CHAPTER TWENTY Now
I take a lantern from the rack beside the entrance, and we use it to light our path. The walls have been remade by the new veins of salt, so different from the silent, cathedral-arched path that I followed on the night of my betrothal. But my feet know the shape of the floor, the slant of the halls.
I go ahead, the lantern held high. We are draped by its shallow, golden light. Alastair stumbles between me and Camille, his arm looped heavily around my waist, his head pressed to the back of my shoulder. His hand, at my hip, slips from plain to clawed.
As we descend into the lowermost part of the mine, he gazes at me with poison-hazed eyes. He touches my cheek, his mouth tipped into a fleeting smile. “Lark,” he whispers, then his eyes sink closed. We continue on, his head resting against my shoulder. I can feel him trembling as he fights against the effects of the Orramus-laced wine and chthonic liquor.
Finally, we reach the altar room. The place where Therion and I sealed our betrothal. It’s still in disarray, the brazier toppled, the floor covered with scattered ash. Amid it all, like unspooled cobwebs, are the tendrils of my hair that Alastair cut to free me from Hugo’s grasp.
Camille sweeps clear a space, and we lower Alastair down. His features shift, blurring from boy to god. Therion speaks to us from Alastair’s mouth, his voice rasped as thorns. “Light the brazier.”
I set the iron brazier upright. A box of matches is on the floor, along with a few dry scraps of the herbs I burned. A cluster of stems bundled together, tied with string. I lay them in the brazier along with handfuls of my hair.
My fingers are trembling as I strike the match. I hold my breath, willing myself to be steady. Finally, the match sparks alight; I set it to the brazier, letting it burn right down to my skin before I drop it into the new flames.
Therion watches as the smoke fills the room. The scent of it washes into my lungs, and a headache pulses at my temples. Dizzily, I crawl back to sit beside the others. Everything rocks and shifts as though we are still curled together in the swan boat, caught up by the violent waves.
Gently, Therion lays his palm against my face. His eyes are bright as coals. His claws stroke over my cheek, wiping away the tears that have risen from the stinging smoke. “You have to leave me here.”
I squint at him, my eyes burning, my head swimming. “What do you mean?”
“You have to leave me—leave both of us—here. I need to sleep beneath the salt, so I can heal. It’s the closest I can get to my own world without … returning. This is where I will be the safest.”
“We aren’t going to leave my brother behind to be buried alive,” Camille snaps. She pulls at Therion’s wrist, drawing him away from me. “If you’re going to stay here, then so are we.”
“It isn’t safe for you, mortal girls.”
“Technically, I am not mortal,” I remind him. His mouth tilts into a brief, faint smile.
“Even so, it will not be safe. You must leave me here until the end of the salt season.” Therion’s breath is labored, catching jaggedly in his throat. He turns back to Camille. “Your brother won’t be buried alive. While I am within him like this, he is protected.”
“No,” Camille says again. She lays her hand on Therion’s cheek, leaning close as she whispers. “Alastair, please.”
With a tremor, the silhouette of Therion fades as Alastair fights his way to coherence. He looks at Camille and me. Though his eyes are still tinged with amber, the lines of his face and the tone of his voice are solely human. “I will come back to you. This isn’t forever.”
Camille flings her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. “Alastair Felimath, you wretched idiot.”
He strokes her hair, his eyes closing as he rests his cheek against the crown of her head. With his other hand, he reaches for me, and takes hold of my fingers in a feverish grasp. “Remember how I told you to be selfish, Lark?”
“No,” I protest. “Whatever you said, I don’t want it, not like this!”
Solemnly, he traces his thumb against my heartline, the softness of my palm. “We don’t get to pick and choose when to face danger.” He lowers his voice. Tears fill his eyes. “I need you to leave me here, with Therion. To go back and tell everyone I’m gone.”
I look at him with confusion. I feel I have missed something vital I need to understand. “Gone where, exactly?”
He lifts one shoulder in a laconic shrug, the gesture so irritatingly Alastair that a laugh snags in my throat. “Where no one can reach me.” He closes his eyes, gathering strength. Draws in a long, slow breath. “Even after the salt season, after Therion is healed, even if he can return to his world, we’ll never be safe. As long as Hugo suspects my connection to Therion, he’ll want his revenge. He’ll hunt us down. And Father … he’ll always be trying to carve us into the shape he wants: forcing Camille back to boarding school, treating you cruelly to remove you from our lives. He wants me alone at his side like a chained dog, trapped and desperate.”
