CHAPTER FIVE Now

On equinox night, the night of my betrothal, we host a bonfire.

I choose a gown from my old dresses, the plainest and most shapeless one. It trails to the floor, gauzy cotton the color of swan feathers. Long sleeves hide my bandaged arm.

The front room of our house has been prepared as if for a dance, with the remaining furniture pushed back against the walls. A fire blazes in the hearth, despite the warm night, and a console table houses a carafe of bloodred wine. I pause to fill one of the waiting glasses as I pass by. A centerpiece of oxeye daisies spills petals onto the floor.

The cottage is overflowing with flowers and with people. The whole village is here, or close to. When my brothers made the invitations, they told everyone my betrothed was a boy I met in Astera, who is waiting for me back in Gardemuir. Now the lie seems to thicken the air, and inside the house is sweltering from the flames in the fireplace and the press of too many bodies. With my cup in one hand and the train of my skirts in the other, I slip past the crowd. Clinging to the shadowed corners of the room, I go through the open side door and out into the garden.

The sun is close to the horizon, painting the cliffside in watercolor hues. In the field beyond our house, the unlit bonfire looks like the twisted skeleton of some washed-ashore sea creature, with vines grown through its bones. Beneath it all, I can hear the hush and sigh of the waves.

Looking through the crowd, I recognize a classmate from nursery school, now grown into an adult in a way that feels incongruous with my memory. The staid librarian who would set aside art magazines for me to buy when they came out of circulation. One of the miners who worked on a crew the last harvest I was here.

It’s tradition in Verse to mark your last unmarried day like this, to gather in celebration before leaving to meet your spouse. The wedding ceremony is always done in private, at an altar in sight of the gods. No one here will ever know what tonight truly means: how my bridegroom and witness will be one and the same when I go to the altar.

I hide from the crowd in the wisteria arbor. Here, beneath the trellis, the heat-and-pollen press of the house eases its hold. I drink my wine in a single gulp, then slump against the overgrown bank of vines. Tilting back my head, I loose a heavy sigh.

A rustle of leaves startles me. I look over to see Oberon slipping into the arbor. He’s wearing a crisply ironed linen shirt tucked into his wool trousers, but his sleeves are rolled to his elbows and he has an unlit cigarette in one hand.

He smiles at me, but his eyes are troubled, uncertain. “Is this hiding place taken?”

I shake my head. Oberon comes into the arbor and leans against the trellis. My brothers were furious when I announced my promise to Therion. I’ve so rarely disobeyed them. It was difficult to stand my ground. But I refused to change my mind: I’d made my choice and I was going to see it through.

In the end, we lapsed into a tense stalemate, and have barely spoken in the past few days. Now, in the orange light of sunset, I feel dizzy and uncertain with Oberon beside me. The wine has made my head light and my limbs heavy. I don’t know if I want him to demand I change my mind, or to tell me I have his blessing.

He takes out a box of matches and inexpertly lights his cigarette. My mouth quirks into a puzzled smile as I watch him. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t. I stole it from Henry.” He takes a slow drag, coughs, and exhales. Scowling at the garden, where people have begun to mill around the path to the bonfire, he says, “There’s too many damn people.”

“I wish they were all gone.”

He arches a brow, the cigarette smoldering between his fingers. “You were the one who wanted them here.”

He’s right. I had insisted that we host the bonfire and invite most of the village, that it could serve as a belated birthday party and betrothal celebration all at once. And at the end of the night, they’ll see me off as I go to the grotto and attend our family’s altar. The same as any other bride on the night before her marriage.

I thought it would be easier this way. I didn’t realize how badly I would crave silence, that I’d long for the house to be empty of everyone except myself and my brothers. But now, as Oberon stubs out his cigarette and reaches for my hand, I remember why I wanted to surround myself with a crowd of people.

“Lark,” he begins, voice low. In the shadows of the arbor, his expression is all despair. “You don’t have to do this. We can find another way.”

“What other way? You and Henry leave everything behind, give up our home and our lands and all we’ve ever known?”

“If that’s what it takes, then yes.”

“No.” I set my teeth against the word. “I can’t go back to school, or graduate, or go to college. I don’t want that. I’m going to marry Therion. I’m an adult now, and this is my choice.”

His fingers tremble; he holds my hand like I am made of glass and he’s afraid I’ll shatter. “And you’re choosing to spend each salt season, for the rest of your life, in the chthonic world?”

