CHAPTER SIX Now
Inside the cave, Therion’s altar is lit by a row of candles. The air is golden and shifting, my shadow thrown large against the smooth stone walls as I approach.
My brothers came here earlier to prepare the chamber. And if I were an ordinary bride, I would spend the rest of tonight here alone. I would sip from the flask of chthonic liquor as the candles burned down. I would recite the betrothal prayer, and after the end of the bonfire, I would return home for one final time before traveling to meet my intended.
I lay my hand on the altar, between two pearlescent shells. It feels strange to think of reciting a prayer to the creature whom I’m about to meet. But I bow my head and begin to whisper the words. “Therion, lord of sea and woods and salt…”
Before I can finish, a sound echoes from the opposite side of the cave, where the grotto opens into the ocean. I turn quickly toward it. There, bobbing gently on the surface of the waves, is a boat. I peer through the gauze of my veil at it in wonder.
The boat is a swan, tied to the rocks with a length of nautical rope. Its neck arches, cirriform as a harvest blade. Wings, carved cloudlike to mimic the pattern of feathers, frame the small interior that’s cushioned with a folded pastel blanket.
A startled sound escapes me. I press my hand to my mouth beneath the veil. To the altar, I say, “You really have thought of everything.”
The main entrance to our family’s salt mine is on the clifftops: a large gateway that opens to a set of stairs leading down and down and down. But there’s another way in that can only be reached by boat. With this strange swan, I can sail to Therion rather than walking across the cliffs.
Now is the moment of no return. Once I step into the boat and leave for the mine, I will be on a path that will take me far from home. Into another world. I won’t see the sky or the ocean or my brothers until the end of the harvest season.
“It’s only for six months,” I tell myself. “It won’t be very long.”
But right now, it feels like eternity.
I gather up my skirts, ready to cross through the shallow waves and climb into the boat. Then a sound comes from behind me: a flurry of seabirds, calling raucously, as they take off from the shore and rise into the sky. I turn sharply and narrow my eyes to the beach.
Night has marked everything in dusky shadows, turned it faded as the smeared ink of a photostat. But there, in a darkened space near the edge of the rocks, I glimpse movement. The flutter of fabric. The shift of footsteps.
My heartbeat rises. I wonder for a brief, foolish moment if my brothers have come to try to dissuade me one final time. It’s not what I want, but there’s a fleeting quaver in my chest as I take a slow step toward the figure.
“I don’t recall the words It’s only for six months being part of the betrothal prayer. But I haven’t studied it closely, I admit.”
Camille Felimath steps out onto the shore. She smiles, one brow arched mischievously. I let out a startled laugh as I realize that she was the girl I noticed in the crowd, the one who seemed so familiar. “Camille! What are you doing here?”
“I just got back from Trieste. I’ve finally graduated from Beauvoir Academy. That wretched place—I had to take an extra term because my grades were so bad. I don’t care, though. It’s so nice to be home, especially since Father is away and can’t lecture me.”
I stare at her, disoriented by the fact that she is so near. For more than a decade Camille has been such a distant, ephemeral creature. My childhood friend, Alastair’s exiled sister, so far away, an entire ocean between us. Now, though I recognize her features—those storm-gray eyes and her heart-shaped, clever face—she feels so different from the girl I sat beside in the village school.
“No,” I falter. “I mean, what are you doing here?”
I glance behind Camille, wondering if anyone else has followed her. But the beach is empty save for the twin rows of our footprints on the sand. A distant orange glow lights the sky near the clifftop where the bonfire still burns.
“I wanted to offer my congratulations on your betrothal, of course.”
She moves forward. I go to meet her at the grotto’s entrance, because I don’t want her to come all the way in and see the swan boat, tethered at the other side of the caves. The wind has drawn her hair from her velvet bows. A dark strand crosses her cheek, striping her smile. Framed by ocean and sky and darkness, she’s lucent as the moon.
Camille offers her hand to me. I hesitate for a moment, then reach out to clasp it. Her palm is warm and smooth. She has a ribbon tied around her wrist, matching the ones in her hair. And I’m both terribly sorry and hopelessly glad that I’m leaving tonight. I’ve missed her so much that it aches, but after what happened between Alastair and me, it’s impossible that Camille and I could ever be friends in the way we once were.
A wave crashes against the rocks. Far out on the starlit water, a seabird calls with a high, keening cry. Camille traces her thumb against my wrist, smiles her mischievous smile.
