Page 9

The surface of the mirror, flat and black as a starless night, begins to ripple and blur.

I edge forward, entranced. The opaque surface now reflects an image. But it is not the cave, or the smoke, or my brothers’ desperate faces. It’s like another world, strange and impossible. The lapping waves of a rising sea. A forest of blackened kelp. Driftwood trees. Pale feathers.

A keen eye, bright as amber.

And then a voice—not mine, or my brothers’—begins to speak. Beautiful, terrible, coming from everywhere all at once. It makes my heart ache, my bones throb.

“If you wish the salt restored, then I demand my price.”

Therion. Our god.

It can’t be. It can’t be real. I clutch at the wall, my nails scrabbling against the stone. I’m frozen in place, held captive by the surface of the mirror. By the creature who has appeared within.

Oberon shakes his head, a vehementno. But Henry lays a hand on Oberon’s shoulder, stilling him. My eldest brother stares intently at the reflection in the glass, his mouth drawn into a taut line as he waits for Therion to continue. I hold my breath and see the bright eye blink, see the rustle of silken feathers.

There’s no sound but the distant waves. Then, “Lacrimosa.”

Terror pours down my spine, a spill of icy water. Therion is still speaking, his words like a knot tied around me, worked tighter and tighter.

“She will be my bride, and stay with me in my world. I will restore the salt in exchange for her hand.”

I picture myself trapped in this sea cave forever, lost in the hushing, smoke-laced dark. Raw, stark panic catches me and drags me forward. I stumble into the cave, my heartbeat wild, my breath coming out in a fragmented gasp. “No!”

I clap a hand to my mouth as Henry and Oberon turn around, their faces washed pale in shock.

Oberon is wide-eyed, frightened. He takes a faltering step toward me, his hand outstretched. His fingers are smeared with soot from the brazier. Before he can move further, Henry grabs his arm. Unlike Oberon, my eldest brother is not afraid. He’s furious. Brows knit, eyes narrowed, he snaps, “Lark, getoutof here!”

From the depths of the mirror, Therion’s attention slides toward me. Held by his gaze, I’m unable to move. I stare into his amber eyes and know I should run. But he has pierced me like a needle, and I can only stand here as my knees turn weak and my pulse softens in the hollow of my throat.

No amount of bonfires or altar prayers could prepare me forthis—our god, his eyes locked to mine and his voice filling the room, carving through the smoky air like a knife.“Lacrimosa will be mine in exchange for the salt; every season—from spring until the end of harvest—she will dwell in my world. For the rest of her human life.”

A startled, desperate sound escapes me. This is impossible, impossible.

“Enough,” Oberon snaps. “Henry, Lark, this isenough.”

He snatches the mirror from Henry and buries it in his pocket. Therion—his reflected face—vanishes.

As soon as the mirror is hidden, water rushes into the cave, cascading over the floor. It foams around our ankles and gutters the brazier, plunging the space into darkness. The tide has never come this high before, this far inland. Henry surges toward me through the rising, frothing waves. He gathers me up into his arms, the way he did when I was small. As he carries me out of the cave, I feel his heart thundering against my ear.

I struggle, trying to get down, but he stops me with a warning glare.“Don’t.”

The tide has filled the grotto, and the water is past my brothers’ knees. As we hurry out toward the beach, waves strike against Therion’s altar, soaking the ends of the velvet cloth and washing the shells into disarray. I cling to Henry, and Oberon wades beside us, the hem of his coat dragging and sodden across the surface of the sea.

Outside, the night is stark and endless, a clear sky and fragments of moonlight on the ocean like shattered glass. When the waves rise around us, Henry lets me go and we swim until we reach the breakwater. My knees scrape against the stones as I clamber across, tumbling to the flower-covered path.

Henry catches hold of my elbow, helps me to my feet. In an unsteady progression we stagger toward the cottage—my arm wrapped aroundHenry’s waist, my fist knotted in the fabric of Oberon’s coat. Once we’re back inside, my brothers lead me into our parents’ old bedroom.

Their room is tucked beneath the stairwell. I used to sneak inside to play dress-up with my mother’s clothes and jewelry, or to curl on the window seat with a lapful of magazines. But now the room is almost completely empty. The dresser, with all my mother’s things—the silver hairbrush and the velvet jewelry box and the carved porcelain swan—has been taken away. Only a bare mattress remains, covered by a faded cotton sheet.

Seawater drips from our clothes. Our skin is gritted with sand. But my brothers tuck me right into the bed and collapse on either side of me. I’m aching, nauseous, my hair laced with the bitter scent of smoke and my ears echoing with the voice of a god.

“How did you do that?” I close my eyes and press my hands to my aching temples. “Youspokewith him. He was real.”

It’s as though I’ve been awoken from a vivid dream only to be told that every impossible thing I saw was true. We burn our tokens and we give our thanks. But for all the devotions that we offer to Therion, our two realms are always separate. At least, Ithoughtthey were.

Tonight, my brothers have unmade the rules of the world. They’ve reached into the dark and drawn out a god. Therion was a distant creature of seasonal bonfires and altar offerings, yet he looked into my eyes and spoke my name.

And he demanded that I bind myself to him, forever.