CHAPTER THREE Now

Time passes in a slow lapse, like petals unfurling. Though I’m exhausted, I can’t fall asleep. I lie on the bed, with Eline clutched tight to my chest, as the storm softens and the moonlight turns clear. The house shifts and settles, twitching beneath the drying raindrops that trace its walls and pool in the gutters.

I roll onto my back. The book Alastair Felimath gave me for my thirteenth birthday is still on the bed, the edge of it digging into my ribs. I think of our hands, edging tentatively closer, the first time we touched. How we had promised to always stay friends.

With a disgusted exhalation, I get to my feet and cross the room to my dresser. Opening the topmost drawer, I shove the book inside, burying it beneath a tangle of hair ribbons and dried-out tubes of lipstick.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. With my crumpled blouse and knotted hair, and my mouth still darkened from chthonic liquor, I look like a creature that has been dredged from the ocean.

Reaching for a barrette, I attempt to fasten my hair away from my face. It’s so quiet inside the cottage at night, so different from Marchmain, where city traffic was a steady background hum at all hours, interspersed by the chime of the Canticle bells.

I can hear the ocean waves breaking near the base of the cliffs. Then another sound comes. Footsteps across the landing; going down the stairs. A door being closed. Muffled voices outside.

I look out through my window. On the same flower-strewn path we followed earlier to the altar, there are two figures. They pass the arbor with its overgrown wisteria vines. A low beam of a flashlight dances at their feet as they vanish out of sight.

My brothers, going past the breakwater and down the staircase that leads to the beach. Going down toward the sea.

I open my window and the night air sweeps into my room. It strokes, cool, against my cheeks as I stare curiously down at the now-empty garden. Listening past the sound of the dripping rain and the nearby ocean, wondering why my brothers have gone sneaking out into the dark.

Navigating by moonlight, I go down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out to the garden. When I reach the breakwater, I see more light flickering at the entrance to the altar cave. Why have they gone back, when we were only just there?

Halfway across the clifftop, I realize I forgot my shoes. My stockinged feet sink into the sand when I step down onto the beach. I gather up my skirts and hurry toward the grotto, as the rising tide pushes me closer and closer to the base of the cliffs.

By the time I reach the cave entrance, I’m walking on tiptoe across the scrap of sand that’s left above the waterline. The sea cave is empty and quiet. The candle we left behind on Therion’s altar has burned down, and everything is untouched, the seashells and velvet cloth painted silver by the filtered moon.

Then, past the altar, near the back of the cave, I see the glow of light. Slowly, I edge closer, my heartbeat rising. The small tug of curiosity that brought me here turns sharper, a prickling thorn of unease. Beneath my fingertips, the stone wall is as smooth as the cold-blooded coils of a snake. There’s nothing, until my fingers catch on a small opening, a space between the rocks. It widens to a hidden corridor.

The scent of smoke drifts out from inside. I can hear the low murmur of my brothers’ voices.

One step beyond the entrance, the moonlight fades to shadows. The smell of smoke grows stronger, reminding me of the summer bonfires we’d burn in Therion’s honor. I press my hand against the wall; my palms are sweating. Fear winds around me, a tightly tied ribbon.

I scrub my damp palms against my skirts, square my shoulders, trying to push aside my apprehension. I was born above these cliffs, lullabied with the sound of these waves. I’ve been into the deepest levels of the salt mine with Henry and Oberon more times than I can count, but I have never been into this hidden passage. Never suspected it might exist. Even so, I have no reason to be scared of the dark.

The passage narrows; I have to turn to my side. Smoke fills the air, stinging my eyes and making my throat burn when I swallow. Like the haze of Henry’s cigarettes, but worse—cloying, noxious. I feel dizzy, disoriented by the shadows.

There’s a dim, fragile warmth, like from a banked-down fire. More of the heavy smoke traces over me, laddering against the light. It slithers across my tongue, down into my chest. It snares me up and tugs me forward into the cave.

My brothers kneel together, bowed over an iron brazier. Their eyes are half-closed, swollen and weeping from the smoke. They both have crowns of laurel leaves on their hair. Oberon holds the silver flask from Therion’s altar, and his mouth is already inky with chthonic liquor.

He opens the flask, takes a long, deep swallow before passing it to Henry. His hands are trembling. Henry drinks slowly, then caps the flask and tucks it away into his pocket.

