CHAPTER TEN Now
I dream of endless oceans, a sky full of swans. Mirrors that don’t reflect my face but instead show my back, retreating, as I run across a beach. The sand is black as the crystal of my betrothal ring. I’m feverish, restless, and the hours dissolve like seafoam. When I open my eyes to the lingering night, I’m so afraid I’ll see Therion: his angry gaze, his pointed claws.
You are mine, Lacrimosa.
But there’s only Camille, still beside me. Her long hair trails silkily across our shared pillow, tickling my face. She looks at me with a sleep-blurred expression. She lays her hand on my cheek, and her palm is cool against my too-hot skin. “Sleep,” she murmurs. “I’m here.”
I think of Damson, comforting me after Alastair’s cruel rejection. Her affection was like a reward I’d earned with my hurt, by telling her she was right that I shouldn’t have gone home. But this, with Camille, feels so different.
When daylight finally comes, I wake alone. Stirred by the sound of voices rising from the lower part of the house. I climb out of bed and pull a knitted sweater on over my brothers’ borrowed clothes. The feathers on my arm prickle against my skin—a reminder that all of this is real, not just some moonlit nightmare.
Halfway down the stairs, I hear Alastair, speaking to Camille. “I only wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Peering into the front hall, I see him in the doorway. I hesitate. I don’t want him to notice me. He stands on the threshold, refusing to come inside. “I’m fine,” Camille says to him. “But Lacrimosa isn’t. And you—”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Alastair snaps, moving away when Camille tries to touch his face.
“Debatable,” she says. “You can’t walk away from this, Alastair. Whatever has happened with Therion—it concerns us all.”
He folds his arms across his chest. He’s wearing his overcoat, and beneath it, his shirt is rumpled, the collar unbuttoned. He looks as though he hardly slept at all. “Don’t lecture me, Camille. This is not my concern.”
“You truly don’t care about Lacrimosa?” Camille asks disbelievingly. “I thought the two of you were friends.”
I bite my lip to keep myself from making a sound as I wait, helplessly, for his response. Alastair’s expression remains aloof. “Lacrimosa and I may have been friends once,” he says, “but we’re not anymore.”
The stairs creak beneath my bare feet. Alastair glances up. His eyes meet mine. Stormy gray, no sign of the bright spark of Therion’s accusing gaze. He regards me with a look that’s as shuttered, as unreadable, as a featureless mask. Then he turns away.
Camille goes after him, following him out through the garden. He’s tense, hands fisted at his sides. She catches hold of his arm, says something to him that’s too quiet for me to hear. He only scowls and shakes his head. She returns to the house, stands beside me as we watch Alastair retreat in the direction of Saltswan. “Gods, he’s insufferable sometimes,” Camille sighs. “What really went on between you two when I was away at school?”
Part of me wants to tell Camille everything that happened with Alastair after she left for boarding school in Trieste. Our promise of friendship. His fingers wound through my hair. I missed you. The coldness of his rejection after that summer bonfire.
The other part doesn’t want her to know how much he hurt me. How much it still hurts, even now. “Nothing happened. We grew apart, that’s all.”
Camille raises her eyebrows, clearly skeptical. “Really?”
“Really.” I keep my face studiedly neutral as I close the door, my fingers trembling against the frame. I want to go after Alastair, but I’m tired of chasing him, of begging for the help he won’t give. “I think we should go back to the altar,” I tell Camille. “Will you come with me?”
She nods. “Of course I will.”
Together, we go into the kitchen and begin to gather up the detritus from last night. The obsidian mirror lies discarded where it fell from my hands. Camille wraps it in a handkerchief and puts it in her pocket. I’m afraid to touch it. Afraid of what lies ahead. Each time I’ve entered the sea caves, I’ve come back changed. Whatever awaits me there now, it will not be salvation. But I need answers. A way to stop the strangeness, the haunting, the way my life is spiraling apart.
I need to speak with Therion.
We leave the house and cross the breakwater, go down onto the beach. As we follow the shoreline toward the caves, I tell Camille about my promise to Therion: How I’ve married him in exchange for the restored salt. How I’m supposed to be with him for half of each year for the rest of my life. But I don’t tell her about the debt, or that it was Alastair who demanded it be paid.
She looks at me, her expression grim. “If you’ve escaped him, then perhaps you shouldn’t go back to the altar. What if you call on him and he steals you away to his world?”
