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His eyes go dark; he steps toward me. We’re only a breath apart, with the deep ocean below us. I can see the stark flush rising across his cheeks. Voice low, bitter and furious, he says, “You don’t knowanythingabout me, Lacrimosa. I’m not going to beg for clemency on your behalf; I’m not going to change my mind—and neither will my father. So spare me your insults.”

He turns so swiftly that his hair whips against his jaw. I watch him walk away, his head bowed, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Hot tears fill my eyes. I scrub at my face with my sleeve, angry at Alastair, angrier at myself for daring to hope for anything but the worst from him.

Alone on the shore, I try to picture the shape of my days ahead. Living in an apartment with my brothers, studying for makeup exams, if I can even find another school that will let me sit them. While the place I dreamed of taking refuge in after my expulsion—our cottage and the cliffs and the endless, wild coastline of Verse—is gone.

I thought I’d already lost everything. My closest friends—firstAlastair, then Damson—my reputation, my dreams for the future. As I make my way back toward the cottage, all I want is to run upstairs and hide in my bedroom. Curl up in my too-small bed with Eline cuddled in my arms. Lick my wounds as I listen to the sound of the waves.

But all of this is going to be lost, too.

I want to drag Alastair Felimath to the top of the highest cliff and shove him into the hungry ocean. I want to follow the path to Saltswan and break every shining window until it can no longer stare down at me. I want to go back to the time when Damson and I were still friends, two Verse girls who promised to always be together.

I’m tired, tired, tired of being powerless.

Instead of home, I go to the beach, heading past the breakwater to where the waves lie flat and still against the shore. Slowly, I take off my clothes, stripping down to my underthings. Free from the skirt and blouse I wore on my last day at school, it all feels so permanent. I’m no longer at the liminal space between there and here, where I could pretend it wasn’t real. That I could go back.

Standing beside the breakwater rocks, I unfasten my bracelets and set them one by one into a clinking stack. Then, teeth gritted, I unwind the bandages from my arm. I try very hard not to look at the large cut on my skin.

In my lace bra and cotton underwear, I wade into the sea. When it’s up to my waist, I take a deep breath and plunge beneath. It’s cold as ice, closing over my head in a bubbling rush. My stitches sting. I draw myself through the water with overarm strokes.

I’m clumsy at first, but all Verse children learn to swim before they can walk. Soon, memory guides my limbs and I’m kicking strongly as I make my way down the coastline, toward the caves at the base of the cliffs.

When I reach the place where the arch of the grotto opens out tothe ocean, I tread water, peering through the rocks to Therion’s altar as the sea laps my collarbones. The ends of my hair trail down my back like strands of kelp. The cliffs cast a shadow across the water, and everything feels blurred and soft.

Slowly, I float toward the rocks. As I emerge, shivering, into the cave, I pretend that I am in Therion’s arms. His feathered wings are enfolded around me. When I say I’ll be his bride, he smiles at me, and his teeth are sharp, stained indigo with liquor from a silver flask. And in the hollowed depths of our mine, the empty veins turn crystalline with new salt that’s black as an obsidian mirror. An endless wellspring that replenishes harvest after harvest. The debt repaid, everything resolved.

I approach the altar in careful, measured steps. Water still covers the floor of the cave, and it washes against my ankles as I walk, tepid as a bath after the chill of the wider ocean. The velvet altar cloth hangs askew, the arrangement of seashells scattered. Carefully, I straighten the cloth. Set the toppled candlesticks back upright.

I gather the shells. Then, one by one, I lay them out on the altar, taking my time to arrange them in a pleasing pattern. My skin is prickled with goose bumps, and a quaver of fear goes through me. I close my eyes and let myself wonder what it will be like to belong to a god.

I’m afraid. But, despite the fear, I’m certain this is what I want. I’ve spent so long feeling helpless. First Alastair broke my heart, then the life I’d built for myself at Marchmain was gone because of Damson. It wasn’t just that she ended our friendship, cutting the bond between us in a swift, ruthless motion. She also made certain that everything I’d strived for—my love of art, my dreams for the future—was completely destroyed.

It’s as though before this moment I was caught in the riptide off the jagged shore, pulled along by a current with no say over where I might land. But now I’ve anchored myself in a place of my own choosing.

This is a terrible, foolish decision but it is mine to make.

I place down the final shell, a sleek abalone with a pearlescent sheen inside. I lay my palm over it and close my eyes. “Therion,” I say, my words echoing against the rocks, “I will marry you.”

A rush of air circles through the grotto. The water stirs, waves rising against my bare legs. At first there is only silence. Then, like a whisper, comes my name.“Lacrimosa.”

“Yes,” I answer.

“You are sure of this?”

“Yes. I am sure.”

“Then come to me on equinox night, to my altar in the depths of the salt mine. There, you will become my bride.”

Therion’s voice is not like it was in the cave, stark and strong andreal. This time, when he speaks, it is delicate as a secret, as though he stands right beside me, as though his lips are against my ear. But when I open my eyes, I am alone. It might have been only my imagination… if not for the fact that in the shell, beneath my hand, is a pale feather and a silver betrothal ring, set with a gleaming crystal of black salt.

I leave the caves for home, with my crumpled blouse draped over my shoulders, sand on my feet, and my lips rasped raw from the wind. Ignoring my brothers, who call out to me when they hear the door close, I go upstairs. In the bathroom, I fill the tub with steam-hot water and wash the salt from my hair and the sand from my skin.

When I make my way down to the kitchen, wearing one of my old dresses and with a new bandage on my arm, the birthday cake my brothers made for me is still on the table.

Oberon and Henry come into the room as I am lighting the candles. I look at them across the bank of flames. Water drips from the ends of my hair and it feels cold as the midnight sea.

I lay my hand flat on the edge of the table. My betrothal ring islike a mark of punctuation on my finger, the black crystal reflecting the shift and flicker of the candles. My brothers stare at it, realization marking their features with twin expressions of horror.

“I will marry Therion,” I tell them, then I lean forward and blow out all of the eighteen candles on my heart-shaped cake.