CHAPTER SIXTEEN Now

I find Camille in the upstairs hall, standing outside the closed bathroom door. From within comes the sound of a running faucet, the splash of water in the sink. She looks anxious and overalert, skittish in a way I’ve never seen her before. Her entire body is drawn tight as a wire, her lips bitten and her fingers curled against her palms.

She nods toward the door. “He won’t tell me anything; he only wants to speak with you.”

“I’ll see what I can get out of him, then. And I might need to borrow some clothes. Your father said I should dress for dinner. As opposed to showing up naked, I guess.”

Camille makes a face at my mention of Marcus. “I’ll go and find something for you to change into. Good luck with the Salt Priest.”

She squeezes my hand, her skin sweat-damp, her fingers trembling, then she goes down the hallway into the depths of the house. I knock on the bathroom door. “Hugo? May I come in?”

The latch clicks, and Hugo opens the door. He’s washed the blood from his face, though his nose is still swollen, and there are spreading bruises beneath his eyes.

“It’s not broken,” he says flatly when he notices me examining his injuries. He turns to sit on the edge of the bathtub. “Close the door, will you?”

I step into the room and close the door. Leaning my back against it, I fold my arms and look down at Hugo. He’s so deceptively innocent, a blue-eyed boy with golden curls and a spray of freckles dusted over his cheeks. And part of me wants to plead with him for help, to lay out the whole truth of my connection to Therion—and his incomplete banishment—like cards on a table.

But I’ll not trust him so easily.

“So,” I begin guardedly. “You’ve left the Salt Priests. Why?”

He gives me a querulous look, then ducks his head. “Because I feel terrible about what I’ve done.”

“Which part, exactly? Banishing our god, or nearly collapsing my family’s mine, or attacking me? Or perhaps when you betrayed Alastair after he trusted you?”

“He told you about that, then.”

“He did.”

Hugo picks at the cuff of his sweater, tracing the shape of the dried bloodstain on his sleeve. “I never meant to hurt him—or any of you.”

“You’ve got a strange way of not hurting people.”

He shoves a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. He looks miserable, but there’s a hard, flinty anger in his expression. “You have no idea what the Salt Priests are like. The ways they demand loyalty, the things they make us do. I should have left a long time ago. I wanted to leave with Alastair, truly I did. But it wasn’t possible.”

I shift back to lean against the opposite wall. “What changed?”

“I had a sister. Georgiana.” He picks up a damp washcloth and begins to blot at the stain on his sweater. “Five years younger than me. She was still a child when Alastair asked me to leave with him. I wanted to bring her with us, but she was … fragile. All the Salt Priests use a tincture as part of our rituals, even the children. It’s addictive. I knew she wouldn’t survive the withdrawal.”

I remember what Alastair told me about the drug the sect uses to ensure loyalty. How no one can be away from the compound for longer than a few days before they sicken. “Is that why you decided not to leave?”

Hugo lays aside the washcloth with a sigh. His eyes are red-rimmed, blurred with held-back tears. “I still wanted to run away. But I needed to steal enough of the tincture for Georgiana. They caught me. I refused to tell them what I’d planned at first. Then … they threatened her. I confessed everything.” He bites his lip, looks down at the floor. “This time, when I left, I didn’t try to steal anything. I just ran.”

“Won’t you need it, though?”

“I’ve been secretly taking less, whenever I can. They watch us, to make sure we drink, but I would pretend and then spit it out later. I’m still … sick. But I won’t die.”

Hugo extends his hands to show me. They’re trembling so much he can barely keep them outstretched. I notice that his nails are stained dark blue, as though all the blood has been leeched from his fingertips. A symptom of the withdrawal.

“And what,” I ask slowly, “about your sister?”

“This year she was chosen to be … honored … at our equinox ritual.”

He doesn’t elaborate but his meaning is clear, couched in the pauses between his words, the way he speaks of her in past tense. The other regions of Verse have their own gods, but here, where we worship Therion, everyone has heard rumors of the Salt Priest rituals. The extreme lengths they use to earn the favor of the god of salt and seafoam. How followers are entombed alive inside tidal caves or held beneath the sea until they drown.

Until now, I’d thought they were only stories. But I think of the items on their altar: the jar of seawater, the bloodstained lace, the cut-off braid. The hair in that braid was almost the same shade as Hugo’s curls.

Slowly, I cross the room and sit down on the tub beside him. A flicker of sympathy rises in me for this boy, who has hurt and been hurt, who has suffered. I lay my hand on his knee. “I’m so sorry, Hugo.”