There’s part of me that agrees with her, that wants to run. But what I was granted when I awoke here instead of the chthonic realm was not a reprieve. “I’m seeing visions,” I explain to Camille. “I’m losing time. Alastair says Therion was banished, but how does that explain what happened last night when I touched the mirror? How does that explain what happened to Alastair? It’s like we were both…”
I trail off, unable to make myself put it into words. Camille’s mouth twists, a troubled frown. Her lashes dip. “It’s like you were both possessed.” She draws out the mirror, clutching it tightly as she refolds the fabric around it. “All the more reason that you shouldn’t go back to Therion again.”
The sight of the mirror in her hands makes a quaver of apprehension trail down my spine. But I square my shoulder, trying to feel resolute. “I have to speak with him, Camille. I have to find out what’s gone wrong before it gets worse.”
She sighs grimly, “Yes. I know. I would still like to run away, though.”
We exchange a fleeting, helpless look, then continue on in silence. The cave is ahead, a dark mouth in the shadowed edge of the cliff. The tide is low, the sea a distant murmur beyond the beach. As we pass through the arched entrance to the grotto, the air turns cool. The stone floor is as smooth as polished marble.
Camille casts me a veiled glance. “Sometimes I wish we were still children, and the three of us were all friends the way we used to be. The way it was before I went away to Trieste. I’ve missed you so much, Lacrimosa.”
Her words are like a ribbon, one end in her hand, the other end knotted around my heart. She’s tied back her hair with one of my barrettes, and this small detail, along with her fatigue-shadowed eyes, her crumpled, slept-in clothes, makes me feel warm with longing. Even like this, tired and worried, Camille is beautiful. The same aquiline features that make Alastair so severe are, on her, an ethereal kind of loveliness. She’s all watercolor hues, pastel rose and lilac.
“I missed you, too,” I murmur, my face gone hot. “I wanted to write you letters but Alastair said it wasn’t allowed.”
“Ugh, that place. No letters allowed at Beauvoir Academy except from your family. Father only wrote to scold me when I failed my mathematics exams, or to remind me to behave. At least Alastair sent nicer things. I asked him about you once. He mailed a drawing of the sea and a quote from his favorite poem.”
I laugh, though it’s bittersweet, remembering the in-between time when Camille was gone but Alastair was still my friend. “What did the poem say?”
“I don’t know. It was in Tharnish.”
I start to laugh harder, and Camille laughs, too. Then she reaches for my hand, clasps it between her own. My stomach flutters. She raises my hand to her lips, her eyes alight with fierce protectiveness, all zealous flame, and kisses my knuckles. “I won’t let Therion steal you. I promise.”
A hot shiver traces up the inside of my wrist, as though she’s whispered the words across my skin. I want to curl against her, let that fierceness cover me like golden armor. I’m so drawn to Camille, but it feels like danger. I know what it means—this longing, this wanting. How letting someone close means to lay your throat bare.
I want to trust Camille. I don’t want to be afraid of her in this way.
We go to the altar, our hands still clasped. The cool, dim light illuminates the velvet cloth and scattered shells. I find a box of matches, strike one, light both candles in their iron holders. Camille unwraps the mirror and sets it down.
We each drink from the flask of chthonic liquor. As I watch her swallow, I think about how the last time we were here, she kissed me. I stare for too long at her mouth, the way she licks away the indigo stain from her lips.
I’m so grateful she is here with me.
I bow my head and lay my hands flat against the altar. With the taste of liquor on my tongue, I look into the unveiled mirror. Slowly, slowly, I reach toward it. I press my fingertips against the glass, the same way I did last night. “Therion,” I whisper.
A swan cries out, far off in the sky. Another answers. I imagine them in flight, a vee, migrating home. The waves hiss distantly against the shore. Closer to the cave, the sea laps shallowly at the rocks where the swan boat was moored. The sound of the water is soft as a song.
“Therion,” I whisper again.
But he doesn’t appear.
We return to the house in conflicted silence. I should feel relieved, but instead all of me is wound tight enough to snap. The sound of the ocean threatens to become the rush of water, the remorseless rise of waves. The cuffs of my shirt are snares of kelp. I jump at every flicker of shadow, skittish as a hare.
My skin feels sticky with sweat; sand is gritted on the soles of my feet. I go upstairs and take a bath—the water hot and shallow—scrubbing myself until all traces of the feverish night are gone. I try to ignore the feathers on my arm, the way they curl around my wrist like a fetter once I step from the water.