“You look very beautiful, Lacrimosa,” she says, and the luring, secretive gleam in her eyes makes my stomach swoop. She lifts her hand, smoothing a crease from my veil. Softly, she asks, “Can I kiss you goodbye?”
Bright heat crosses my skin. A brief flicker of memory passes over me, of my first and only kiss—Damson’s mouth on mine, her eager grin as she announced Now we’ll always belong to each other. Of Alastair and me in the field at the summer bonfire, our foreheads pressed, the hitch of his breath, how badly I wanted to close that distance but never did.
The only intimate moments I’ve shared have been with people who both despise me now. I imagine it being erased by Camille’s touch. Camille, who was once my friend, who braided ribbons in my hair and held my hand as we walked home from school. Who, in this moment, is drawing a strange, sharp-edged wanting from me. A flicker of desire like a guarded flame.
She reminds me of a time when I didn’t hurt.
Slowly, I nod. Camille raises her hand to my jawline. Her thumb is beneath my chin, tilting my face upward. A dark thrill goes through me, and I feel bold and dangerous. She brushes her lips against my cheek, kissing me through the veil. Then she pauses, as if waiting to see what I will do next. She still wears the same perfume I remember. It smells sweet and syrupy, like glazed strawberries.
Her hand goes to my waist, fingers tracing an unhurried caress through my gown. There’s a question in her eyes, in the arch of her brow, in the way she touches me. I’m overtaken by fierce, helpless longing. I want to preserve this forever, to hold her close, to start all over again.
I rock onto my tiptoes, kissing Camille on her lips. My veil is between us, all rasp and silk. I taste salt, and an electric current goes all the way down my spine. My eyes scrunch closed as Camille kisses me back. She’s still smiling; I can feel the shape of it against my mouth.
I drag her closer, feeling the arch of her ribs and the curve of her hip beneath her velvet dress. She laughs, quietly, then her teeth scrape my lower lip. My pulse rises to a tangled staccato in the hollow of my throat. Camille brushes a final kiss against my veiled mouth, then draws back. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Congratulations again on your betrothal, Lacrimosa.”
I watch as she goes back across the beach in the direction of the bonfire gathering. As she rounds the cliffs, she grins, lifting a hand in farewell before disappearing out of sight. I can still feel the trace of her fingers on my waist, and the hot, open press of her lips on mine.
I take a deep breath, sigh into the dark. I blow out the candles at Therion’s altar, hitch up my skirts, and wade through the shallow water to the swan boat.
I lay my hand on the swan’s proud, curved neck. I think of smoke and salt, the taste of wine. An orange-eyed gaze that watches me, unblinking. As I climb into the boat, the wind rises, catching up sparks from the bonfire and pulling them into the air. I untie the tether rope, unfurl the sail, and settle myself in the blanket-soft cradle between the swan’s wings.
The boat drifts out to the wider sea, carrying me swiftly toward the hidden entrance of our salt mine. A narrow pier beneath silvered moonlight, a simple wooden doorway above the waves.
I throw my tether rope out to catch the pier post. Hand over hand, I draw my swan across the waves until it settles beside the dock. As I walk across the beach toward the mine entrance, the air turns unnaturally still. Even the sea has smoothed until it’s as flat as glass.
With trembling hands, I take the flashlight from the velvet bag that’s tied to my wrist. Clicking it alight, I climb the narrow stairs that lead to the entrance in the cliffside.
Our salt mine is carved like a cathedral, with vaulted ceilings interlaid by wooden support beams. When I was last here, the walls of the corridor were marbled by black salt veins, but now there’s only smooth, clear stone. The empty cuts are like scars.
It feels strange to walk down this corridor without my brothers on either side of me. The mine is so quiet without the sound of voices or the steel-on-salt noise of the harvest crew at work.
I go down and down and down. Shivering as the air grows colder. Then, at the very depths, a doorway marks the end of the corridor. Beyond it is the small chamber housing another altar to Therion. We rarely use it except at the end of the salt harvest, when we recite a prayer that marks the close of the season.
There’s a low shelf notched into the wall. On it sits a silver flask of chthonic liquor, a circle of seashells, and the carved figure of an ivory-pale swan, a clutch of tapers in the hollow between its wings. Beneath the shelf is an iron brazier.
I’m strung tight; tensed and anxious, I reach into the velvet bag and take out the bundle of herbs and the obsidian mirror. I kneel beside the brazier, folding up my skirts beneath me, careful of the trailing ends of my veil. With a taper from the carved swan, I strike a flame. I scatter the herbs in the brazier, then set them alight.