“Then we’ll all run away,” Camille says fiercely.
I nod in agreement. “We’ll go somewhere so far that no one will find us.”
But Alastair only looks at us with aching sadness. “I don’t want to run, to spend my life forever hidden and hunted. I want to be with you, Lark, and with Camille. I want to travel the world, and buy too many books, and see every Caedmon painting. I want to come home and swim in the sea and walk on the cliffs. And I want to do it without being afraid.”
“I want that, too,” I say.
Camille leans her head on Alastair’s shoulder. “And so do I. I only want this. But if we tell everyone you are”—she falters over the word—“gone, then you’ll never be able to come back home.”
I clutch at Alastair, wishing for another choice, for a way to hold back the inevitable. I think of our future, how the three of us might forge a path of our own choice. Free of those who would seek to exile us, or bind us, or make us feel worthless. None of this is what we were destined for, but we have spoken words from a dead language at the heart of the woods, fought our way here with the help of a god. We can seize this, choose this. We can make this ours.
“Only Hugo and your father need to believe it’s real. And after that, perhaps…” I trail off, unable to put into words such a tentative hope. That the future we’ve dreamed of, together, could be made real after this ruinous, impossible situation.
Camille dips her head, exhales a shuddering breath. “We will leave and tell them you—and Therion—are gone. We’ll let Hugo think he’s gotten what he wanted. Father will never hurt you again, Alastair. I promise.”
The three of us curl together beneath the rising smoke. Alastair pulls me toward him. My eyes flutter closed as he kisses the tears from my lashes.
“Mea Yvin Elevrh,” he whispers. Then his mouth is against mine and I am kissing him fiercely, tasting liquor and herbs as the brazier sparks and crackles by our feet. Camille’s fingers are at my nape, stroking the delicate place beneath my hair.
“You are mine,” I tell Alastair, the edge of my teeth against his lip. “You and Therion. And I will keep you safe.”
“I love you,” he says. And Therion’s voice follows, all smoke and darkness, echoing with otherworldly magic: “I love you, Lacrimosa.”
I hold them close, the god I was born for and the boy I’ve loved since the first moment we met. I think of sailing across the sea on a boat carved into the shape of a swan. Of long train rides, drowsing to the rock and sway of the carriage. Of galleries and bookstores, late nights beside a library fire. I think about the springtime ocean, cool and still beneath a brilliant moon as we dive under the cresting waves.
Then Alastair’s hands are on my wrists, loosening my embrace. He lies down on his side, curled up beneath the thick fog of brazier smoke. “Find me at the end of the salt season,” he murmurs. His features sharpen, feathers wreathe his head in a crown. Therion gazes up at me. “Go, now. I will keep him safe.”
Numbly, I get to my feet. The weight of sadness is like an anchor, dragging me under the surface of a depthless sea. Camille’s arm slips around my waist. We lean against each other as we walk. We go to the doorway, slow and reluctant. My hand is on the latch, but I cannot make myself draw it closed. Therion looks at me through the thickening smoke. “You must leave,” he urges. His voice is stern, commanding, reverberating through the chamber and out into the hall.
I shake my head. My eyes blur with helpless tears. Camille lays her hand over mine. Together we pull the door closed. I’m sobbing as the latch slides into place.
Leaving the mine is like a terrible dream. The lantern has burned out so we stumble through the dark. I’m drawn back to the surface as though by instinct, some deep-buried memory that lies within me from all the other times I’ve walked these halls. I clutch Camille’s hand as we make our way upward. I wonder if this is how swans feel when they leave behind the winter and fly back to their natal home.
Behind us, the salt groans and shudders. The crystals spike and spiral out from the veins, until they’ve filled the corridors, sealing them tightly closed. I know it will protect Therion while he heals. But it’s a desolate thought, that there isn’t a way back into the depths. We cannot change our minds.
Soon, the light grows brighter. The entrance is ahead, framing a star-stitched sky. The moonlight is dazzling, bright as a flame after our time in the shadows. Fresh air spills over us, drying the tears on our cheeks and combing through our tangled hair. We stand together at the entrance to the mine, and Camille flings her arms around me.