In its place, he draws out another object: something smooth and polished. It catches the shifting light of the flames. It’s a mirror, framed in tarnished silver. But instead of glass the surface is gleaming black, like a piece of polished obsidian. My brothers clutch the mirror between themselves, bowing forward over the glass.

When they start to speak, their tongues are indigo, their teeth stained dark. Their words are like a poem, scratchy with smoke. It has a familiar rhythm, and I realize they’re reciting the homecoming prayer I spoke earlier at the altar. But the words are different, turned from a message of thanks to a desperate appeal.

“Therion, lord of sea and woods and salt, we return to your lands, hold us safe…”

My brothers repeat the prayer over and over, until it becomes a tangle of formless, haunting words. “Please,” Henry whispers, his voice fracturing. His hands clutch the mirror, white-knuckle tight. “Therion, please.”

Oberon sinks to his knees, shrouded by the smoke from the brazier. Through gritted, liquor-stained teeth, he begs, “Answer us, damn you!”

The brazier stutters. A sudden gust of wind spills in from behind me, carrying the scent of sea. Smoke from the fire swirls and billows, caught in the currents of air. It pools at the corners of the cave like pleated satin, then slowly unfolds, drifting back toward my brothers.

The surface of the mirror, flat and black as a starless night, begins to ripple and blur.

I edge forward, entranced. The opaque surface now reflects an image. But it is not the cave, or the smoke, or my brothers’ desperate faces. It’s like another world, strange and impossible. The lapping waves of a rising sea. A forest of blackened kelp. Driftwood trees. Pale feathers.

A keen eye, bright as amber.

And then a voice—not mine, or my brothers’—begins to speak. Beautiful, terrible, coming from everywhere all at once. It makes my heart ache, my bones throb.

“If you wish the salt restored, then I demand my price.”

Therion. Our god.

It can’t be. It can’t be real. I clutch at the wall, my nails scrabbling against the stone. I’m frozen in place, held captive by the surface of the mirror. By the creature who has appeared within.

Oberon shakes his head, a vehement no. But Henry lays a hand on Oberon’s shoulder, stilling him. My eldest brother stares intently at the reflection in the glass, his mouth drawn into a taut line as he waits for Therion to continue. I hold my breath and see the bright eye blink, see the rustle of silken feathers.

There’s no sound but the distant waves. Then, “Lacrimosa.”

Terror pours down my spine, a spill of icy water. Therion is still speaking, his words like a knot tied around me, worked tighter and tighter.

“She will be my bride, and stay with me in my world. I will restore the salt in exchange for her hand.”

I picture myself trapped in this sea cave forever, lost in the hushing, smoke-laced dark. Raw, stark panic catches me and drags me forward. I stumble into the cave, my heartbeat wild, my breath coming out in a fragmented gasp. “No!”

I clap a hand to my mouth as Henry and Oberon turn around, their faces washed pale in shock.

Oberon is wide-eyed, frightened. He takes a faltering step toward me, his hand outstretched. His fingers are smeared with soot from the brazier. Before he can move further, Henry grabs his arm. Unlike Oberon, my eldest brother is not afraid. He’s furious. Brows knit, eyes narrowed, he snaps, “Lark, get out of here!”

From the depths of the mirror, Therion’s attention slides toward me. Held by his gaze, I’m unable to move. I stare into his amber eyes and know I should run. But he has pierced me like a needle, and I can only stand here as my knees turn weak and my pulse softens in the hollow of my throat.

No amount of bonfires or altar prayers could prepare me for this—our god, his eyes locked to mine and his voice filling the room, carving through the smoky air like a knife. “Lacrimosa will be mine in exchange for the salt; every season—from spring until the end of harvest—she will dwell in my world. For the rest of her human life.”

A startled, desperate sound escapes me. This is impossible, impossible.

“Enough,” Oberon snaps. “Henry, Lark, this is enough.”

He snatches the mirror from Henry and buries it in his pocket. Therion—his reflected face—vanishes.

As soon as the mirror is hidden, water rushes into the cave, cascading over the floor. It foams around our ankles and gutters the brazier, plunging the space into darkness. The tide has never come this high before, this far inland. Henry surges toward me through the rising, frothing waves. He gathers me up into his arms, the way he did when I was small. As he carries me out of the cave, I feel his heart thundering against my ear.

I struggle, trying to get down, but he stops me with a warning glare. “Don’t.”