Smoke curls up, delicate as a thread stitched through the air. I close my eyes and lean forward. A plume rises from the brazier and traces my lips, then spills down my throat. The taste of salt, of ash, of wormwood, is achingly familiar. Even though I’m far beneath the ground, I can hear the sound of the sea.
I look into the mirror. “Therion,” I say, and my voice is too loud in this chambered space.
Carefully, I uncap the flask and slip it beneath my veil, raise it to my lips. The chthonic liquor is richer, older than the one on our seaside altar. It tastes of crushed berries and roses, and burns when I swallow.
“Therion,” I say again. This time, his name is a whisper.
The air is filled with smoke; it hazes my vision, burning my half-closed eyes. The circle of obsidian shimmers and ripples. I blink, and he is here—whole and impossibly real, so much more than the abstract reflection in the caves beside the sea.
He is everything and nothing like the lithe figure that slipped through the forest in Caedmon’s mural. His face is impossibly youthful; he looks only a little older than me, with a smooth jaw and softness in the lines of his cheeks. But the rest of his features mark him as distinctly other: the pallid feathers that frame his shoulders, the brilliant amber of his eyes.
He’s a god. A god standing before a foolish, mortal girl. And before I can think to hold it back, I blurt out, “Why me?”
Therion laughs. The sound of it goes right through to my bones, pressing against my rib cage, my spine, the inside of my skull. “Why not you?”
“What do you want with someone like me?”
His mouth twists, a boyish expression of amusement that settles into something keen eyed and curious. “Lacrimosa. My betrothed. Are you sorry to be chosen?”
The truth of it is: I’m not. I think of my last moments at Marchmain, packing my suitcase as the fresh stitches throbbed on my wounded arm. Sitting numbly on the train, too bereft to even cry. How desperately I’d wished for something larger and braver than myself, a hand of fate that could reach down and pluck me from this situation.
Therion can’t spin back time or give me the future I’ve lost. But this, our betrothal, offers another way forward. “No,” I tell him. “I’m not.”
He smiles at this, dipping his head in a pleased nod. Then he lowers himself to kneel before me, so our faces are even. His eyes are like orange coals through the dark fringe of his lashes. Hazed by curling brazier smoke, his teeth are sharp, his hand far too large to be anything mortal. He is seafoam and storms and starlight. “Do you fear me?”
I press my rouged lips together, my mouth gone dry. “No,” I say, but it comes out wavery and uncertain.
Therion reaches for my hand. Feathers trickle between his fingers. He has translucent, crystalline claws. “Don’t be afraid. You are mine, Lacrimosa. I will never harm you.”
I’m trembling, shuddering, but somehow, I manage to lay my fingers against his palm. The ring he gave me is on my finger, the finely cut salt crystal shimmering in the dark.
He draws the veil from my face. His eyes glow bright as flames as he watches me, smiling his sharp-toothed smile. I’m still holding the flask, and he curls his fingers around my own, guiding the flask to my mouth. His palms are warm and, strangely, calloused in the way my brothers’ hands are.
The chthonic liquor pours hotly over my tongue. I swallow, feel it smeared, bitter and indigo, across my mouth. Therion takes the flask from me and drinks, a slow swallow. I watch the motion of his long, elegant throat.
“Don’t be afraid,” he tells me again.
I sit up on my knees. I put my hand against his cheek. His skin is as smooth and cool as the hidden stone walls of the sea cave. His breath riffles against the inside of my wrist. I think of Alastair, watching me across the crowd at the bonfire. I think of Camille, the softness of her lips.
“I’m not afraid,” I say. And then I kiss him.
His mouth against mine is the night itself, a starless dark that speaks of ancient things, of the deep, strange lands beyond this world. His tongue sweeps roughly over mine. I taste the liquor on his lips. Everything begins to blur and blur and blur.
His touch makes me dizzy. Beneath me, the ground rocks like the swan boat did on the waves, a lullaby rhythm. I curl into his arms—my bridegroom. Therion grazes kisses against my cheeks, my throat. He breathes my name into my hair. He draws me close with a rustle of feathers.
I clasp the obsidian mirror in my hands, its weight heavy against my chest.
For one entire winter, I had pretended to fall asleep beside the fireplace each night so my brothers would carry me upstairs to bed. They had played along, Henry and Oberon, each taking turns. Pretending not to see the smile that twitched on my mouth, the way my lashes fluttered as I kept my eyes closed.