“I am. And at the end of each season, I will come back to you and Henry. Back here, to our home, where we all belong.” I pull away from him, scrunching my hand against my skirts. I don’t want to be something fragile, too delicate to touch. If I must be glass, then I want to be the razored edge of a broken pane—sharp and dangerous. “We should find Henry. It’s almost time.”

Oberon is solemn and silent as he follows me out from the arbor and into the house.

The front room is even more crowded now. Stiflingly warm, and filled with the distracting hum of voices. Beside the fire, Henry is deep in conversation with someone. The light shifts, the figure turns, and it’s Alastair: dressed in a dark suit as though he’s on the way to a burial, his coat slung carelessly over his arm and silver cuff links glinting at his wrists.

I’m moving before I can think, my face flushed as I shove my way through the crowd toward him “What do you think you’re doing here?”

He regards me with bored indifference. “I was invited.”

“You weren’t.” Around us the conversation falls to a pin-drop silence as my voice grows louder.

Henry steps between us, and fixes me with a warning glare. “I invited him, Lark.”

“Well, I’m uninviting him.”

“I only wished to deliver my personal regards on your betrothal.” Alastair brushes an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve. His face is cool and impassive; if he feels anything about the fact I am about to be married, it doesn’t show.

“You’ve delivered them, so now you can leave.”

“And how fortunate,” he goes on, features calm as a marble sculpture, “that your new spouse has promised to settle your family’s debt.”

I clench my teeth, renewed humiliation flooding me when I think of how I asked for his help, the way he refused. A drone fills my ears, like the rising hum of a boiling kettle. I’m too hot, my chest gone tight, my palms slick with sweat. I take a heavy step forward, closing the distance between myself and Alastair.

“No thanks to you,” I hiss, then Henry catches hold of my arm.

“Lark, I need you to come upstairs with me. Now.”

His fingers tighten in the crook of my elbow as he guides me out of the room. Oberon is behind us. He closes the doors and shuts out the crowd. My last sight before I’m led up the stairs is Alastair, watching me leave with no sign of emotion in his storm-gray gaze.

We reach my bedroom, and Henry’s grasp slackens against my arm. He casts me a solemn look. “Really, Lark. Starting an argument with anyone—let alone Alastair Felimath—in the middle of your betrothal party is not the best idea.”

Neither Henry nor Oberon knows the full truth of what happened between Alastair and me. How close we really were before things fell apart. Why it hurts so much that he has become the way he is. And I can’t bear the thought of setting it into words now.

I press my hands to my flushed cheeks. “How could you invite him, and tell him I’m getting married to settle our debt?”

“How would it have looked if we didn’t invite him?” Oberon says. “He’s our closest neighbor. And we had to explain how we’ll suddenly have the means to repay what we owe.”

I cross to the window, lean my elbows against the sill. Alastair’s mocking words ring through my mind like a carillon bell. Your betrothal. “I’m tired of the way he acts like we owe him our entire existence.”

Henry paces around the center of my room. He exhales a weary breath. “Lark, it’s not too late to change your mind.”

I look down into the garden. Ribbons have been tied to the trees, turning them into springtime maypoles. Beyond is the path that leads over the clifftop to Saltswan. I think of Henry, walking that path as he went to invite Alastair to attend tonight. The same path he and Oberon had taken, years ago, to make their fateful promise to extend our parents’ debt.

The horrible truth is, we do owe our existence to the Felimaths. But that ends tonight. Soon the debt that has kept us beholden to Alastair’s family will be gone forever. My apprehension over what I’ll face when I go to the altar melts away, replaced by determined fury. With my promise to Therion, I’ll ensure that my family will never be at the mercy of the Felimaths again.

Squaring my shoulders, I go to my dresser and pick up my comb. “I want this,” I tell my brothers. “I’ve seen the cruelty of the mortal world; I have no fear of gods or monsters.”

Oberon hesitates for a moment, then crosses the room and takes the comb from me gently, his thumb casting against my knuckles. I put my back to him; he unties the ribbon that holds up my hair. As he starts to comb, the waves drape around my shoulders and down my back, heavy as a golden cloak.

“What happened to you at Marchmain?” Oberon asks quietly. But I only shake my head, unable to answer.

Across the room, hanging alongside the pastel-hued dresses once worn by a younger, heedless girl, is our mother’s betrothal veil. Taken from the trunk upstairs where it lay preserved in folds of paper. The cream-colored tulle is embroidered with crimson flowers, spilling like a gossamer stain down to the floor.

Oberon finishes with my hair. I search in the dresser and find a tube of lipstick, the same red as the veil flowers. I paint it on, press my rouged lips together. I can’t tell my brothers how thoroughly my only friend had shut me out, treated me like I’d turned invisible. Or what I did, after, trying to make her see me again.

