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“Yes, of course.” I’m lost to the numb shock of terror; everything feels so far away. “Can you walk, if we help you?”

“I will try. If you can help me to the sea cave, my boat will carry us the rest of the way.”

His head falls to his chest, his strength spent. Falteringly, Camille and I help him to his feet and make our way slowly down the stairs.Alastair is heavy between us, one arm slung around each of our shoulders, his head slumped forward, his footsteps unsteady. It feels impossible that we can do this, yet somehow, we make it through the kitchen door, out of the house.

The ground is strewn with fallen wisteria blossoms; the heady perfume clouds around us, choking the air. We clamber across the breakwater, half dragging Alastair over the low wall of rocks and down onto the beach. Stumbling over the sand, we cross the narrow shore, headed for the caves.

Outside the grotto, the swan boat is tied in the same place it was on the night of my betrothal. It rocks fiercely on the rising waves. We wade through the water and over the slippery rocks until we reach the boat. Camille helps Alastair on board as I untie the rope.

They sit together, Alastair with his head against Camille’s shoulder, while I free the sails. The wind catches them, and I tilt the rudder; the swan begins to drift out onto the wider sea. The boat lies low with the weight of our three bodies, water slopping over the sides as the rough sea jolts us over the rising swells.

The wind is at our backs, swift and fierce, and soon we’re past the curve of the cliffs. I think of how the sea was covered in petals on my betrothal night, how my brothers stood on the beach and cast the flowers onto the waves. Now the waves are bare and dark, crashing angrily against the boat. More water comes over the sides, pooling at our feet.

“It won’t flood before we reach the mine,” I say, unsure if I’m trying to convince the others or myself. Camille doesn’t reply.

Her eyes are downcast, her attention fixed on Alastair, the bare expanse of his chest revealed by his open shirt. In the moonlight, the worst of his scars are clear and terrible. With shaking hands, she touches him—the burns above his heart, the healed incisions on his arm. Her fingers move from scar to scar, mapping the evidence of all he’s suffered.

When she looks up, her eyes are filled with tears. “Father did this to him, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I say softly.

Her brows draw together, and she makes a pained, angry noise. “I always suspected—but Alastair told me, so many times—that he’d never—” She cuts off, choked, and presses her fist to her mouth. “I thought he trusted me.”

“He does trust you, Camille.”

“Then why did he hide this? I could have helped him. I could—” Camille scrubs at her face, swiping away the tears. She clasps Alastair’s hand between her own. “If—when—we’re through this, I don’t want any more secrets.”

I lay my hand over Camille’s, over Alastair’s. I’m thinking of my brothers, the terrible secrets woven beneath our lives like the roots of an ancient tree. Henry and Oberon, hiding the truth to give me a normal life. It’s so much easier to be protected from hurts, but there’s a strength in knowing, even if that knowledge brings pain.

“No more secrets,” I murmur.

Camille draws me closer. My head dips to hers. I shut my eyes as the ocean swells beneath us, rocking the swan boat as we make our way alongside the cliffs. And I know that no matter what happens after tonight, this trust will last unconditionally. We’ll stand together at the eye of the storm; our bond will be forged in fire. There are no walls between us—only truth and promises.

We reach the pier on the crest of an enormous wave. The boat slams into the side. Splinters of wood scatter out, caught up by the ocean. I scramble for the rope, doing my best to tie the straining craft to the pier post. As the waves froth around my feet, I look to the entrance of the mine, glinting with the overflow of new salt. The crystals shimmer blackly in the moonlight.

A shiver passes over me as I think of the shadowed corridors, sloping downward, the press of earth above our heads. But I am thedaughter of this mine. I’ve swum beneath chthonic oceans and crossed the border between worlds. I’m not afraid of the dark.

I’m not afraid—until I hear a sound from the clifftop. Overhead, lined by moonlight, Hugo gazes down at us. He has escaped the attic. He sees us at the pier, at the rear entrance to the mine. Everything is as still as a painted mural. The fury on his face is obvious, even from here.

Then he is all in motion, hurrying along the clifftop on the path toward the main entrance of the mine. With his pale shirt and golden hair, he slips in and out from the fringe of the clifftop woods like a luminous deer in one of Caedmon’s forests.He knows. He knows where we are going.

I nudge at Camille, pointing to the cliffs above. “We have to hurry.”

Her mouth thins, her expression hardens. Together, we help Alastair from the boat. I see the blurred lines of Therion in his face, his body. I loop his arm around my shoulders again. Swiftly, we cross the beach, toward the cliffside, where the entrance—an opened arch—reveals nothing but darkness. The way down into the farthest depths of the mine.

CHAPTER TWENTYNow

I take a lantern from the rack beside the entrance, and we use it to light our path. The walls have been remade by the new veins of salt, so different from the silent, cathedral-arched path that I followed on the night of my betrothal. But my feet know the shape of the floor, the slant of the halls.

I go ahead, the lantern held high. We are draped by its shallow, golden light. Alastair stumbles between me and Camille, his arm looped heavily around my waist, his head pressed to the back of my shoulder. His hand, at my hip, slips from plain to clawed.

As we descend into the lowermost part of the mine, he gazes at me with poison-hazed eyes. He touches my cheek, his mouth tipped into a fleeting smile. “Lark,” he whispers, then his eyes sink closed. We continue on, his head resting against my shoulder. I can feel him trembling as he fights against the effects of theOrramus-laced wine and chthonic liquor.

Finally, we reach the altar room. The place where Therion and I sealed our betrothal. It’s still in disarray, the brazier toppled, the floor covered with scattered ash. Amid it all, like unspooled cobwebs, are the tendrils of my hair that Alastair cut to free me from Hugo’s grasp.

Camille sweeps clear a space, and we lower Alastair down. Hisfeatures shift, blurring from boy to god. Therion speaks to us from Alastair’s mouth, his voice rasped as thorns. “Light the brazier.”

I set the iron brazier upright. A box of matches is on the floor, along with a few dry scraps of the herbs I burned. A cluster of stems bundled together, tied with string. I lay them in the brazier along with handfuls of my hair.