CHAPTER THIRTEEN Now

We reach the woods just after sunrise. Everything is eerily still: the ocean like glass, the sky cloudless. The air is a haze the color of lavender.

The three of us spent the night beside the library hearth, passing the wine back and forth until the bottle was empty. I fell asleep on the chaise, while Alastair and Camille took turns sitting awake to watch over me.

In an early hour of morning, I stirred and found myself curled between them—Camille breathing sleepily against my neck and my head resting on Alastair’s knee while he read by the firelight. He held his book with one hand while the other stroked idly at my hair, one golden tendril ribboned possessively around his finger.

Now we make our way to the trees in a quiet procession, everything somber as a ritual. We’re all dressed in light-colored, flowing clothes—Camille in a gown similar to mine, Alastair in an untucked shirt and linen trousers. All of us are barefoot, our toes pressing tracks in the mud left behind from last night’s storm.

Camille pauses beside a grove of olive trees and breaks some of the slender branches from their trunks. She weaves them deftly into three circlets as we follow the path toward the center of the woods. I take one of the circlets from her and place it on Alastair’s head. It sits askew on his wavy hair, like the lopsided crown of a forest prince.

His eye hasn’t changed back, unlike when Therion possessed him the first time. It stays amber-bright, catching the dappled sun that falls through the trees.

At the heart of the woods is a tall, tall tree that I used to climb as a child. From the highest branches I could see clear down to the ocean, to the entrance of the salt mine. One year, Henry built me a platform of wood between the branches. The playhouse I made is still there, but ruined. The lace curtain I tacked up like a canopy is in tatters, the ends gone ragged and unraveled.

“Here,” I announce, letting the satchel slip from my shoulder. “This is the place.”

At the base of the trunk is a fairy-ringed space of earth, where spider orchids grow among the fallen leaves. I clear a patch of ground and gather enough stones to form a rough circle. In the center of my makeshift brazier, I pile dry kindling.

When I’m done, I sit in front of the unlit fire. Camille and Alastair kneel on either side of me. We lay everything out beneath the tree: the mirror, a box of matches, the silver flask of chthonic liquor that I’ve brought from Therion’s altar.

As Camille opens the flask, Alastair lights a match. The bright red cover of the matchbook is like a splotch of blood against his palm. The flame stutters out, extinguished by the wind. He tries again, then gestures for me and Camille to shift forward. With a shield of our bodies and our cupped hands, the fire comes slowly alight.

The glow of the rising flames steals all the light from the rest of the forest. Everything outside the place we sit dims to shadows. The tree above, with its platform and tattered lace, is gilded, the whorled surface of the trunk as gold as a gallery frame.

Camille drinks deeply from the flask, then passes it to Alastair. When he offers the flask to me, I wrap my hands around his own by instinct. The same way I did with Therion on the night of my betrothal. His indigo-stained mouth tilts into a smile and he raises the flask to my lips.

I swallow down the inky liquid, tasting roses and herbs, and behind my closed eyes everything turns the color of the deepest sea. As I drink, Camille lays one of the olive wreaths on my hair. Smoke rises from the brazier.

We pass the flask back and forth, my hands against Alastair’s, against Camille’s, each touch slow and lingering. Camille’s thumb marks the lines of my palm, Alastair’s fingers trace the veins on my wrist.

My heartbeat rises, and I’m trembling, nervous. My eyes are stinging from the smoke. On my arm, where the feathers pierced through my skin, the scar begins to itch. The salt crystal on my ring feels hot as a burning coal.

Alastair unwraps the mirror and props it against the tree. Firelight shimmers over the obsidian surface and catches in his changed eye, turning it brilliant as an ember. Camille’s hand is gentle at the small of my back as I look toward the glass.

“Therion,” I whisper, and his name is like sugar in my mouth, dissolving over the taste of the rich chthonic liquor.

The tree above the flames is golden: a lit taper. The woods beyond are all whispering shadows. Gradually, the sound of the wind turns to the sound of waves. Lapping, lapping, the way they do against the breakwater when the tide is high. I stare down at my hands, tense in my lap. My skin is crusted with sand, as though I have just laid my palms flat against the beach.

The world seems to speed and slow all at once. I’m aware of the drip of dew from the branches above, how it’s turned as fast as torrential rain. The moon rises and sets a hundred times. Down on the beach, at the base of the cliffs, the tide sweeps rapidly out, then crashes against the shore in a single breath.

Bubbling streams pour in channels past us; we are on an island beneath our golden tree. A hare runs out from the undergrowth, leaping over Camille’s lap before vanishing into the trunk. A flock of swans fly through the woods, their wings cleaving the smoke as they pass between the branches.

It’s too much effort to sit upright any longer. I lower myself down beside the brazier. Alastair holds the mirror close to my face, angling it so I can see the surface. But I look past it, at him, as the brilliance of our fire mantles his shoulders like a cloak.

The pooling, shifting shadows wash between the trees like waves, coalescing into a shape behind him. Alastair lets out a choked breath, pressing a hand to his face as his eyes wince closed. There’s blood on his fingers. I reach for him, but he shakes his head, the motion stilted. He takes hold of me, lays me back. Leaves crumple beneath my spine. He’s on his knees, staring down at me. He drags his thumb across my stained lips.