That is how it feels to be taken into Therion’s world. A slow, delirious not-quite-sleep.
Then, a crackling pierces through the quiet. It’s muted at first, like the sound of rain against my bedroom window. But swiftly, the noise grows louder, louder, louder. Becomes a rising storm, the aching groan of branches bowed fiercely by the wind. Then—the crack of broken bone.
I open my eyes. The room is still hazy with smoke, but I see a figure moving toward me. They’re speaking—chanting—words running together like smudged ink. The same phrase, over and over. “Sennvh devlient, fume devlient. Sennvh devlient, fume devlient.”
“No!” Therion snarls, all bared teeth and fury, his claws flexing against my waist.
There’s a flash of brightness. The brazier flares, then darkens—its flames doused. Everything turns black. Therion howls, pained and furious; there’s a scrape of claws on stone, the snap of razored teeth.
I try to go to him, but something catches hold of my hair. The unbound length of it is twisted into a rope, and the chanting stranger is pulling, pulling me away from my wounded god. “Stop!” I cry, struggling against them. “Let me go!”
A chunk of stone comes away from the ceiling and topples down, shattering against the floor. Charred leaves from the brazier crush beneath my bare feet. I claw at the stranger, my fingers scrabbling against their shirtsleeve. A flare of light casts through the room, dazzling me as it shines into my eyes. I blink, seeing nothing but brightness. Then, with a snick, the grasp on my hair is loosened.
I stagger forward, caught in the tangle of my veil. An arm slides around my waist, catching me. A voice, familiar, whispers into my ear. “Stay still. I’m going to get you out.”
“Alastair?”
More rocks crash down around us. Alastair drags me out of their way. A fall of light captures my attacker, illuminating him. He’s a boy—older than me, but younger than my brothers—with a narrow-jawed face half-hidden by his golden hair. His shoulders are angular, knifelike, beneath his tailored shirt.
I can’t see Therion anywhere.
“What are you doing here?” I cry out to the stranger. “What do you want?”
Before the stranger can answer, Alastair lifts me into his arms. He turns swiftly and carries me out of the chamber. He’s stronger than I expected, muscles drawn taut as I try to get free. “Alastair, put me down! I have to stay with Therion.”
“I didn’t come all the way down here just to watch you be crushed to death,” he sneers.
Another cascade of rocks tears from the ceiling. Stones fall, heavy and shuddering. The air fills with dust. Alastair pulls me close, protectively, and he begins to run. He carries me through the salt mine, the beam from his flashlight bouncing erratically as it lights our path. He doesn’t glance back even once, doesn’t hesitate. Only goes forward.
Eventually, I see a stretch of sky. More rocks tumble down with a brutal crash. We hurry out into the night, away from the mine’s entrance and back onto the pier.
Alastair lowers me down near where the swan boat is still tethered. He’s breathing raggedly, sweat beaded at his temples, his hair full of dust. He cups a shaking hand against my cheek. “Lark.” There’s a hitch in his voice, a quaver of furious fear. “Lark, are you hurt?”
I stare at him, helpless with shock. He’s been so remote and cruel ever since the day when he thoroughly severed our friendship. When he made it clear I meant nothing to him. Now he’s saying my name with incongruous tenderness, when for so long he’s only ever called me Lacrimosa, his mouth drawn into a sneer, like the syllables taste bitter.
“Alastair,” I rasp, my throat roughened from the smoke. “Who was that boy?”
“I had to cut your hair,” he says.
None of this makes sense. Beneath us, the pillars of the pier creak and groan. The wind has changed, rushing swiftly across the ocean, sending the waves into a frothing riot that crashes against the base of the cliffs. Sea spray fills the air. More chunks of rock fall down into the water. The swan boat is wrenched back and forth at the end of its straining rope.
I choke, gagging at the taste of bitter liquor that floods my mouth. My hand, weighted by the ring, feels senselessly heavy. Everything spins and blurs and I’m lost to thoughts of the scattered brazier, the strange chant, and Therion—vanished.
Alastair’s hands curve around my own. He prizes my fingers apart and pulls the obsidian mirror from my grasp. I shove myself upright, my heartbeat spiked with panic. “Give that back!”
I grab for the mirror, but the movement sends a rush of dizziness over me. The last thing I see, before I black out, is Alastair Felimath placing the mirror into his pocket.