He nods, tears welling beneath his golden eyelashes. “That night, when I interrupted your betrothal to Therion, I was acting on the orders of the Salt Priests. I mean what I say: I never wanted to hurt any of you.”

I cast a surreptitious glance toward him. I can see what drew Alastair to Hugo, why he would have trusted him. I feel the same pull. The temptation to confess is a palpable thing; I can taste it like sugar dissolving on my tongue. Yet something stills me from telling him the truth. Instead, I ask, “But why did you want to banish Therion, if he is your god?”

Hugo bites his lip, tugging at his sleeve again. Before he can answer, the sound of footsteps echoes from the stairwell. I open the bathroom door as Alastair reaches the landing, shadowed by his father. I move closer to him, my heartbeat rising.

I want to take his hands, to wrap my arms around him and hold him close. Keep him safe. But Marcus is watching us, keen-eyed as a predator. I think of how he tore the wreath from Alastair’s hair at the bonfire, wrenched him away from me. I think of Alastair’s twice-broken arm, the cigarette burns over his heart.

If Marcus realizes our connection, or that I know what he’s done, it will only make things worse for Alastair.

With effort, I force myself to look relaxed. Turning to Hugo, I say, “Mr. Felimath was just telling me that they dress for dinner at Saltswan. Maybe you and Alastair can go together and pick out what to wear.”

Alastair glances between Hugo and me. His expression is veiled, his face neutral as a mask. Coolly, he beckons to Hugo, then goes down the hall without waiting for the other boy to follow him. Marcus watches them with a scowl.

In a low, warning tone, he calls after Alastair, “Don’t hit him again.”

---

I come to dinner in a borrowed gown of lilac silk. The neckline scoops low into voluminous draped sleeves that leave my shoulders bare while covering my arms, so the feathers are hidden. A wide ribbon is sashed tightly at my waist. Camille tied a matching ribbon in my hair before she hurried off to lay out the meal, refusing my offer of help.

Marcus had telephoned the village tavern and ordered a prepared dinner to be delivered to the house. Now, as I enter the dining room, the table is already laden with covered platters and set with scallop-edged porcelain plates and gleaming silver cutlery. A large salt lantern hangs overhead, filling the room with light.

Camille stands framed against the enormous window. Her dress is a similar cut to mine, with fabric that’s the muted green of blackberry leaves. The falling light comes in from outside, haloing her dark hair with streaks of fire.

The room is quiet, filled by a held-breath stillness. I’m the last to arrive; everyone else is seated at the table. Marcus sits at the head, idly holding a glass of wine that he doesn’t drink. Hugo and Alastair are side by side, both dressed in neat, funeral-dark trousers, silk ties, and pressed linen shirts.

They all stand at the sound of my approach, Marcus and Alastair moving instinctively, Hugo awkward as he follows. Camille pulls out my chair, bending to whisper, “You’re beautiful,” her breath rushing against my ear.

I want to laugh, to tell her she saw me upstairs already and that she looks beautiful, too. With her silken dress and the long, elegant lines of her bared neck, she’s like a figure from a painting, all gossamer skirts and the dark brown waves of her unbound hair. But the looming presence of her father makes my words catch in my throat. I offer Camille a tentative smile and touch her hand beneath the table.

Across from us, Alastair sits straight-backed, his tie fastened in a Balthus knot, silver glinting at his shirt cuffs. When he sees me, his eyes widen, and he bites his lip before quickly glancing away. But all I can do is stare at him. He looks so darkly aristocratic, like a fallen prince, too golden and beautiful to be real. Like he should be wearing a laurel-leaf crown and stamped in profile on an ancient coin.

Marcus clears his throat pointedly. He lays down his glass and unfolds a napkin. “Now that we’re all here, we can begin.”

Camille moves around the table, uncovering all the platters. The dishes are the type of food my family would often prepare for large harvest dinners, when we’d eat outside on a trestle table with the rest of the mining crew. New potatoes, steamed greens, a loaf of sourdough bread beside a dish of butter. The main meal is a mixture of vegetables in bright crimson sauce—Versian stew.

Marcus gives a disapproving look at the rustic meal but doesn’t comment. Camille sets the platter covers onto a sideboard and refills her father’s wine. He watches as she serves the food onto his plate. I hate the way that he sits and expects her to wait on him, like she is a hired servant rather than his daughter.

Alastair, Hugo, and I all help ourselves to the food. Camille slides into her chair beside me.

Marcus takes up his knife and fork and begins to cut a slice of bread into smaller pieces. Not looking at me, he asks, “Lacrimosa, how are your brothers? Still carving their way through the salt mine, it seems.”

