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I kiss the place beside her ear, then whisper, “You were so brave.”

“Forgery and blackmail,” she laughs, her voice thick with held-back tears. “Truly my finest moment. Gods, Lark. What if he’s right, and I do fail at all of this?”

“You know he isn’t right, Camille. You’re not going to fail. And if you do—I’ll be with you. We’ll fail together.”

Camille wipes her eyes with her sleeve. Her mouth tips into a tentative smile. “I’m going back to the house, to make sure Father doesn’t burn it down or salt the fields before he leaves. I’ll come and meet you later. But, before I go—I have something for you.”

She reaches into the other pocket of her coat and produces a book. It’s tied like a present with another velvet ribbon, twin to the one I’m wearing at my throat.

When I take the book from her, the weight of it lies familiar in my hands. “The Neriad?”

I hug Alastair’s book against my chest. Camille brushes her knucklesagainst my cheek, wiping the tears away as they fall. “It’s only a loan, really. He’s going to want it back. But in the meantime, I thought we could teach ourselves Tharnish, as a surprise for him.”

My thumb strokes against the spine of the book and I imagine the phantom prints of his fingers, marked beneath my own touch on the binding. And then, because I need to hear it spoken aloud, I say, “We’ll see him at the end of the salt season.”

Camille gives a decisive nod, but there’s a softening at her shoulders, as though my words have freed something from her. “He’s not gone. I’d feel it, if he was.”

My brothers are waiting for me in the arbor when I return. Lilac blooms drip down from the wisteria vine, filling the air with pollen and perfume. There’s an open bottle of summer wine and three glasses—one empty, waiting for me.

I sit down between them, let Oberon pour the wine into my glass. Henry is smoking, his lit cigarette sending a slow curl of smoke over our heads. The wine and the smoke together are like a knot tied tight within me. When I drink, I am back in the woods, kissing Alastair beneath the tree as the worlds begin to blur. I am in the depths of the mine, watching the salt seal closed around him.

“How are you feeling?” Oberon asks, tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear. I manage a faint smile, leaning into his touch.

“Everything is going to be all right,” I say, and my words taste of brazier smoke.

I decide that when Alastair comes back, I’m going to tell my brothers the whole truth of all that took place while they were gone. I’ll tell them everything. Camille and I vowed no more secrets, and I want that to be the case with my brothers as well. I believe I can trust them to protect Alastair, to help me keep him safe.

Henry takes a drag from his cigarette, exhales with a sigh. Thenhe looks at me, his gaze darkly serious. “Lark, no matter the circumstances of your birth, we love you. We always have, that has always been real.”

Oberon nods in agreement, his expression somber. “We love you. I regret so much of what we’ve done. But I don’t regret that you are ours, that we are a family.”

I set down my glass so I can take their hands. My chest aches as I feel the familiar rasp of their calloused fingers against my own. The hurt of their secrets will be slow to fade. Perhaps it never will; there will always be a scar on me in the shape of the truth. But alongside the reality of how I came into the world is the way they have loved me, have been there for me, my entire life.

“I love you both, too. You are my brothers, and nothing will change that. But… I can’t stay here.” My voice quavers, and I swallow thickly. “I was made to be Therion’s bride, then I was going to devote my entire life to Caedmon’s artworks. Beyond that, I hardly know who I am. And I want to find out. After the salt season, I’m going to leave.”

Henry dips his head, his lips pressed together into a grim line. “We understand.”

Oberon is too stricken to speak, but he tightens his hold on my hand. My eyes fill with new tears, and I let them fall, slipping hotly over my cheeks.

“You—and Verse—will always be my home,” I tell my brothers. “And I will return. But first, I want to see the world.”

We sit together as the sun sinks down, painting the air in amber light before everything fades to dim, velveteen shadows. My brothers go back into our house, and I make my way to the clifftop fields.

I follow the path through the wildflowers, the sea below, the sky turned silver with the rising night. I cross a narrow stretch of fields, all rustling grass and petaled flowers, then climb down onto the tide pool beach.

The pools shine like enchanted mirrors as I pass them, catchingscraps of my reflection. Beneath the rocky shore, the riptide carves through the water like a jagged arrow. The sea is the deep indigo color of chthonic liquor.

I takeThe Neriadfrom my pocket and carefully untie the ribbon. There’s just enough light left for me to make out the typeset lines in unreadable Tharnish. To make out the illustrations Alastair has sketched on almost every page.

There are insects and leaves, constellations of stars marked with painstaking precision. The Fibonacci spirals of shells. An arched window. The scalloped line of the waves. There is Camille, with her ribboned hair and her dark eyes. There is a swan, curved around the outlines of a boy who is too beautiful to be human.

And there is me. My name written between the lines, over and over, like it’s a spell. The sketch I glimpsed before when Alastair left the book in my cottage, all long hair and a flowered crown. And another, newer image: my bobbed hair topped by a wreath of olive leaves, feathers braceleting my wrist, and fierce determination in my gaze.

It’s so strange to see how Alastair viewed me. Brave and enduring, a girl who will go fearlessly into the world, who is strong enough to bear all the hurts that come through living.

Then, folded between the pages of the book, is a piece of plain, thick stationery, newer than the timeworn pages.

I unfold it slowly, my hands trembling.