Page 5

“Lark,” Henry calls to me from the hall, his voice soft.

I slip the satchel strap over my shoulder, cradle my bandaged arm against my chest. “All of them,” I tell my brothers. “You asked what rules I broke, to be expelled? I broke them all.”

On the landing, everything is dark and empty. I hesitate at the top of the stairs, listening for the sound of footsteps. My brothers don’t follow me. So much has changed, but they still know when I need to be left alone.

My bedroom is at the center of the hall. It’s been four years since I was last in here, and though I expect to find it as empty as the rest of the house, everything is still the same. My brothers have left my room untouched, a time capsule of my fourteen-year-old self. The pale dresses I used to wear spilling from their hanging rack, the art magazines I bought at the library bookstall, my white-painted dresser cluttered with old perfume bottles.

I drop my satchel on the floor, near the end of my bed. The buckled flap comes open, spilling a sheaf of papers and books. The topmost one—a hardcover collection of Caedmon’s early sketches—falls open, revealing a penciled inscription on the endpaper.

Happy thirteenth birthday, Lacrimosa. Love, Alastair

I snatch up the book and slam it shut, and fling myself onto my bed.

Eline, the knitted bunny that was my favorite toy as a child, is tucked under the pillow. I hold her against my cheek, the way I did when I was small, my thumb worrying against the worn fabric of her ears. Then, burying my face against the mattress, I let out a muffled scream.

Outside, the storm that gathered over the sea has reached the shore. As the heavy droplets beat against my window, I’m grateful for the sound of it, a thing I can hide beneath.

Then

The first time she saw him alone was by the sea. Early spring, the sky gray as feathers, daylight waning slow into evening. Alastair stood at the shoreline, his trousers rolled up, waves lapping his bare feet. He was in profile, half-turned toward the water, and he watched the ocean with an expression that seemed almost… hungry.

The whole scene was like one of Lark’s favorite paintings, a landscape by Ottavio Caedmon, all resonant hues and textured brushstrokes. Alastair with his loosened collar and his tangled hair was a selkie kept too long ashore, cursed to languish when out of sight of the sea.

He turned to her, and she hesitated, overcome by a shyness she didn’t understand. “You’re back,” she said, then bit the inside of her cheek. She started to laugh, because it was such a foolishly obvious thing to say. Alastair had been away for two years, since just after the spring of Lark’s eleventh birthday.

Alastair started laughing as well. “Observant as ever, I see.”

The sound of his laugh was the same as she remembered, and that encouraged her a little. Still, Lark stood frozen in place as Alastair came toward her. The sea was at his back. A streak of sunlight cut throughthe clouds, lining the edge of the water in gold. His eyes were the same storm gray as the evening sky.

They’d never been together like this before, despite the fact their houses were close enough that Lark could see the Felimath estate from her bedroom window. When Lark, Alastair, and his older sister, Camille, met in the village school, they became friends out of circumstance. The class was small, so they shared a desk. They were neighbors and it made sense that they walk home together.

Lark knew the Felimath siblings were different from her. That they lived in a big house that had a name—Saltswan—and that their father owned all the land except for the small acreage where she and her brothers lived. Lark was never invited to visit them at Saltswan, and she never asked them to her cottage.

But none of that really mattered when they were passing notes beneath their desk, or racing one another to the border of the Arriscane woods on the way home. They were a trio, woven together like a triplicate knot, even if their friendship existed in a small, contained space.

It wasn’t until Lark’s eleventh birthday that she realized the difference couldn’t be eclipsed by penciled notes and after-school games. Alastair and Camille gave her a present, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a pink velvet ribbon. Inside the parcel was a leather-bound notebook, with pages the color of milky tea. It was gleamingly new, with a gold stamp on the back cover marking the name of the stationery company.

Lark had visited that store once, when her brothers took her into the city. It had gilded lettering on the windows and the inside was as elegant as a museum, with pens inside locked cases and notebooks lining the polished wooden shelves.

“Camille and I have one as well,” Alastair said, taking a twin notebook from his pocket to show her.

“I don’t carry mine around everywhere, though,” Camille teased. She picked up the ribbon from the parcel and started to braid it into Lark’s hair. Musingly, she went on, “Do you know your hair is the exact color of honey?”

Lark hugged the notebook to her chest. She felt a strange, bright joy, sitting between Alastair and Camille as the courtyard tree spilled dappled shadows over them. It was like the syrupy, sugar-rich taste of the strawberry cake her brothers had served at breakfast: a birthday tradition.

Impulsively, she held the book against her heart like a talisman. “We should write in them when we’re apart, and then we can swap once the pages are full.”

Alastair cast her a sidelong glance. Her stomach dipped, and she wondered if she had crossed a line. If trying to make their friendship exist outside the school yard and their clifftop walks would somehow tarnish it, if she was asking too much. Alastair laughed, which softened some of her worry, but he looked nervous. “I wouldn’t know what to write,” he said, and then, a flush creeping over his cheeks, he went on hurriedly, “but I do like to draw.”

That afternoon, once they’d parted at the gate to the Arriscane woods, Lark went home and showed her brothers the gift. Oberon was quiet and solemn, and Henry turned the pages of the notebook, frowning at it, as though there were some unpleasant message invisibly written on the blank paper.

Finally, exasperated, Lark set her hands on her hips. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want you taking anything from the Felimaths,” Henry said.

“I didn’ttakeit, Henry. It was a present. For my birthday.”

Her nose started to prickle and she thought she might cry. Oberon took the notebook back from Henry and placed it in her hands. He put his arm around her shoulders.