I hold her tightly, feeling the frantic beat of her pulse in my own chest. She kisses me, the shared taste of our sorrow as bitter as the sea. I wish I could keep her this close forever, fold her inside the structure of my bones, tuck her safe beneath my heart.
“We need to make it real,” Camille says raggedly. “Make it look as though Therion—and Alastair—are truly gone.”
I nod, slowly, as my eyes linger on the rack of lanterns by the entrance, the scatter of dry tinder that’s been swept into the corridor from the wind, driftwood and dead grass and tumbleweeds. Then I look to the swan boat, still tethered to the pier. “I think I know what to do.”
I grab for the lanterns, taking one in each hand. The box of matches from the altar room is still in the pocket of my skirts. Camille watches me for a moment, then realization darkens her face. Squaring her shoulders in determination, she grabs two more of the lanterns and follows me to the pier. “Is there a way to get back without the boat?”
“Yes. There’s a ladder on the edge of the cliff.”
We hurry back and forth, gathering scraps of driftwood and handfuls of dried grass, anything that will burn. We load it into the boat until the space between the swan’s wings is full. From a distance, it looks like the huddled shape of an unmoving body.
One by one, we shatter the lamps, tipping the flammable salt-forged oil over the pile. I untie the sails, letting them billow free.
Then we both crouch on the pier as the waves thrash against the boards, soaking our skirts and jolting the boat as it strains against the tether rope. Camille lights the match, but it dies instantly. I cup my hands around hers as she strikes another, shielding the new flame from the wind.
The fire catches, slow at first, tracing a path through the oil and wood like a caress. Then the wind rises, and the fire draws upward, sparking and fierce.
With numb fingers I work the hitch knot undone and free the boat from the pier. Together, Camille and I give the swan boat a forceful push. It’s swept up by the current as the loosened sails begin to smolder. I watch as it drifts farther and farther away, until the swan with a pyre cradled between its wings is far from the shore.
“We have to go,” Camille says, pulling my arm as she urges me away from the pier. I follow her across the beach to the ladder. The simple boards are held into the stone with enormous rusted bolts. I climb, the scent of iron from the bolts like spilled blood, the wood slippery smooth beneath my palms.
Adrenaline drives me forward, my hands and feet moving automatically as we make our way over the side of the cliffs. Once we reach the top, I drag myself into the fields, too unsteady to walk. I collapse beneath a sprawl of oxeye daisies. Camille flings herself down beside me. I crawl to her, and we hold each other as we’re overtaken by sobs.
I can smell smoke from the sea. It smells like the brazier, and I think of Alastair and Therion, far below the earth. Falling into a torpor in the depths of the mine, healing, bringing themselves back from oblivion, cradled by new-grown salt.
Our sobs shudder into stillness. The sound of footsteps comes from the woods. Hugo crosses the field toward us. “He’s gone,” I tell him harshly and the grief that aches from me is real. “They’re both gone.”
He stands, staring helplessly down at the burning boat. “But how—why—?”
“Therion burned himself and Alastair, rather than be captured by you.”
Hugo’s mouth opens, but no words come. Camille pulls herself onto her knees, glaring up at him with her fists clenched. “Are you pleased now? You’ve gotten what you wanted.”
“I never wanted this!” Hugo cries. Camille surges up and grabs the collar of his shirt, dragging him to the ground. He falls heavily beside her, and he doesn’t fight as she pulls him close, glowering furiously into his eyes. Hugo is crying silently, tears streaming down his cheeks, glimmering in the reflected light from the far-off flames.
“Camille, don’t hurt him.” I reach out to her, but she pushes my hand away.
“I should hurt you,” she snarls at Hugo, her face pressed close to his. “I should throw you into the sea and let you drown. But you’re not worth it.”
With an angry exhalation, she releases Hugo and slumps back to her heels. I put my arm around her, and she presses her face against my shoulder, crying with harsh, fierce sobs. Hugo folds to the ground on my other side. And though I’m trembling with anger, I lay my hand in the space between us. Tentatively, he reaches out, and takes hold.
We sit together as tears stream over our cheeks, and we watch the burning boat sink beneath the waves.