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“Only the beginning.”

“Shit.”

Mordaunt propped Aurienne on the ledge that rimmed the inside of the lantern room. He stood in front of her, irresolute, his brows drawn, his mouth an anxious press. The concern on his features wasunsettling. His mouth was for snarking, not for looking worried on her account.

“I’m fine,” said Aurienne.

Mordaunt’s eyes remained on her bloodied hands.

“Ugly, isn’t it?” said Aurienne.

“We don’t choose our Cost,” said Mordaunt. He sat beside her. “If this thing was ever to work, I would’ve imagined that that was the—the kind of moment.”

Aurienne nodded. They had come to the very edge of something today. Something very like what the tales spoke of—a flickering and a fraying of this world and the revelation of another beyond the gossamer. In the thundering rush of wings, it had felt like they were somewhere on that cusp, where the impossible was possible, where the unhealable could heal.

The thrill of Aurienne’s early forays into these stories found her again; she almost believed—she wanted to believe. And now she must wait an entire month until the next full moon. (Baffling, to be anticipating her next rendezvous with Mordaunt, but, well—she was rather looking forward to trying again.)

“Are you feeling better?” asked Mordaunt.

“A bit. You can stop looking so concerned. It unsettles me.”

“I need you. I need your hands. I’ll be as concerned as I like when they look like mincemeat.”

“When I’ve recovered my seith, I’ll heal the mess.”

“You should rest,” said Mordaunt.

Aurienne tilted her head back and leaned, at first, against the glass pane behind her. The glass was uncomfortable and slippery. Exhausted, and past caring what he thought, she slid off it, and rested her cheek upon the soft velvet of Mordaunt’s cloaked shoulder.

She closed her eyes and breathed until her breaths matched the cadence of the waves somewhere below them—the long ins, the slow outs. The lighthouse sent its beam out in search of something in the dark. Forleagues and leagues over the sea, shadows split, closed up, and were split again.

Aurienne’s faintness receded. She opened her eyes.

The lavender sky had given way to black. The Blædnes moon had risen.

Night made a dark looking glass of the windows. Mordaunt was watching her in the reflection. The lighthouse flared and sent his face into sharp relief—the scar across his mouth, the features she wouldn’t admit were handsome, the eyes palely reflecting light.

Fyren.

But also—also just a man.

He sat, scarred and imperfect, under a scarred and imperfect moon. Motionless, alert, intent upon her. His breath fanned against her temple, heartbeat-slow, the careful, measured slowness of a man controlling his breathing. The shape of his mouth mattered. His stubble caught her hair.

Just a man. Being so near him in that moment freed the thought from Aurienne. Just a man who, as they stood in the light of another place, had nearly touched his lips to hers. Just a man who had whispered, desperately, “Please.”

He leaned into her, or she into him, until their arms touched. Their joined reflection in the window made a soft and pleasing trigonometry. There was a strange intimacy in feeling the heat radiating from him. Aurienne wondered if he thought the same. No answer came, save the mute press of his arm against hers.

It meant nothing. It couldn’t mean anything, because of what she was and what he was. These were sweet nothings of an entirely new kind. Meaningless. Futile.

Mordaunt shifted. His signet ring brushed against her; carved stone, blood-warm, caressed her wrist. Her skin received it like a kiss.

Aurienne vacillated between being repulsed and drawn in, between wanting more and wishing to move away, an ebb and a flow as changefulas the waves below, as throbbing and intermittent as the lighthouse strobe. This was the real in-between. Did he, too, feel the push and pull?

The light flared. She glanced up. She caught him unguarded. Instead of mirrorlike silver she found chasmal grey. The intensity in his gaze shocked her even as she found her answer. He looked at her as one who wished to worship, and one who wished to defile.

The next time the light flashed, the mirror was back.

They sat for a long time, leaning against each other, existing in two states at once.