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Henry shakes his head. “That money is for your schooling, Lark. But even if we had it back, it wouldn’t be enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alastair has claimed the debt—immediately, with interest.”

I stare at him helplessly. Maybe, if I wait for long enough, his words will reorder themselves into a different meaning. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t escape the raw truth: It wasn’t enough for Alastair to hurtme; now he’s come after my whole family.

It’s calculating and cruel, and so typicallyAlastair, to step eagerly into the place left by his father. There’s a painful, personal edge to it—he was so vicious in the past when he destroyed our friendship. Now, he’s claiming the debt with the same ruthlessness. “Anything,” I whisper, the words catching between my teeth. “Anything but this, anyone but him.”

My hands have started to tremble. Oberon takes the flask from me, closes it, and places it back on the altar. “It’s all right, Lark,” he soothes. “We’re going to take care of it.”

“How, if the mine is empty?”

He hesitates, then glances toward Henry, as though to steel himself.“We’re going to sell the estate. Even with the mine not operational, between the house and the land there will be enough to settle what we owe.”

“No,” I say, choked. “You can’t.”

“It’s already been decided. There will be enough left over to rent a small apartment near the city. We’ll be close by when you’re in college. You know that we’ve always promised to take care of you. And we will. You don’t need to worry.”

I thought I was immune to shock, numb to it, after everything that happened at Marchmain. But a stark, sudden hurt reverberates through me like a slap; my ears ring, my breath stutters. I clutch at my bandaged arm, fingers pressed down hard. “So I’m supposed to let the Felimaths take everything from you, from us, because you don’t want me toworry?”

“It’s decided,” Henry reiterates, fixing me with a steel-hard look. “What we want, Lark, is for you to be in school. Your application for the curatorship was to be decided this month, not to mention your graduate exams. So, tell me: Why aren’t you at Marchmain?”

I turn away from Henry’s searching gaze, focus instead on the altar. The candle flame shifts and dances like a fluttering moth. The light blurs as my eyes fill with tears. “I was expelled.”

Swallowing back a rising sob, I stumble forward to the altar. I lay my hand over a shell, rasping my thumb across its fluted edge. Oberon touches my shoulder gently. “Why?”

I think of loveless eyes and shattered glass. The way my body felt hollow and bird-boned when I realized what I’d done. Shame turns me hot, makes my voice small. “I broke the rules.”

“Which rules?”

Tears spill over my cheeks, and I shake my head. Closing my hand tighter around the shell, I begin to recite the prayer we have always spoken at homecoming. “Therion, lord of sea and woods and salt, I have returned to your lands and ask that you hold me safe.”

I press my lips together, tasting the inky remnants of chthonic liquor. Now I’ve begun, I should lay it all bare, confess my transgressions to my brothers and our god. But the words catch in my throat. I cannot speak.

All I can do is stand at the altar with my head bowed and candlelight gilding my tear-wet lashes. When the final harvest was taken from our dying mine, I was miles and miles away, working fervently on my essay for the curatorship and imagining my future surrounded by Caedmon’s greatest works.

And while I dreamed of that future, while I ruined my chances at getting it, my brothers gave up almost everything. Now Alastair Felimath is going to take what is left.

Suddenly, the space inside the grotto feels airless, heavy with sooty candle smoke and liquor fumes. Pushing away from the altar, I hurry out of the cave and onto the beach. My head drops back as I drag in a desperate breath, scrubbing the tears from my eyes with the sleeve of my coat.

The tide has crept higher. A wave breaks near my feet. Heavy clouds blanket the sky, and far offshore, a flicker of lightning blooms. The air crackles with the promise of a storm.

When Henry and Oberon return from the caves, we walk the path back to the house, colored by the muted hues of evening. The whitewashed walls of our cottage are the same softened lilac as the wisteria flowers.

“I don’t want you to sell the house,” I murmur, as we stand together outside the kitchen door.

Henry shifts restlessly, his gaze drifting back toward the grotto, now laid in the shadows that have gathered at the base of the cliffs. He takes a final drag from his cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray he keeps beside the back door. “It’s decided, Lark.”

He puts his arm around me, his touch gentle. Oberon reaches for my hand. His fingers graze my wrist and he feels the bandage. Frowning, he pushes back my sleeve. “You’re hurt. What happened?”

I open my mouth but the words don’t come. Yet when I close my eyes I can see it all, lucid as a dream. The Marchmain greenhouse, the glass walls shining in the moonlight. Humid air, the crunch of gravel. And Damson Sinclair, the girl who was—until our final year at school—my closest friend.

She stands before me, and I am alight with fury. I see her cruel grin, hear her careless laugh. My hands as I shoved her, hard, against the greenhouse wall. The shatter of glass, shards like stars, the moon newly bright through the empty frame. Damson, sobbing. The shallow cut on her cheek, my arm dripping blood.

I pull away from my brother and tug my sleeve back down. The row of stitches on my forearm is throbbing beneath the bandage, and I curl my hand over the ache. “I fell against a window.”

Before he can respond, I go back into the house. I pick up my satchel from where I dropped it, then take another candle from the sill.