All I can do is pull both of my brothers toward me until we’re tangled in an embrace. Oberon leans his cheek against my hair. Henry lays his hand on my shoulder, his fingers pressing my arm for a brief, tender moment. I can tell by the stilted way he is breathing that he is trying not to cry. Tears rise behind my lashes, but I blink them away.

“Don’t,” I whisper fiercely. “Don’t act like I’m going to my funeral.”

Henry squeezes me tighter. I want to stay like this forever. Let all the world fall away. But, with a sigh, I step back and we draw apart. Solemnly, Henry takes the veil from its hanger and fits it over my hair. The netted gauze turns everything the color of springtime sunset, when light scatters across the ocean waves like embers.

“You look beautiful,” Oberon says.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The red heart of my lips, the gold of my hair, the veil with its garden of flowers. I’ll go like this to the altar, for the final moments of my betrothal night. I’ll go like this, onward, when I meet Therion in the depths of the salt mine.

I gather up the train of my gown, tuck it into the crook of my arm. In single file, my brothers and I go back downstairs to the waiting crowd.

Everything goes still when I enter the room. It reminds me of the nights at Marchmain when I couldn’t sleep, and I’d open the window to hear the midnight bells from the Canticle, echoing through the moonlit air. Even with the veil over my face, I can’t ignore all the eyes on me.

“I’m ready,” I tell my brothers. “I’m ready to go.”

They flank me like guard dogs as I pass through the crowd: Oberon with his hand at the small of my back, Henry’s fingers curled beneath my elbow. The gathering of people draws back like a lowering tide as we cross the room, falling into line behind us as we go out into the rear garden. In a procession, we walk to the clifftop where the bonfire now burns.

I can’t help seeking out Alastair, who stands alone at the edge of the crowd. The light from the rising flames paints over him, outlining his profile in amber and gold. And suddenly I’m back in this same field, four years ago, the first and only time I returned from school during a term break. At the summer bonfire with Alastair, the last time we were together before everything between us fractured apart.

Our eyes meet, and I tense so furiously that my clenched teeth scrape the inside of my mouth. Swallowing down the bloodied taste of my bitten cheek, I glower at him. Anger simmers over me, heating my face beneath the veil. But I don’t turn away. He was so determined to be here, to witness this moment. So let him see.

We’re held in this moment of silent challenge. Alastair is the first to let his gaze drop. I continue onward toward the edge of the cliffs. As I walk, I seem to glimpse him everywhere in the crowd. He’s beside the bonfire, casting a wreath of flowers into the new flames. He’s beneath the wisteria arbor, smoking a stolen cigarette.

He’s beside a strange girl, whose features are hidden by the shadows. She’s tall and willowy, with dark hair drawn back in twin velvet bows. She leans toward Alastair with languorous grace, cupping her hand around his ear as she whispers to him.

There’s something familiar about her—but when I narrow my eyes, trying to make out her face, I realize the arbor is empty and it was little more than my imagination, playing tricks.

My brothers lead me to the breakwater, where a candle on each step lights the way down to the beach.

I pause at the apex of the stairs. Oberon’s fingers tremble against my spine. Henry passes me a small velvet bag with a ribboned handle that loops around my wrist. Inside is a flashlight, a bundle of herbs, and the obsidian mirror.

“Be safe,” he whispers. “We will see you at the end of the salt season.”

I’m too choked to speak, I can only nod. Any other girl might have an ivory veil, a golden band, or strands of polished pearls. But I have only this—a flower-sewn veil adorning my unbound hair, a black-salt betrothal ring, a magic mirror, and my brothers drawing me into what feels like a final embrace.

I curl between them, my eyes closed, the moth-quick sound of Henry’s heartbeat against my ear. Their bodies, hemming me in on either side, form a protective cave that closes out the sounds of the gathered crowd.

But I know it is time to leave. Silence trails me like a phantom train of silk as I step away from my brothers and walk down the stairs. The tide has lowered to reveal a flat stretch of beach, the sand packed hard and damp from the recent waves.

I walk alongside the water, my bare feet noiseless as they press into the sand. Just before I reach the place where the shoreline curves and the cliffs will hide me from view, I turn back for a last look.

Atop the cliff, silhouetted by the bonfire, Henry and Oberon begin to cast handfuls of flowers down onto beach. The waves draw in, catching up the petals and sweeping them out to the water’s surface, where they float like bitter snow.