Camille is at my other side. Her fingers circle around my wrist. She kisses me hotly, her mouth tasting of the ocean. Then she takes the mirror from Alastair and holds it nearer my face. Bright amber eyes stare back.

Waves crest through the forest, foaming as they break against the trees. The frothing tide tangles around my ankles, my wrists, my throat—I’m swathed by gauze. It’s my veil, embroidered with crimson flowers, pinned to my hair like on the night of my betrothal.

The three of us cling together as everything blurs. It’s like the night when I plunged my hands into the bathtub of seawater. When strands of kelp tied my limbs. When the tide rose impossibly against the windows of the Saltswan library.

We’re swept up by a current, dragged away from the woods into icy, lightless depths. My chest aches with the need for air, and I struggle, my veil tangled around me like a fisherman’s net. Then I am lifted in strong arms—Alastair, holding me cradled against him, swims through the current with sure, even strokes.

I surface in a tide pool, clinging to the rocky edge. I drag in a desperate breath. Alastair is beside me, pulling Camille from the water. We lie together on the shore, the only sound our ragged gasping. With trembling hands, I unwind my veil from my face, folding it back so I can see clearly.

The sky is lilac, glowing and dreamlike. The trees beyond the shore are the same trees as in the Arriscane woods: I can make out one with a rough wooden platform and trailing tatters of lace. But all of them have shifted backward, the natural randomness of them rearranged into a corridor.

We are nowhere familiar—somewhere that is both ocean and forest, and wholly elsewhere. We were supposed to bring Therion to us, to our world, and instead we’ve landed here. “It didn’t work,” I say, frantic, desperate.

Alastair clutches hold of my wrist. His changed eye is weeping blood, his face is pale and stricken. Wordlessly, he gestures to where the shadows lie thickest between the strange trees. A shape is emerging, ghostlike and ashen. Camille gasps at the sight of it. She stares, her mouth open, a fearful, awestruck expression on her face.

Standing before us is Therion.

He’s a stir of feathers and a whisper of dark fabric. Bared teeth and gleaming eyes. In the lilac light he is so different, so real, compared with the way he appeared in my nightmare visions, or in the mine on our betrothal night.

His chest is bare, and his skin has the look of sleekly daubed oil paint. His hair is a waterfall of ink that spills down his back. A mantle of feathers blends seamlessly with his features, arched around his temples and shoulders in pearlescent brushstrokes.

“Lacrimosa,” he breathes, and at the sound of his voice, the forest quivers. The trees bow low toward us; the earth trembles.

I push myself to my feet and take a cautious step forward. Placing myself protectively in front of Alastair and Camille.

“Therion, I didn’t betray you,” I tell him, speaking quickly, my words tumbling into a frightened rush. “I didn’t know that a Salt Priest would be there on the night of our betrothal.”

Therion’s mouth curves into a snarl. “I know it wasn’t you who betrayed me, Lacrimosa. It was that boy, that Salt Priest, who sought to banish me. If the ritual was not interrupted, he would have succeeded.”

“If you don’t blame me, then why have you…” I hesitate, searching for the right words. “Why are you haunting me?”

“Gods do not haunt.” Therion’s eyes narrow, anger sparking in his gaze. “I have been trying to reach you, to call on you, my betrothed. I need you to help me escape.”

I glance around us, confused. “Escape—from here? But isn’t this your world?”

“No. This is a place between—neither the chthonic nor the mortal realm.”

I look again at the forest, the water. Seeing it with renewed understanding. The shift and blur of the Arriscane woods and the familiar coastline as it’s transfigured by the otherworldly lilac sky. “You’re caught here.”

“Because of the ritual,” Alastair adds, his voice stilted. “Because I stopped it.”

Therion’s attention flickers to Alastair for a moment. He dips his head in a slight nod, though he is still seething, furious. “Yes. The ritual was incomplete. And now I am caught between my world and oblivion. But it will not last. As the darkness floods in, I am less and less able to hold myself anchored. Lacrimosa and I are both under threat.”

Realization settles over me. I stare at Therion in horror. “That is why I’ve been losing time? All the strangeness, the visions, the haunting … It’s because of our bond.”

“We are as one, Lacrimosa. This same darkness comes for you as well.”

Camille lets out a fractured gasp, and clutches hold of my arm. On my other side, Alastair presses close. But even hemmed between them, I am frightened and trembling. All I can hear is Therion’s voice, the furious ire in his explanation. Oblivion, darkness, banished. “Therion,” I whisper, pleading, “you have to let me go.”

“I will not let you go. You are mine. You have been ever since you first drew breath.”

Fear spikes through me, like a needle piercing silk. “What do you mean?”

“You were promised to me by your brothers on the night you were born.”

“No,” I say. “That isn’t right. The night in the cave, behind our altar, was the first time they’d ever spoken to you.”

Therion regards me unwaveringly. “Henry and Oberon came to me eighteen years ago. That was when we made our agreement.”

