Page 54

I want to be more than a girl made for a god, more than the girl who Damson rejected, who was expelled from Marchmain. Who felt she needed the approval—the permission—of an institution to be worthy of her dreams. I want to explore the world with Camille and Alastair, for all these wistful adventures to become real.

We drive on in silence until the land is cloaked by heavy darkness, an enormous starlit sky and only the tunnel of our headlights to reveal the road ahead. It’s hard to imagine there’s anything here except for us, driving through a world painted by ink.

I think of Alastair, the summer after the ill-fated bonfire, being taken along this same road with his bruises and scars, his broken arm. This is the northernmost part of Verse, bordered by the vast North Sea. It feels exactly like the sort of place where a man like Marcus would hide his son, so his abuse would not be discovered.

It feels exactly like where a cult would gather.

At daybreak we reach the isolated town that is the nearest settlement to the Salt Priest compound. We’re at the end of the peninsula, and the land is flat and marshy, fields of sagebrush replacing the tall cliffs of lower Verse. The air smells of salt and brine, with an organic undertone like the forest floor. Like old things turned to rot.

On a hill beyond the town is a tall, narrow building—all gray stone and slate tiles, bordered by a wrought iron fence. “That’s where I stayed, last time,” Alastair says, and though his expression is guardedly neutral, I can feel the edge to his voice, the rawness of hurt that still lingers. In the back of the car, Camille is asleep.

I reach out to him across the seat and take his hand. His thumbtraces over my knuckles. Our clasped hands rest on his knee. He lets go, fleetingly, to change gears as the car slows, as we enter the single main street of the town, then he holds my hand again. We go on like that, neither of us speaking, just the shared warmth pressed between our palms.

Camille wakes with a yawn as we pull into a small paved area surrounded by low-lying trees and an empty sagebrush field. The town where we’ve stopped is so small it could hardly be called a town. Aside from the clinic where Alastair was sent, there’s a handful of dwellings and a general store, its windows unshuttered and a coil of smoke rising from its slender chimney.

When we get out of the car, the air is still. There’s a bite to it, hinting at the icy plains that lie on the opposite side of the sea. The Frozen North, where the people I grew up believing were my parents died. Everything is dimmed by a lowering cover of clouds. It feels as though springtime never reached here, that everything is caught in an eternal gray winter.

Camille gestures toward the store. “Should I ask for directions?”

“Go ahead,” Alastair says, his eyes still fixed at the tall shape of the clinic, now little more than an outline in the hazy distance.

I watch Camille as she goes inside. The door has a bell hooked to the top; it rings discordantly as she enters.

Alastair starts to pace in a wide, restless circle. A film of shell-grit dust stirs up from the ground, pasting itself to the toes of his shoes. I follow him as he goes to the treeline, where the sprawling branches of a pine block our view of the clinic. The wind through the needle-fine leaves sounds like a voice whispering incomprehensible secrets.

As we stand together, side by side but not touching, Alastair sighs heavily. “I never thought I’d be back here,” he says. Then, eyes downcast, he adds, “I’m such a coward. Even now, all I want to do is turn around and go back to Saltswan.”

I lay my hand on his arm. It aches to look at him, to see thesorrowful hue of his expression. “You’ve brought me here. You’ve watched over me while I slept, and pulled me back from the dark. You’ve followed me into another world, let Therion change you; you’ve put yourself in danger. You’re not a coward, Alastair. You never have been.”

He turns away from me, his mismatched eyes as troubled as the clouded sky. But I catch his face between my hands and hold him still. His lashes dip; he looses a slow breath. “If I was brave, it was only to save you.”

I trace the line of his jaw. His skin is warm, despite the cold wind. His hand goes tentatively to my waist. It feels like forever since I first touched him, that careful linking of our smallest fingers. Now our closeness is like a flicker of memory. Caught up from the past and carried here.

Alastair looks at me like I am an altar, and he is laying out shells one by one, lighting candles as he whispers a prayer. I can see the quaver of his pulse in the hollow of his throat. I stand on tiptoe, narrowing the last distance between us. He is all lean strength and broad shoulders, so different from the softness of Camille. I can feel the rasp of his jaw where his beard is growing in. The rising pace of his heart beneath the solid plane of his chest.

I kiss the corner of his mouth. Kiss his cheek, slowly, slowly. My blood is honey, my movements languorous. His hand slides down my waist, fingers plying the curve of my hip. Each touch, each breath, is magnified, until it becomes its own small universe.

I press my lips to his temple. His jaw. Mapping a path to the corner of his eye, feeling the prickle of his lashes as he blinks. Alastair gasps, stilted and desperate. His fingers tighten. He tugs me closer, until we are pressed flush, all heat and helplessness. He cants against me, his lips parted, a fever in his gaze.

“Lark.”He says my name like it’s a precious, breakable thing, and the sound of his voice turns me molten with wanting; I am all sparkand wick. He bends to me, kisses me, insistent and yielding at once. When I kiss him back, he makes a low, helpless noise, and it hums through me right down to my bones. He tastes of salt and bitter tea; his tongue is hot and clumsy as it sweeps over mine.

Alastair kisses me the way I wanted him to in the summer field, at the entrance of Saltswan, on all the nights when I let my mind wander and thought of him, even after he’d broken my heart. It’s our entire history, all the pain and the tears and the missed chances, condensed into this single moment.

It’s so different from kissing Camille. She is the sunlight as it fragments over the waves and turns everything gold. Alastair is the indigo depths beneath the surface, a riptide, sleek and ensnaring. Kissing him feels like drinking stolen wine, like I have taken something shattered and set it back together, made it new.

When we draw apart, we’re breathless, both of us laughing and suddenly shy. Camille appears from the doorway of the store, balancing three paper cups of tea in her hands, a paper bag tucked beneath her arm. I fight the urge to smooth down my hair or blot at my swollen lips.

She passes me one of the cups, then reaches into the bag for a sugar-dusted pastry. Taking a large bite, she looks at us both with a knowing, gleeful smile. There’s a smudge of jam on her chin. I wipe it away with my thumb, then lick the sweetness from the edge of my finger as we leave the town behind and start out for the small, barely used trail that will take us down to the sea.

The Salt Priests live in whitewashed cottages built right beside the beach. The walls stand out against the backdrop of sand like driftwood or pieces of bleached bone, as though the entire settlement washed ashore from the depths of the ocean. All the windows are covered by a film of grime that makes the glass seem frosted.

At the edge of the shoreline is a larger building, with a spired roof and a clocktower. Our shoes crunch over gravel as we walk toward its arched wooden door. A brisk wind comes in from the sea, drawn through the spaces between the cottages with a low howl. Aside from the wind, though, everything is silent. None of the doors open, and nothing stirs behind the clouded glass.

I glance between Alastair and Camille. Then, my shoulders squared, I raise my hand and knock. The light glints on my betrothal ring. The hollow sound of my fist against the wood echoes through the air.

There’s no response.

I try the handle, and though I expect it to be locked tight, it turns easily. The door swings open on sleekly oiled hinges to reveal a high-ceilinged room.