“Yes. They’re about to bring in the new harvest, and—”

“I’d heard that you were off to be married, though I see that wasn’t the case.” Marcus talks over me, as though he didn’t even hear my answer. “As a matter of fact, I’m surprised that neither of your brothers have announced a betrothal yet.”

My chest tightens as I think of Oberon’s hidden letters, the love he gave up to protect our family’s secrets. Beneath the table, I slip off my betrothal ring and place it into my pocket. I’m afraid that if Alastair’s father looks closely enough at me, he will see everything—he will see right down to my bones, and know all the secrets I’m hiding.

I pick up my spoon and stir it through the sauce on my plate. “Henry says that miners are like sea captains, only they’re married to the salt rather than the ocean.”

“Don’t play with your food, Lacrimosa.”

Startled, I lift my spoon to my mouth and swallow a too-large portion of stew. It hasn’t cooled enough, and I feel it burn all the way down my throat. On my scallop-edged plate, the bright red sauce looks like blood. I sip from my water glass, fighting desperately not to cough.

A large, arched mirror hangs on the wall opposite the window, reflecting the view of the clifftop fields—burnished grass, swaying flowers—and us, all at the table. It’s disconcerting, to see our movements doubled as our reflected selves unfold linen napkins and spread butter onto sourdough bread. I keep expecting to see the surface blur and change to the obsidian glass of the mirrors in Therion’s world.

Yet each time I look there is only my own face, my lips bitten raw and my eyes wide with worry. The landscape unfolding behind me as the night draws in.

“Camille,” Marcus says, “have you given more consideration to your future studies?”

She lays down her knife. It clinks loudly against the edge of her plate. “I thought that … perhaps I could remain at Saltswan, instead.”

Her father waves aside the suggestion impatiently. “That is not an option.”

“I’ve already graduated, Father. I don’t want to go back.”

“And I don’t want a child who avoids responsibility to her family. I’ll wire your school in the morning and enroll you in their postgraduate program. You can take a remedial course in mathematics first.”

“I want to stay here.” Camille is tense, fighting against the quaver in her voice. But Marcus turns away, ignoring her blanched expression, ignoring the way Alastair grips the edge of the table in quiet fury.

“We’ll discuss this later, in private. Now, tell me—Hugo, was it?—how, exactly, do you know my son?”

Hugo shoots Alastair a startled glance. “I—we—met at the same convalescent hospital.”

There’s an uncertain note in his voice, and Alastair flinches. Mouth drawn taut, he nods in agreement. “Yes. It was in Driftsea, wasn’t it?”

Alastair has named a place far from the Salt Priest compound, and I clench my hands in my lap, hoping his father doesn’t connect Hugo with Alastair’s ill-fated attempt to run away. It frightens me, the way that Marcus stares at both of his children with the promise of violence in every gesture.

He arches a brow as he looks at Hugo, whose hands have begun to tremble. “You don’t look well, even now. You’re not contagious, are you?”

Hugo looks truly awful, with violet bruises beneath his eyes and his nose all swollen. He’s clearly struggling against the pangs of withdrawal; sweat beads at his temples and he’s clumsy as he tries to butter a slice of bread. The stains he showed me on his hands have spread farther up his arms, marking his wrists in poisonous lines.

He shakes his head. “I’m just a little tired.”

The knife slips from his hand, clattering against the plate. I push myself to my feet and reach across the table to help him. I can feel Marcus’s eyes on me, the heat of his disapproval. Determinedly ignoring him, I finish spreading butter onto Hugo’s bread and slide the plate back. He takes it from me with a tentative smile.

I feel so restless that I want to climb outside my skin. I need to question Hugo about Therion. Before that, I need to talk with Alastair and Camille. We have to decide how much to say, if we should even trust him. But everything is overlaid by Marcus Felimath’s pointed questions and watchful stare. All I can do is sit in helpless silence as the air grows heavy as a gathering storm.

He lifts his glass, drinking more of his wine. His mouth tilts into a sneer as he glances in my direction. “Your guests, Alastair, have dreadful conversation skills and even worse manners. I thought I made it clear that I didn’t wish you to keep such unfit company.”

Alastair refills Hugo’s glass from the pitcher of water that sits on the table. With studied calm, he says, “I see nothing unfit about either their conversation or their manners. I’m sorry you don’t feel the same.”

