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They take me to my cottage and help me upstairs. I stumble into my room, into bed. My hand finds Eline, still tucked beneath the pillow. I hold her to my chest.

Camille collapses next to me with a groan. Our eyes meet, and her gaze is as amber-bright as Alastair’s was when we were in the woods. Bloodied tears clot her lashes. She has been changed by Therion, too. Shakily, I lift my hand, touch her cheek, trying to wipe the tears away. My fingertips are stained with blood. There are pale feathers threaded in her hair.

Alastair hesitates at the edge of my bed, one knee on the mattress, his hand on my shoulder like a question. I shift across, making space for him on my other side. He stretches out, his eyes heavy-lidded, irises still changed. He glances down at my knitted toy, manages a smile. “Does she have a name?”

“Eline,” I say, too overwhelmed to be embarrassed. Then I close my eyes to dreamless sleep.

When the next day comes, we gather in the kitchen with the items from our forest ritual spread out beside a pot of strong black tea. I lay my hands flat against the table, staring down at the obsidian mirror. My nose starts to prickle, and I can feel the hot rise of tears at the corners of my eyes. “I can’t believe my brothers kept the truth from me for my entire life.”

Camille casts me a guarded look. “How can you be so sure what Therion showed us was the truth?”

“Because we were there. We saw it for ourselves.” But even as I say this, I’m caught by uncertainty. I think of how Therion overtook Alastair’s body—possessed him—in his attempts to speak with me. The orange spark that lit Camille’s eyes when we first returned from Therion’s world faded by the time she awoke, and the feathers had drifted onto my pillow. But he has changed us all, woven himself into all aspects of our lives, our bodies.

We are, in so many ways, at his mercy.

Alastair notes my expression, and his mouth slants into a troubled frown. “We saw what Therion wanted us to,” he says. “He’s on the verge of being banished entirely, lost forever. Wouldn’t he do anything to save himself?”

I touch the feathers that curl around my wrist. Therion may have held me gently on the night of our betrothal and sworn he would never hurt me, but right now he is desperate as a drowning man. Is it so unthinkable that he might be manipulating us all, if it means his survival?

I push my hair back from my face, let out a frustrated sigh. “He’s dragging me from this realm, he’s possessing Alastair. We need to know the truth. I wish we had more to go on than a vision.”

“How did your brothers learn to speak to Therion?” Camille asks me. “And where did they find this mirror?”

“Oberon told me the ritual was an old family story, and our father had told him and Henry about it. They only attempted it after he died. But—he’s not really my father, is he?” It makes my head spin, and my heart ache, to realize that my brothers who raised me are more my parents than the long-dead mother and father I never knew. “As for the mirror, our family have lived here for generations. The attic is filled with packed-away heirlooms. At least it used to be.”

Alastair picks upThe Neriad, which he’s got with him as always, skimming through the pages with a frown. “Do either of them keep a journal?”

“I’ve never seen them writing in one. But if Henry or Oberon had a journal, or letters, or anything like that, and it talked about… what they did… it would be hidden away.”

“If we all look around—” Camille begins, but I shake my head.

“I’ll do it,” I tell her. “I need to do this on my own.”

As I go upstairs, the reality of it settles over me like a shroud. I’ve gone into my brothers’ rooms before, to latch the windows and borrow their clothes, to make sure the house is safe. But this—to deliberately search for hidden secrets—is different.

It feels wrong, but at the same time, I have to know the truth. And I’m not sure what I’d prefer—to find nothing, or to have my impossible origins confirmed.

In Henry’s room, there’s nothing at all. Even when I get down on my hands and knees and check the undersides of the furniture. I look through all the same places in Oberon’s room, his dresser and his bookshelves and beneath his bed. The longer I search, the worse I feel.

Then, at the very back of his wardrobe, tucked inside the pocket of an old coat, I find a pair of envelopes, held neatly together by a paper clip. Slumping down to the floor, I slide them free with shaking hands.

The first contains a photograph of Oberon, around the age he was in Therion’s vision, with another boy, who I don’t recognize. He’spressing his lips to Oberon’s cheek in a theatrically playful kiss. My brother is laughing.

The photograph makes me feel strange and sorrowful. I’ve never known either Henry or Oberon to be involved with anyone, but here is a boy who may have been Oberon’s lover. It feels like the worst intrusion to have found this, and I feel even worse when I open the second envelope to discover a letter.

Oberon,

I love you. But I cannot bear your secrets any longer, and you are drifting further and further away from me. If I don’t leave now, I fear that I’ll be lost, drawn out in your wake, then left behind as the tides pull you onward.

I have returned the photograph of us, as you asked.

Nicholas

I fold the letter into the envelope, clip it to the photograph, and place them both carefully back where they were hidden. My stomach roils and I feel hot and wretched, sad for this boy with his beautiful, poetic words and sorry for the way my brother must have hurt him.

Perhaps the secret he spoke of was the ritual, but it isn’t enough proof. I go back to the landing and look to the end of the hallway, where a narrow staircase leads up to the attic.

I climb the stairs slowly, feeling condemned.