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“Because when I tell you how Hugo and I met, you’ll hate me even more than you already do.”

The terrible softness of Alastair’s voice makes my heartbeat swoop. I tip back my head, letting the salt-scented air pass over my face. I’ve spent so long nursing the wounds he left me, hating him for the way he broke my heart. But now, as we sit in the windswept field, all I feel is longing for how things were before.

I look at him, this sea-drenched, solemn boy. With his wet hair and stark gaze, he’s like some oceanic creature that ought to be captured in delicate strokes of paint. And it feels like instinct, like breathing, to reach for him, to take his hand. So I do.

He goes terribly still, as though my touch is a danger. But slowly, he relents, his fingers curling tentatively over mine.

“If I promise not to hate you,” I ask, looking down at our joined hands, “will you tell me?”

Alastair’s mouth tilts into a sad smile. “It all began the summer you came back from Marchmain, the night of the bonfire. Father always hated how close Camille and I were with you. But when he saw ustogether, and he realized how I—” He looks at me, then quickly looks away, a flush creeping over his cheeks. “You were my best friend, Lacrimosa. And he knew how much I cared.”

I tighten my grasp on Alastair’s hand, feeling the prickle of unshed tears behind my lashes. For a fleeting moment, the salt air has the scent of bonfire smoke.

“He told me to end it,” Alastair goes on. “Break her heart, completely, he said.So she’ll stay out of your life.I refused, at first. But eventually I gave in.”

I look at the scars on his skin, the healed-over cuts, the cigarette burns. It aches, to imagine Alastair as he was then, the boy who hid with me from his father on the night of the bonfire. Trying to stand up against Marcus Felimath and his brutality.

“You didn’t mean it?” I whisper, my voice catching in my throat. “Those things you said to me…”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it, but I said it all the same.” A tear slips down his cheek. He scrubs it away with his sleeve. “After you left that day, I was so angry with my father. I shouted at him, called him weak, pathetic, told him it was petty, how much he hated your family. He struck me; I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my arm for the second time.”

“Oh, Alastair,” I breathe, caught by the cruelty of it, by my rising helplessness.

He turns his face away, closing his eyes against more tears. “The clinic where I recovered was near the Salt Priest enclave. That’s where I met Hugo. It took me a long time to heal, and we got to know each other while I was there. He’d sneak away and meet me on the beach. I didn’t expect to have feelings for him. Not after—” He pauses, avoiding my gaze again as his blush deepens. Everything that lies between us feels like a battlefield, all churned mud and senseless ruin.

“Then,” Alastair says, “I asked if he’d run away with me.”

He looks bereft, stricken with guilt. I shift closer, so our shouldersare touching, our joined hands resting on my knee. “I can understand why you wanted to trust him.”

“I was ready to let Camille face the brunt of our father’s anger, to walk away and never look back. What kind of wretched, heartless persondoesthat? Especially after the way I treated you.”

“It doesn’t make you heartless to crave safety.”

Alastair laughs harshly. “In the end, it didn’t matter. On the night I was supposed to meet Hugo, my father came instead. Later, I found out there’d been an anonymous message at the clinic, warning them that I was planning to run away. I never did find out why Hugo betrayed me.”

“Did you know he would be there, on the night of my betrothal?”

“No. What I told you was the truth. Camille and I were worried about you, so she followed you to the altar. Later, I walked away from the crowd, saw you in that strange boat, and saw Hugo going into the mine.”

“And so you came after him. You saved me.”

Alastair closes his eyes in a slow blink, as tears spill down his cheeks. “Lacrimosa, I know it doesn’t make up for it, but I’m going to help you with Therion—if you’ll let me. We’ll find a way out of this. I’m going to keep you safe.”

I cup my palm against his jaw, wipe away his tears with the edge of my thumb. He bows to me; our foreheads press. Then we are both moving toward one another, and I am holding him; he is warm and trembling in my arms. It’s just like the night of the bonfire, time spun back, and I wonder if it can be mended, all these wounds between us.

Alastair has bared himself to me, shown me his scars, told me things that even Camille doesn’t know. Everything feels delicate, like a ribbon of new silk. But in this moment, I am as fierce as an ocean storm, as unstoppable as the violence of a rising tide.

I frame his face between my hands, and the spilled ink of his hair trickles over my fingers.

“Yes,” I manage to tell him. “I want your help.”

Then

Lark’s final year at Marchmain began with all the magic of a folktale. Autumn lit the courtyard elms bonfire-bright; the scent of woodsmoke draped the air. As she and Damson walked along the river on their way to Gallery Practical, fallen leaves decorated the surface of the water like scattered rubies.

The new life Lark had sacrificed so much for drew ever closer. Outside of classes, she and Damson spent all their time on their application for the curatorship. Writing notes, highlighting photostats, diagramming their favorite artworks. Even their drowsy idylls in the window of Lark’s dorm—Damson combing her coin-colored hair, teacups cooling on the sill—were devoted to their application. Soon, whenever Lark closed her eyes, a vivid picture of the following year arose, clear as a lucid dream.

Every time she stepped into the gallery, it felt like coming home.