The tide has filled the grotto, and the water is past my brothers’ knees. As we hurry out toward the beach, waves strike against Therion’s altar, soaking the ends of the velvet cloth and washing the shells into disarray. I cling to Henry, and Oberon wades beside us, the hem of his coat dragging and sodden across the surface of the sea.

Outside, the night is stark and endless, a clear sky and fragments of moonlight on the ocean like shattered glass. When the waves rise around us, Henry lets me go and we swim until we reach the breakwater. My knees scrape against the stones as I clamber across, tumbling to the flower-covered path.

Henry catches hold of my elbow, helps me to my feet. In an unsteady progression we stagger toward the cottage—my arm wrapped around Henry’s waist, my fist knotted in the fabric of Oberon’s coat. Once we’re back inside, my brothers lead me into our parents’ old bedroom.

Their room is tucked beneath the stairwell. I used to sneak inside to play dress-up with my mother’s clothes and jewelry, or to curl on the window seat with a lapful of magazines. But now the room is almost completely empty. The dresser, with all my mother’s things—the silver hairbrush and the velvet jewelry box and the carved porcelain swan—has been taken away. Only a bare mattress remains, covered by a faded cotton sheet.

Seawater drips from our clothes. Our skin is gritted with sand. But my brothers tuck me right into the bed and collapse on either side of me. I’m aching, nauseous, my hair laced with the bitter scent of smoke and my ears echoing with the voice of a god.

“How did you do that?” I close my eyes and press my hands to my aching temples. “You spoke with him. He was real.”

It’s as though I’ve been awoken from a vivid dream only to be told that every impossible thing I saw was true. We burn our tokens and we give our thanks. But for all the devotions that we offer to Therion, our two realms are always separate. At least, I thought they were.

Tonight, my brothers have unmade the rules of the world. They’ve reached into the dark and drawn out a god. Therion was a distant creature of seasonal bonfires and altar offerings, yet he looked into my eyes and spoke my name.

And he demanded that I bind myself to him, forever.

Oberon shifts beside me. “There were rumors that our family once knew a ritual to speak with Therion,” he whispers, a rasp of shame in his unsteady voice. “Dad told us about it, before you were born. We never gave it much thought until after he died. Then Henry and I tried the ritual, together, a handful of times. But Therion never answered.”

“Not until tonight.”

He exhales, a desolate sigh. “We never should have done it.”

I stare up at the ceiling, thinking of the emptiness of this room, of all the rooms around us. Our whole cottage has been hollowed out, and I can feel our connections to this place—where generations of Arriscanes have lived and died—dissolving like a sugar cube in hot water.

“Do you really think that Therion would restore the mine if I went to live with him?”

Henry lays his hand on my back. “Enough,” he orders, an echo of what Oberon said to us in the caves. “We’ll discuss this later.”

As I fall into a troubled silence, I let myself picture how it would be to go into Therion’s world. To dwell with him in the chthonic realm for every salt season, for the rest of my life. To be his bride.

I know the ways of marriage: betrothal rings and veils, promises sealed by a kiss. Two lives entwined in a single existence. Everything shared, joy and sorrow. It’s a form of trust I’d never thought to give another, because the only people I have ever loved in that way, first Alastair, then Damson, had turned that closeness to a weapon.

How might it be, though, if I were wed to a god? I force aside my fear and think of Therion’s amber eyes, how his voice echoed through the cave. When he took me to his world would it hurt, or would he draw me with him as gently as dipping beneath the surface of the sea? My breath held, my limbs heavy, the two of us borne away by a waning tide.

And what he offered … it could fix everything. It could fix me. It’s a terrible thought, but once it rises I can’t let it go. If I were Therion’s bride, I would be more than the girl who Alastair Felimath refused to love, more than the girl who lost the future she worked so hard for. I would save my family from ruin.

My eyes shutter closed and I sink into a clotted darkness, tucked between my brothers. At Marchmain, one of our first lessons was about the golden ratio in art, the magic thirds that divide paintings into ley lines that can be read for hidden meaning. There was a grim symmetry in my own life: Henry, Oberon, and me. The trio I had once formed with Alastair, myself, and Camille.

And now my existence looks to be divided in the same way. There’s our cottage at the clifftop, windswept and barren. Then the mine, with the hollowed veins, the salt all vanished away. Then, beneath a gauze-thin border I had never known could be crossed, the chthonic world.

Where Therion waits for me.