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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 thebestidea.”

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 leadsover 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. Henrylays 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.”