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Damson brushed a strand of hair back from Lark’s temple. “I only wanted you close to protect you, Lark. You’re so happy at Marchmain. If you stayed with me, I would have kept you safe.”

Lark sniffled, blotting at a fresh rise of tears with the handkerchief Damson had given her. She could tell Damson was pleased to be right, even though she was so gentle and sympathetic. The Canticle bells began to chime, the notes as mournful as a sad folk ballad.

“Next time, I’ll stay,” Lark said. She knew it was the right choice,but even so, it made her chest ache to speak it aloud. “But I’ll miss my brothers so much.”

Damson slid her arm around Lark’s waist. “Write letters to your brothers when you miss them. Write to them every day and leave that horrible boy to be forgotten in Verse.”

Lark smiled sadly and snuggled closer against Damson. Even with the leaden heat, which drew sweat from her skin in all the places they touched, it soothed her to be held like this. Alastair may have broken her heart, but Damson had given her a place to land after she fell.

She wiped her eyes, folded the handkerchief back into her pocket. Half jokingly, she said, “If I’m accepted into the curation program, then I could stay in the city forever, even after I graduate.”

Damson was silent, her fingers idly stroking Lark’s nape, the downy hair. After a long moment, she cast Lark a sidelong glance. “Are you going to apply?”

“I—I’ve been thinking about it.” Lark felt suddenly anxious. It was the first time she’d spoken about the program, except for when she told Alastair. She hadn’t even mentioned it to her brothers yet. It was too close-kept, like a spell that would be undone if she gave it voice.

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until Damson smiled, and said, “I have, too. We should apply together. If we submit a joint application, that will prove they need to accept us both instead of anyone else. After all, who would be better suited to curate Ottavio Caedmon’s works than two girls from Verse?”

“Would that be possible?”

“Of course,” Damson said confidently. “In fact, I’ve already spoken about it with Headmistress Blanche.”

“But you didn’t know I was even going to apply until just now.”

Damson took Lark’s face between her hands. She regarded her levelly, all dark-eyed seriousness. “I know you better than anyone, Lark.”

Lark bit her lip. Damson’s kindness was startling; it made a hot ache spread through her chest, made her want to cry again. So much wasuncertain, but right now, Lark knew she had never loved anything—or anyone—as fiercely as she loved Damson.

They sat together and watched as early stars rose over the courtyard sky. Only a few were visible here compared with Verse, because of the pollution and the salt-powered streetlamps. Nights were different in the city. It was never truly dark.

How might it be to stay here and never return home, if not forever, then at least until she graduated? Lark pictured her life laid out as clearly as Caedmon’sThe Dusk of the Godsmural, several key moments in their own painted panels. Walking beside the river. Buying strawberry pastries from the café district. Evenings in the gallery just before the closing hour, when the exhibition rooms were empty and the whole place felt like it belonged solely to her.

All through her first year at Marchmain she had longed to be back in Verse. Homesickness was a constant companion, rising to greet her in every quiet moment. But now when Lark thought of wildflower fields and the ocean’s hush, Eline left behind in her bedroom, she felt conflicted, sorrowful. Here at Marchmain she had purpose; she had someone who cared deeply for her, whoknewher.

At Marchmain, there would be no Alastair Felimath to break her heart.

Lark wrote her brothers a telegram the next evening, after the first day of classes had finished. Standing at the desk in the campus post office, her hands shook as she penciled her message into the little box for the telegraph operator. The letters smudged and blurred, her unease marked on the page.

She handed over the form, paid for the express service. The coins clinked as the telegraph operator placed them in the till. Lark gripped the edge of the counter. She had to make a concentrated effort to loosen her grasp, to turn around, to walk away.

This was the right choice. Itwas. As Lark went into the library, where she and Damson had agreed to meet, she thought of the altar her family kept for Therion. She’d gone down to the sea caves and recited her prayers when she returned, laying a new shell down on the velvet cloth in offering.

Denying herself a return home, denying the familiar comfort of her brothers, was like that shell. An offering paid in sacrifice for the new life she wanted, far from Saltswan. Her future belonged to Astera, the busy city streets, the slow-moving river, the courtyard elms. Days spent with Damson, filled with library books and gallery visits.

But by the end of the week, there was a reply from her brothers in Lark’s student mailbox. A telegram asking her to call them. Her family didn’t own a telephone, but they had written down the number for the village post office. They would be waiting, and Lark should call them the next morning.

She didn’t tell Damson about the note. She couldn’t. In the past, whenever Lark had spoken at length about her family, Damson would turn solemn and silent.

“I know you don’t mean to hurt me,” she finally explained, “but think how it feels, to hear about your brothers who love you so much, when all I have is my grandmother, who can barely remember to write once a year.”

If Lark showed her the telegram, it would be a disaster. And Damson had been so kind to her since she came home, buying Lark little presents to cheer her up: a new velvet ribbon, a cherry-colored lip stain. She had even shared photostats of all the first week’s notes from every class, neatly highlighted, because she knew Lark was upset over Alastair and would have trouble concentrating.

So the telegram sat like a burning ember in the depths of Lark’s satchel, hidden and secret, as she left the dorms early the next morning. She slipped out through the side gate of Marchmain, even thoughit was against the rules to leave the campus so early without a permission note. In the city, she found an anonymous public telephone booth at the corner of two quiet streets.

At the other end of the block, people were crossing the main thoroughfare on their way to work. The sound of voices and footsteps, and the engines of passing cars, formed a backdrop to the ringing that echoed up from the receiver after she dialed.

Lark gave her name to the person who answered the telephone. “My brothers are expecting me to call.”

Soon Henry came on the line. “Lark, what is all this about you not coming back? Is something wrong?”