I put on an old cotton dress and pin my wet hair back from my face with two barrettes. Daub some of Oberon’s aftershave on my wrists. The bathroom is filled with steam, the mirror clouded. My reflection is a blurred, impressionist landscape.
I am standing still. But in the glass, something moves.
Clutching the sink, I lean closer to the mirror. I hold my breath. I am motionless as a statue. The reflection is, too. Then, slowly, I see the sprawl of pallid light behind my silhouette. Like outstretched wings. Trembling, I clear a space in the fog with my hand. Amber eyes stare back at me, bright with desperate fury.
Behind me, a wave of water sloshes over the edge of the bathtub. It floods around my feet, cold as the altar cave, briny with salt. A strand of kelp snares my ankle. I stagger forward with a startled cry, wrenching open the door. The water recedes, drawn back like a tide as it vanishes into the drain.
Camille comes running up the stairs. I fall into her arms. I’m shaking, frantic. I hold her like a tether line, press my face into the curve of her shoulder. “What happened?” she asks. “What did you see?”
My voice is choked, the taste of chthonic liquor painted over my tongue. “Therion.”
We turn together and look through the door. The tub is filled shallowly with my bathwater, a lazy curl of steam rising from the surface.
The mirror reflects nothing but an empty room.
I press my hands to my face, sighing out a ragged breath into the cupped space of my palms. I feel as though I’ve lost my mind. Camille gently touches my shoulder. “This arrived, while you were in the bath.”
She passes me a yellow envelope stamped with the mark of the telegram service. My fingers are shaking so much I can hardly get it open. Inside, two lines are typeset on yellow paper:
Evelyn Hotel
#4 Fourth Street, Clovendoe, 000 241124
At the bottom, signed in indigo ink, are my brothers’ initials. Tears fill my eyes at the sight of them. I need my brothers more than ever, and they’re so impossibly far away. All I want right now is to hear their voices.
“Can I use the telephone at Saltswan?” I ask Camille.
“Of course you can.” A thoughtful expression crosses her face, and her mouth curls into a smile. “In fact, pack your overnight bag. I think you should stay there; we should all be together. It’s … safer.”
“Why are you helping me?” I ask quietly. What I really mean is, Why are you being so kind?
Camille regards me levelly. Then she takes my face between her hands. Her thumb strokes my cheek. The motion of her touch raises goose bumps all over my body. “My entire life, nothing has ever been of my own choosing. Alastair is the heir. I’m to keep out of the way, go to school, learn to manage the family accounts. I hate sums. I’m home now, but Father is set on me going back to Beauvoir Academy for a postgraduate year in mathematics. I know how it feels to have your future taken out of your control.”
Her gaze is vehement, lit by the same protective spark as when she held me in the altar cave. I press my lips together. I feel a hum of heat rising between our skin. She doesn’t move away, but only watches me. A guarded, careful question in the tilt of her mouth, the arc of her thumbs on my cheeks. My lashes flutter, my breath sighs out, quiet as a secret.
In a fractured whisper, I ask, “Is that the only reason?”
“No.” Camille leans closer. Her voice turns quiet. “I care about you, Lark.”
My heartbeat quickens. I’m caught by a snare of desire, thorned as brambles. The scent of her strawberry perfume fills my lungs. I could lie forever in her touch, curl up in the crescent of her neck and shoulder, the blanket of her hair like the lowering night.
I falter, feeling shy as I tip my face upward, closing the distance between us. I brush my lips against hers, tentative, the unsure answer to her silent question. She sighs against me, her mouth yielding under mine.
It’s like kissing her for the first time, no veil between us, only her chapped lips, the heat and softness of her mouth. She’s so careful, so gentle, that when her teeth notch playfully against my lip, it’s a bright, delicious shock. “Camille,” I say, all tattered, and she kisses her name from my lips, kisses me until I am helpless. She laughs against me, and her tongue is in my mouth, hot and insistent. We stumble backward until I’m pressed to the wall.
Her knee slots between my thighs and I can’t help but gasp as I rock against her. She tastes of syrup, impossible sweetness. Chamomile tea. When I close my eyes, all I can see is a calm, flat ocean. Her hand slips beneath my hair, fingers tracing patterns against my nape, my collarbones. It feels like words from a secret language, something only the two of us can know.