Marcus narrows his eyes, but then, as Hugo reaches for his glass, his hands give a tremor. Camille and I watch in horror as the glass falls to the floor, shattering into a burst of shards and spilled water. The sound of it splits through the quiet room, and we all jump.

Hugo pushes out of his chair and kneels beside the glass, trying to blot up the water with a napkin. Then, biting back a cry, he doubles over, eyes closed as he presses a hand to his mouth.

“Gods,” Marcus snaps, exasperated. He gets up from the table abruptly. “Alastair, I want to speak with you alone.”

Throwing down his napkin beside his untouched food, he sweeps out into the hall. The sound of his heavy tread against the stairs echoes through the silence that has sunk over us. Hugo sits back slowly on his heels, cheeks pallid, eyes glazed as he surveys the broken glass.

I go to Alastair and take his hands between my own. His skin is chilled, his palms slick with tense sweat. He pulls me close, wrapping his arms around me. He buries his face in the crook of my shoulder and exhales a fractured breath.

“Don’t go to him,” I murmur. “I’ll lie for you, say I don’t know where you are. You can stay in my cottage until he leaves.”

“No,” he whispers against my neck. “I can’t.”

I look despairingly toward Camille, but before I can speak, Marcus calls from upstairs. His voice is like a sharpened blade. “Alastair, I meant now!”

Alastair steps back from me, but I clutch his arm, refusing to let him leave. Gently, he peels my fingers away. Cupping a hand to my cheek, he straightens his shoulders. “I have to go to him, Lark. It will be worse if I don’t.”

I watch him leave the room, wanting to follow, feeling torn and helpless. Camille starts to pick up the shards of broken glass, stacking the largest pieces onto a clean linen napkin. She catches my gaze, and nods toward Hugo. “Ask him,” she mouths, but I don’t know what to say.

I press my lips together, try to swallow past the anxiety that snares my throat like a strand of kelp. “Hugo, why did the Salt Priests order you to banish Therion?”

He struggles to stand up, clutching the edge of the table for support, his knuckles white. “They didn’t. All they wanted was for me to interrupt your betrothal, so he wouldn’t be wed to an outsider. But that wasn’t enough.”

My heartbeat rises, and a tremor of hope lances through me. Forcing the desperation from my voice, I ask, “The ritual you used to banish Therion … is there a way to reverse it?”

Slowly, Hugo looks up at me through the veil of his tangled curls. “Why would I want to do that?” His expression shutters, his eyes turned hard as stone. “My sister died for a vision of Therion. Banishment is what he deserved.”

“But he wasn’t the one who killed her. The Salt Priests were.”

“They killed her for a vision of him! In his name they’ve poisoned us, destroyed us, taken our lives, and he barely deigns to answer. Why should Therion be given our fealty?”

I think of the night I went into the tide caves and saw my brothers wreathed in smoke. How perhaps only days before, on the far end of the peninsula, Georgiana Valentine was murdered by the Salt Priests. The spring equinox rising, waves trembling on the cusp of the shore, a girl with the same golden hair as Hugo being held under the water.

“I don’t blame you for wanting it to end,” I tell him. “But punishing Therion for the cruelties of your priests isn’t the way to make that happen.”

“What would you know?” Hugo snaps. He takes a heavy step toward me. “You have sacrificed nothing to be chosen.”

I stand my ground, my arms folded. “I have sacrificed plenty.”

He regards me for a moment. His eyes are glittering, with the dangerous coldness of broken glass. Then, he picks up the bottle of wine from the table and raises it to his lips, drinking deeply. A bead of ruby liquid slides down his chin, dripping along his throat until it marks a stain on his shirt collar.

“I need some fresh air,” he says, as he saunters toward the doorway, the bottle still in his hand. “I’m going outside.”

Camille and I watch, incredulous, as he vanishes into the front hall. Moments later, the door closes with a heavy, final sound. Camille pinches at the bridge of her nose. “I’m tired of this little Salt Priest and his games.”

“Maybe I should speak with him on my own.”

She tightens the ribbon in her hair, smooths down her gauzy skirts. “No. Let me.”

We go out into the front hall. Camille draws me close, presses her lips to my cheek. I feel the smudge of her lip stain left behind. I lay my hand against her nape, stroke the sleek line of her bare neck. We stand for a moment, our faces touching, breathing a shared breath. Then we draw apart.

Camille leaves the house with a whisper of silk. I stand at the foot of the stairs, press my hands to my face, exhale a desperate sigh into my palms. I can still smell the scent of Camille’s strawberry perfume, sweet and sugary, on my skin.

Then I turn and go up to the second floor, in search of Marcus Felimath’s room.