.

A sliver of Therion’s amber gaze.

“Listen—” he begins. His teeth clench, he flinches. Pressing a hand to his face, he draws away bloodied fingers. A crimson tear leaks from his changed eye.

Camille gasps, catching his face between her hands, holding him still while she stares at him in horror. “Alastair,” she breathes, choked and frightened.

I move toward him shakily, chilled by terror. Before I can reach him, Alastair shoves himself away from Camille’s touch. He gets to his feet, cuts me a furious look that stops me in place. He scrubs his bloodstained fingers against his shirt, then snatches up one of the flashlights from the floor. Motioning tersely for Camille, he says, “We’re going home. Lacrimosa—stay here. I’m finished with you, with all of this.”

Camille looks between the two of us, incredulous. “We can’t just leave after that.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Alastair goes down the corridor toward the front of the house, his footsteps echoing loudly through the silence. I hurry after him. I’m dizzy, my steps unsteady; I have to catch myself against the wall for support.

I grab his sleeve. “Alastair. We need to stay together. I—I need your help.”

A muscle feathers in his jaw as he glares down at me. “I should have left you to the Salt Priest.”

There’s more blood on his cheek, fresh tears clotting through his lashes. He’s hurt—because of me. I hate myself for this: the waver in my voice, the way I’m holding him tightly, the desperation I feel. But more than that, more than anything, I hate how frightened I am to watch Alastair leave.

I’m afraid for him, afraid for myself. Of what might happen if he walks away and leaves me here alone.

Lowering my voice, I whisper, “Please.”

The shard of amber in his changed eye is like a spark, like fire. “No.”

“We should stay together,” Camille insists. She casts a beseeching look at Alastair, but he only shakes his head.

“Camille, I don’t want to be anywhere near her right now.”

She looks between us, from her brother to me. Then, with a troubled sigh, Camille puts her arm around my shoulders, drawing me back from Alastair. “I’ll stay with Lacrimosa, then,” she says.

Tucked against Camille, I start to tremble.

“Good.” Alastair rubs at where I was holding him, as though to wipe away my touch. He opens the front door. “It’s settled, then.”

He strides away, not looking back. Camille and I stand side by side, watching until Alastair has been swallowed up by the night. Silence fills the air. The dark slithers in through the opened door, and I imagine the creep of hidden eyes, tracking my movements. A clawed hand reaching out for me from beneath the trees.

I close the door, turn the key in the lock. Inside the house, shadows curl up like wolves in the dimly lit corners. Night presses against the windows with a palpable weight, swathing the cottage like a shroud. Apprehension drags a cold finger down the length of my spine.

Wordlessly, I go upstairs. Camille follows, staying close at my heels. We go into my bedroom. I close the door, prop a chair beneath the handle, and double-check the window latch. It doesn’t feel much safer in here. I’m hopelessly aware of the darkness outside, the sinister creep of the shadows. I rub my arms, trying to rasp the chill from my skin.

I think of Alastair, his bloodied eye, Therion’s voice spilling from his lips. No matter how much I despise him, there’s a treacherous piece of me that wishes he were here, too, closed in the false safety of my room instead of walking back to Saltswan on his own.

“Why?” I ask Camille. “Why did you stay here, instead of going with Alastair?”

“Because you need me.” She regards me levelly, and for a moment, her serious expression is so like her brother’s—cool and pragmatic. Then her mouth tilts, and she gently squeezes my shoulder. She guides me toward the bed. I sink down.

“Thank you,” I tell her. I feel tied and tight, every piece of me lined by fear. “Thank you for staying with me.”

Camille’s hand slides to my nape, her thumb stroking reassuringly. I stretch out on top of the quilts, turn my face against the pillow. I’m still dressed in my brothers’ clothes, and when I curl onto my side, the collar of the shirt brushes my nose. I can smell the faded notes of Oberon’s aftershave. It makes me want to cry. Slowly, Camille lies down beside me. Her hand draws away from my nape. My skin there feels cold without the press of her palm. We’re both still for a moment, a careful distance between our bodies. Then, Camille touches one of the feathers on my arm, tracing over the vane to where the quill sprouts neatly from my skin.

“We’ll figure this out, I promise,” she says. She hesitates, shifting restlessly on the bed. “Lacrimosa, after the bonfire, when I kissed you it wasn’t to be cruel. Alastair didn’t tell me to do it. I just … wanted to.”

I bury my face deeper into the pillow, caught by sudden, inescapable shyness. Camille draws me close, her forehead against the back of my shoulder. I can feel the rise and fall of her chest against my spine as she breathes.

The rhythm lulls me, and I let my eyes sink closed. Pretending I am safe, here in my room with the window locked and a barricade at the door. With Camille and I tucked together like twin crescent moons.

And neither of us mentions that the true danger isn’t out there, in the dark. It’s within me.