When we pause for breath, she lets her head drop forward, burying her face against my shoulder. “Gods,” she sighs, her lips grazing down my neck, “can’t we do this forever?”
I laugh, feeling breathless and dizzy. “I wish we could.”
Slowly, slowly, we draw apart. As Camille steps back, I look at her guardedly. She smiles, and there is no artifice in her, nothing I need to earn or give. Her cheeks are flushed, her mouth reddened. I go into my room, my fingers at my lips, pressed down on the memory of our second kiss.
I fill my satchel with a change of clothes, my hairbrush, a velvet ribbon. The book of Caedmon’s sketches. I go downstairs, with Camille at my side. She waits while I put on my boots, tie up the laces.
She trails after me as I pace through the house for a final time. In the kitchen, I notice Alastair’s copy of The Neriad, left behind on the table. I pick it up, opening it to a random page. The margin is filled with more of the tiny, intricate pencil sketches. Leaves and seashells and wildflowers. A face, in profile: a girl with long hair crowned by flowers. My name, written between the lines of poetry, so darkly that the pencil has smudged. Lacrimosa.
I close the book, tuck it into the bottom of my satchel. We leave the cottage through the kitchen door.
Saltswan is solemn on the clifftop, the windows sheened gray by the reflected sky. I keep my hands in my pockets, clutching the folded telegram like it’s a talisman. I try to figure out what I’ll say on the telephone, how to explain this to Henry and Oberon.
Inside the house, none of the lamps have been lit. In the quiet front hall, the framed portraits watch us from the shadows. A taut red mouth here, a set of narrowed gray eyes there. There’s no sign of Alastair in any of the rooms we pass.
Camille leads me into a sitting room at the rear of the house. Here, on the wall between two ornate portraits, is a framed photograph of Alastair and Camille with their father. Camille is posed stiffly, in a severe, dark dress. Alastair wears a suit, a silk tie knotted tightly at his throat. Marcus Felimath has his hand on Alastair’s shoulder, and even in the grainy black-and-white picture I can make out the firm, hard way he’s grasped his son, the harsh press of his fingers.
I touch the edge of the photograph frame. Even though Camille and Alastair look unhappy, standing on either side of their grim father, it raises a little prickle of envy in me. I wish that Oberon hadn’t burned all the photographs of our parents. It’s as though my life is a book, and when I try to turn back to the chapters before my birth, there are only the barest lines of text.
Beside Marcus is an unfamiliar woman with elegant, aquiline features and long, dark hair. “Is that your mother?” I ask. I have never met Alastair and Camille’s mother, but I remember Alastair mentioning her briefly, saying she lived in another city and had little contact with her children.
Camille nods. “Yes. Her name is Romilly. I think this photograph was taken the last time I saw her; she has an apartment in Gardemuir now. She writes to us sometimes. But whenever we’ve tried to visit, it’s never the right moment.”
We’re standing so close that the backs of our hands almost touch; I reach to Camille, lace my fingers through hers. Romilly Felimath stands slightly apart from the rest of her family, her eyes focused on a point beyond the camera lens. She looks distracted, as though she is already somewhere else.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Camille, because it’s all I can think to say.
She offers me a wan smile. “All I remember of her was that she taught me and Alastair to play the piano.” Her smile dims. She looks at me, her expression starkly bitter, lit more by anger than sorrow. “I still don’t know if it would be better or worse if she had stayed, but I’ll not chase after someone who doesn’t want me. Alastair has always been the only family I truly need.” She drags her thumb across my knuckles, then slides her hand from my grasp. Indicating the table below the photograph, where a telephone sits beside a stack of glossy architectural magazines, she goes on. “I’ll wait upstairs while you make your call. Come and find me when you’re done. And good luck.”
I set down my satchel and take the telegram from my pocket as Camille leaves the room. I pick up the receiver, cradling it between my shoulder and ear. I’m about to dial when a voice comes on the line. Alastair, in mid-conversation. “—I’ve done what you asked.”
He sounds bored, annoyed. I can picture him standing beside a window, his eyes on the sea, barely paying attention to the call. I need to hang up, but then, before I can move, he continues, “I know it was a mess, what happened in the mine, and with the Arriscanes, but I told you—I’m taking care of it.”
I clap a hand over the receiver, holding my breath. Alastair is talking about me—about my family. He’s talking to the Salt Priest.