Page 53

The attic is small and windowless except for a narrow triangle of glass. It’s a low-ceilinged space where the air is hot and close. The walls and floor are bare, unsealed wood. It smells like a forest, like salt. It’s so much emptier than I remember.

I pace a slow circle around the room, past the few leftover packing crates. Then my foot catches on a splintery edge of a raised board.Kneeling down, I notice that one piece of the floor looks different from the rest—a shorter panel of wood that doesn’t sit flush against the others.

I try to prize it up with my fingers, but I can’t get enough of a grip. Searching the room, I find a wooden clothes hanger. Hooking the metal top of it against the board, I manage to work it loose. Beneath is a small, hollowed space containing a cloth-bound notebook.

It’s identical to the ones I’ve seen Henry use when he writes down ledgers for our salt mine.

I stare at the book for a long moment, knowing I have to pick it up but too afraid to move. Finally, with trembling hands, I open the cover.

As I start to read, it’s like I’ve fallen backward across the years, spun through time to where Henry—the Henry of the visions, the Henry before I existed—marked his thoughts on these pages.

Today our parents have left for the frozen north, and I am in charge. One day this will be my life, always. Right now, it feels like I am playacting at being an adult. Maybe with enough practice it will all feel easier.

I flip through the diary, past sporadic entries that marked the shape of my brother’s days. His preparation for the salt harvest, columns of figures for a harvest crew.

I’m aching with anticipation, knowing that it will come, yet when I find the folded telegram announcingthe death of Ariel and Oliver Arriscane, tears fill my eyes. It’s like I’m hearing the news for the first time alongside Henry, who has written almost nothing after that day—only a sheaf of blank pages with a few lines begun and scratched out.

And then, the final entry. Dated at the beginning of spring, my birthday:

Tonight we call Therion from the sea.

I go back downstairs with the diary in my hands. When Camille sees my stricken expression, she takes the book from me, setting it aside before she draws me into her arms. I press my face against hershoulder. She strokes my hair, kisses the curve of my cheek. But as she holds me, my sorrow begins to flare alight, hurt kindling to fierce, bright anger.

My brothers may have created me for Therion, but I’ve had eighteen years in the mortal world to make my own life. I refuse to succumb to this, to let him haunt me and threaten me, to pull me into the dark.

“I’m going to find a way out,” I tell Camille, scrubbing the tears from my face. “I won’t let him hurt me—hurt any of us.”

Alastair picks up Henry’s diary. He flips through the pages, his mouth drawn taut. In profile to me, his changed eye—amber and sparking—gleams like a gemstone in the morning light. “We need to find a way to sever your bond, before it’s too late.”

I look from him to Camille. The bond I have with Therion from my birth, from my betrothal, extends to them as well. We’re all at risk.

But what if severing the link banishes Therion entirely? I can’t forget the desperation in his voice. His mortal terror, the earnest fear in his eyes. So raw and visceral, those words of a god from a boy’s mouth. How he claimed our connection was the only thing keeping him from oblivion.

I take the journal from Alastair’s hands. I draw in a deep breath, knowing that this choice means danger, knowing it’s the only way. “I want to go to the Salt Priests.”

We drive through the night, going north, to the remote and windswept upper reaches of Verse. Camille and Alastair take turns at the wheel, one sprawled out across the rear seat to rest while the other drives. It’s been years since I was inside a car, and I watch the scenery blur past the window with a mixture of thrill and terror. Feeling like I have slipped into a dreamworld, the same as the strange purple-hued forest where Therion spoke to me.

The Salt Priest compound is at the far end of the Verse peninsula. The road follows the clifftop, a winding dirt track above the endless sea. Sunset turns the fields to blood, our skin as orange as the eyes of a swan. It draws a path across the surface of the ocean until the water gleams like satin.

“What are we going to tell them when we arrive?” Alastair asks from the rear of the car. He and Camille exchanged places awhile before, and until just now he has been asleep. “Not the truth, I hope.”

I bite my lip as I try to think. “We can say we’re university students from the city. And we’ve come to make field notes for our theological project.”

Camille snorts back a laugh, and Alastair pushes himself upright, leaning into the front of the car to scowl at her. “It’s a good idea, Camille.”

She waves a hand in protest, still laughing. “It is! It’s perfect! I just—truly, it’s the role you and Lark were born to play. Two scholars, dedicated to the pursuit of archaic knowledge.”

“Perhaps ifyouspent more time studying, you’d have passed your mathematics exam,” Alastair says tautly.

“No thank you. I don’t want to spend my life doing account books for Father. I’m going to travel the world.” Her voice turns dreamy, and she reaches with one hand to open the window, her other still on the steering wheel. The cooling nighttime air spills in. “And you will both come with me. We’ll sail across the ocean in Lark’s swan boat. We’ll go to every city that has Caedmon’s paintings in their galleries. We’ll visit every bookstore and buy so many books that even Alastair won’t be able to read them all.”

Alastair rolls his eyes, but there’s no heat in it, only their familiar rhythm of teasing. “It’s not my fault the only thing you’ve ever bothered to read is an atlas.”

“I also read music scores, for the piano. And magazines.”

As I listen to them both, I can’t help but smile. It’s the first timewe’ve spoken of what things might look like once all this has passed. It draws me like a lure. I remember Camille’s vehement promise that the world had limitless good to offer, that she would claim it for me. Right now, I can picture it so clearly—galleries and unfamiliar cities and the three of us, together.

I want it, this new unbridled life where anything is possible.