Page 13

His fingers tighten, and he strokes his thumb against my clavicle as he gives me a stern look. “The discussion is over, Lark. Now sit down, and we can have breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry.” I step away from Henry, pushing his hand from my shoulder. Moving past the table with its teapot and pink-iced cake, I open the back door.

“Where are you going?” Oberon asks.

“I want to take a walk, to clear my head. You can eat breakfast without me.”

Before either of my brothers can argue, I go out into the garden and close the door. I wait for a moment, wondering if they will follow. But they remain inside. I turn away from the cottage, going barefoot past the wisteria arbor and toward the path that leads through our gate and away over the clifftops.

Everything about the day is still: the ocean flat as glass where it presses the rocky breakwater, the wildflowers in the field as motionless as a painting. But I am alight with restless frustration. I walk swiftly, my fists clenched at my sides. Keep my gaze fixed to the distance, where Saltswan is a darkened shape against the morning sky, perched at the far edge of the cliffs like a carrion crow.

I swore I’d never speak to Alastair again. Not after what he did, the summer when I was fourteen, when everything changed. He cleaved me so neatly from his life, it was as though I’d never been there at all.

But I refuse to give up, to sit as powerless as the water nymph in Caedmon’sAnnabel by the Sea, chained to a rock and watching helplessly as the tide draws out, leaving her stranded on the shore. Even if that means appealing to Alastair Felimath.

The first time I went to Saltswan with him, when I still thought him a friend, the house had been shuttered and closed. Now thewindows are uncovered and the tall panes of shining glass watch, keen eyed, as I approach. Then, as I round a curve in the path, I notice a lone figure on the beach below the house.

In spite of everything, seeing Alastair down by the shore gives me a small flash of relief. At least this way we can meet on neutral ground, rather than beneath the accusing stare of Saltswan’s windows.

He’s at the farthest point of the beach, where the sand gives way to tide pools and rocks. Here, the coastline slants abruptly into the water, and the ocean is deep, the water a cold blue-black. A riptide carves lines of foam across the waves; it’s so fierce that even the seabirds refuse to settle on this stretch of water.

But Alastair sits calmly at the edge of the rocks, with his trousers rolled up and his bare feet dipped in the inky sea. He’s reading a book, all his attention focused on the pages. His legs move idly back and forth, tugged by the current.

I imagine pushing him, hard, right between his broad shoulders. Watching him sink below the water, blurry and lost as he’s caught up and dragged into the depths. But a boy who sits fearlessly at the edge of a riptide could surely swim free of the strongest current.

He turns at the sound of my approach. The sleeves of his linen shirt are pushed back, and his collar is unbuttoned. On the winter-bleached skin at the crooks of his elbows, his veins are raised and blue—the same color as chthonic liquor.

Alastair closes his book. I catch a glimpse of the title, written in an unfamiliar language. “It’s Tharnish,” he says haughtily when he notices me trying to read it.

No one has spoken Tharnish for hundreds of years. If anyone learns it at all, it’s only scraps of obscure phrases fromThe Neriad, an epic poem detailing the wanderings of an ancient folk hero. One of Caedmon’s earliest sketches was of a scene in which the hero crosses through an ethereal forest while the old gods watch him from the shadows between the trees.

“I should have known you were the type to read a dead language for fun.”

Scowling, Alastair tucks the book away beneath his arm. He looks at me more closely, taking in my appearance for the first time. “Lacrimosa, you look like hell.”

I shake back my hair, feigning indifference, even as I feel the itch of sand against my scalp and the dampness that clings to my disheveled clothes. The bandages on my arm are tattered and loosening; my stitches sting from salt.

I’d wanted to come to him aloof and icy, like a queen granting favors. Now, though, at the edge of the sea with my tangled hair and the taste of chthonic liquor still on my tongue, all of that melts away.

“Change your mind,” I demand.

“About how you look?” He snorts derisively. “I suppose you might make a half-decent supplicant to the Salt Priests. You’ll have to brush your hair first.”

The Salt Priests are a peculiar, reclusive cult who live in an isolated compound in the northern reaches of Verse. They drink from the sea and clothe themselves in shirts of woven kelp. Sometimes, walking home from school beneath the low clouds of a promised storm, Camille, Alastair, and I would make up horror stories about them to frighten each other. Tiptoeing close to the sea, pretending a kelp-wrapped arm was about to grab us from the waves.

It sends a pang through me, his casual mention of this—somehow it would almost be kinder if he had forgotten that timebefore. When we were friends. I push aside the ache in my chest that rises with the memory and grit my teeth. “You know what I mean. Change your mind about the debt.”

“I can’t.”

He doesn’t even pause to consider before answering me. And just like when I overhead him speaking to my brothers, there’s not even the barest trace of apology in his voice. “You can’t, or youwon’t?”

Slowly, he draws his feet from the sea and stands to face me. The wind tugs at his hair. He pushes the dark strands from his eyes with the edge of his wrist. He glares at me, and he’s cold, cold, cold—as merciless as the frozen north that swallowed up my parents. “My father has entrusted me to settle this debt and I mean to see it done.”

“My brothers are going to sell our home. We will have to leave Verse because of you. Does that make you pleased, to know you’ll take everything from us?”

Alastair gives a little flinch, like I’ve wounded him. Then his mouth twists into a sneer. “Don’t act so altruistic. It’s hardlyyourhome. You haven’t been back in four years.”

“Camille has been away at her boarding school for even longer; does that mean Saltswan isn’t her home, either?” I let out a snarl, my hands clenched into fists. “Why not admit the truth: You’re too much of a coward to disobey your father.”