I glance toward Alastair and Camille, the small distance between us now feeling impossibly wide. Before I can move, Therion takes hold of my hand. His skin is as cold as mist; I can feel the sharpness of his claws. He gazes down at me, the anger in his face transmuted to something wilder: a helpless desperation. He’s holding me like he is drowning, and I am the lifeline that will pull him to safety.

“If you do not believe me,” he says, his voice like the drift of feathers, “I will show you.”

I force myself to square my shoulders. I hold out my other hand, the one Therion has not clasped, and reach for Alastair and Camille. “Show me, then. Show all of us the truth.”

Therion draws me forward, until I am in his arms. He glances at the others with his amber gaze, then tips his chin in a beckoning gesture. “Come closer,” he orders. Alastair and Camille move to him, and Therion gathers the three of us into an enclosed embrace.

We’re swept up in a rush. The air smells of the sea, of salt and brazier smoke. Therion takes us toward the woods, into the corridor of trees. Transposed over them, like the galleried walls of Saltswan, are endless gilt frames. Inside each one is a rectangle of polished obsidian. The same as my mirror.

The mirrors catch our forms as we pass. Each one shows a different reflection. In one, I am veiled by crimson-embroidered tulle, silver feathers cascading from my wrists. In another, I am in my loose, plain gown with a collar of seaweed at my throat.

In another, I stand beside Alastair, and his features are changed—his hair sleeker, his eye brighter, as though more of Therion’s presence has slipped inside him. He is whispering into my ear, tender as a lover.

At the farthest end of the corridor is a frame so large it could almost be a window. The obsidian glass ripples and shivers as we come near, blurring until it reveals a view of bone-pale beach and silver-tipped waves.

In one blink, I am in the tidal caves, in the hidden alcove behind Therion’s altar. The air is filled with bitter smoke. My brothers are there, far younger than I’ve ever known them—Henry with the shape of new adulthood in his angular limbs, Oberon’s cheeks still rounded by a boyish softness that has long since vanished.

They clutch the mirror between them, the silver frame enclosed by their white-knuckled hands. “We need your help,” Henry says. “Our parents are gone, and the mine is dying.”

Within the small circle of glass, Therion’s features shift and stir. A keen, bright eye. The rustle of his feathers. “What you ask is no small thing.”

“We understand,” says Oberon.

“If I’m to help you, then I will need an anchor to your world. My strength is here, in the chthonic realm. If you want me to restore the salt, then I must have someone who lives in the mortal world, who is bound to me.”

My brothers exchange a glance. I realize this is something they have discussed before. Oberon bows his head in supplication. My stomach aches at the sight of him, so young and vulnerable, offering himself as a sacrifice.

Therion looks out, grimly, from the mirror. “It is not that simple. I cannot forge a bond with someone who is mortal born. I am the god of the salt, of the sea, and I need someone forged from those elements.”

“But—” Oberon falters. “That’s impossible.”

“If you cannot be bound to someone mortal born, then tell us how to help you,” Henry demands, his teeth set in desperation.

Slowly, Therion begins to speak to them. The scene changes, and my brothers’ actions are played out in a blur of images. I watch as they move to the grotto, where candles burn on the velvet-clothed altar. The sea floods into the cave. They cut their palms with a broken shell, they crouch by the edge of the water. I see the swirl of blood mixed with the ocean.

I see my brothers emerging onto the beach. A boat washes ashore, shaped like a swan. Tucked within the cradle of its carved wings is a squalling, red-faced infant. Me.

“You were not born from a mother but made of your brothers’ blood, of salt and seafoam. You are forged from my world, but exist on the mortal plane,” Therion tells me. Then, his harsh expression shifts—the trappings of divinity pared back until he is only an amber-eyed boy gazing at me in desperation. And in his face, I see true terror—an unveiled fear that I never thought could belong to a god. “You were made to be mine, for this purpose alone. I am fading, Lacrimosa, and you are all that is keeping me from that wretched dark.”

“Please,” I whisper again, feeling as broken as shattered glass, “you have to let me go.”

Therion snarls, teeth sharp. All the softness and vulnerability falls away. He is a howling storm, the roar of a violent sea. “No. You are mine, and I need you.”

His claws scrape my wrist, his teeth are bared and gleaming. I flinch, frightened by his fury, trying to pull away from his grasp. Then Alastair moves forward. He steps close to Therion—steps into Therion—until the two are overlaid.

“Let her go,” he says through gritted teeth. His fingers are at my wrist, freeing me from Therion’s hold. “Let her go.”

Darkness crowds at the corners of my vision. In one blink, I am in the tidal cave, watching the waves pour in from the beach. In another, I am in a forest where the trees are painted in pastel tempera hues. Where creatures slip between the trees, their faces changing from human to other with every step.

And in a row, the three of us—Camille, Alastair, and I—emerge from the woods in our pallid clothes with our olive-leaf crowns, stumbling back into the clearing. Therion and his strange mirror-gallery world have gone. I hear his furious cry echoing through the woods, caught up and swept away by the wind.

Then all that remains is a brazier of dimming embers, an empty flask of chthonic liquor, and the solemn drip of salt water from the trees.