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Alastair cups my face with his hand. His fingers are like ice, sharp-tipped, his nails turned to translucent claws. He gazes at me with mismatched eyes, one gray, the other bright as flame. The amber eye of a swan.

“Lacrimosa,” he breathes, and then his features shift. Boy becoming god, Alastair becoming Therion, as he draws closer to me. His claws scrape against my cheek, down the line of my jaw.“Lacrimosa. You broke your promise.”

“Therion—” I rasp, a tightness at my throat. Clutching at my neck, I feel a slippery ribbon of kelp, bound like a choker. I’m fighting to speak, to breathe. “Please, I—”

I scrabble at the kelp strand, trying to break it. My other hand is fisted in the front of Alastair’s shirt. I’m falling, falling, everything out of control, and I’m so afraid.

On my finger, my betrothal ring is heavy as an iron weight. I turn it so the stone faces my palm. I clench my fist, feel the salt crystal digging into my skin. A tremor goes through me. My teeth snap together, my vision blackens. I drag Alastair against me, as though we are drowning, caught together at the heart of a violent sea.

When the darkness clears, I’m on the chaise in the Saltswan library, my head in Camille’s lap. Alastair sits at the other end, his knees folded up against his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around them. I press a hand to my throat; there’s nothing there, only skin scraped raw by my own nails.

I sit up slowly, all of me aching, and look around the room. The window is clear, no kelp or lapping ocean. The rain has slowed now, the noise of the storm overlaid by the crackle of the fireplace. Both Camille and Alastair look pale, frightened. “Did you see—” I begin, and Camille nods, stricken.

“Please tell me you spoke to your brothers,” she says, “and they know exactly how to stop all of this.”

Mournfully, I shake my head. “I couldn’t get through. The phone isn’t working.”

“The lines must be down because of the storm,” Alastair says.

I shift down the chaise, reach hesitantly for him. “Are you all right?”

He looks at me over his drawn-up knees. His gaze is mismatched, the shard of amber left behind by Therion like a spark of flame. A streak of blood is drying on his cheek. “I’ve felt better.”

I slouch down beside him, let my head drop against his shoulder. Twisting at my ring, I feel the bruised, tender place on my palm where the crystal pressed in. “I need to find a way to reach Therion, to speak to him, before this happens again. Before he hurts you, or Camille. I don’t believe that he’s banished, no matter what Hugo did. Otherwise, how could he be appearing this way?”

“And why didn’t he appear when we wanted him to, at the altar?” Camille adds.

Hating to ask, but knowing I must, I turn to Alastair. “WouldHugo be able to help? Considering he started all of this? I know you said he must have gone back to the Salt Priests, but perhaps he’s still nearby.” I think of the face outside my window, the retreating figure in the arbor. The thought of Hugo here, a present threat, fills me with a queasy panic. But I force it down. “If there’s a chance he could help, we should seek him out.”

Alastair rubs at the dried blood on his cheek. He looks reluctant, pained, as he offers, “We could drive to the Salt Priest compound and find him.”

I push myself up from the chaise, too restless to remain still. As I pace around the room, past the orderly leather spines of books, the rain-streaked window, I imagine us leaving Verse in Marcus Felimath’s beetle-black car. Driving to the far end of the peninsula where the Salt Priests live.

I lean my elbows against the windowsill, letting out a breath that fogs the glass.

I feel as lost as the night at Marchmain when Damson and I fought. I already gave up so much on that night; with my expulsion I let Damson and Jeune take everything from me, the entire future I’d worked toward. And now, caught by the force of Therion’s anger, the small amount of control IthoughtI’d gained when I agreed to marry him has slipped away.

I refuse to stay like this, small and afraid, the same girl who was forced out of the life she’d built. “I don’t know if it would make things better or worse to attract the Salt Priests’ attention even more than I already have. But I’d rather go there, or to Therion himself, if it could solve this. Even if it meant I was in more danger.”

The glass of the window is cold from the storm. I push myself away from the sill, going back toward the fireplace. My satchel lies on the floor near the chaise, the buckles fallen open, its contents spilled. The obsidian mirror, half-unwrapped. Alastair’s copy ofThe Neriad. As I walk past, my foot nudges the edge of the mirror.

I look down at it. The opaque glass reflects the light from the fireplace, a muted blur of shifting colors. It makes me want to climb out of my skin.

“When we pray to Therion, we’re reaching out to him, offering a piece of ourselves to the chthonic world,” I say. “But what if we could find a way to do the opposite? To bring him closer to us, rather than taking ourselves to him?”

Camille looks from me to Alastair. “Would that be possible?”

Alastair’s brow is creased in thought. I wait for him to tell me it’s a terrible idea, but he only reaches down and picks upThe Neriad. Opening the book, he turns through the pages until he reaches a heavily annotated section. Eyes narrowed at the typeset lines, he begins to recite in Tharnish.

His voice is slow, reverent. It feels as though all the shadows in the room uncurl at its sound; the fire shifts and flickers in time with the rhythm of his words. Unprompted, he repeats the lines, translating them for Camille and me.“Tear away the veil at the heart of the woods, lay yourself bare on the boughs of a golden tree. Let us be unstrung down to our bones, loosened from the world.Under the open air we shall seek the gods.”

He speaks haltingly as he concentrates on the translation. The words drift over me like early petals pulled down by the wind. It’s as though I can see the Arriscane woods, not on the clifftop beside my cottage, but growing inside of the library with us. Flowers unfurling against the shelves, vines woven between the books.

I think of the forest. Leaves stirred by air that carries the scent of the far-off ocean, the hush of distant waves against the cliffside. Much closer to the golden woods ofThe Neriadthan a tidal cave or the depths of the mine.

“The forest on the clifftop,” I say, and inside my chest it feels like a knot has been untied, like I can breathe again. “We’ll call to Therion at the heart of the woods.”

Alastair and Camille both dip their heads in agreement. Alastairtouches his upper arm. His fingers press down through his shirtsleeve, as though feeling the scar left from when his arm was broken. His expression is dark, determined. “If that doesn’t work,” he says quietly, “then we go to the Salt Priests.”