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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 bagthat’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 itto 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 ishere—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 distinctlyother: 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. “Whynotyou?”

“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 lowershimself 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.