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CHAPTER SEVEN

Now

I wake alone in the gray light of dawn back at the cottage. I slowly sit up in my own bed, wincing at the ache in my head, the bruised throb in my knees. My palms are gravel-rashed, as though I fell. Someone has replaced the bandage on my arm with fresh linen.

As I get out of bed I catch a glimpse of myself in the dresser mirror. Clean nightdress, a scrape on my cheek. My waist-length hair now unevenly cut, tracing against the tops of my shoulders, the ends curled under.

Oberon appears in the open doorway. When he sees I’m awake, he calls out for Henry. I stumble toward him, falling into his arms. I’m grateful and frightened as he holds me close. We’re reunited—but I know that everything is wrong. I shouldn’t be here, not yet, and not like this.

I can feel the tremor in Oberon’s hands, hear the rapid beat of his heart. “What happened?” I ask, my voice muffled by his chest. “How long has it been?”

“You’ve been asleep for two days. Alastair Felimath found you unconscious on the beach, the morning after the bonfire.”

I draw back to stare at Oberon in shock.

“On the beach? No, that isn’t right. I went to Therion, just as I planned.

He sent a boat and I sailed to the lower entrance of the mine.

But the ritual, it was interrupted. There was a stranger—” I shake my head as the details blur together, like the feverish recollection of a dream.

“The mine collapsed, and Alastair carried me out.”

Henry is in the hallway, listening with a frown. Slowly, he comes into the room. He touches my cheek; he’s uncertain, as though he’s afraid I will disappear. “No, Lark. There wasn’t a collapse. You were in the sea caves, by Therion’s altar. Alastair led me to you; I carried you home myself.”

I wriggle free of Oberon’s arms and pace over to the window, looking out anxiously, as though the answer will lie on the other side of the glass.

Therion’s ring is on my finger. I can still feel the memory of his hand on mine, the rasp of his mouth as we sealed our marriage with a liquor-drenched kiss.

“I need to go back to the mine,” I announce.

My brothers exchange a troubled glance. “We went to the mine,” Henry says. “The day you were found. Nothing had changed.”

I pull a knitted sweater on over my nightdress, shove my feet hurriedly into my shoes. With the laces trailing, I go past my brothers and head out of my room. A rush of dizziness overcomes me as I reach the landing. I pause at the top of the stairs, clutching the banister tightly.

Sighing, Oberon comes to stand beside me. He slips his arm around my waist. “All right. We’ll go back. But come and have breakfast first; you need to eat before you do anything.”

I let him help me down to the kitchen, and I sit at the table while he makes toast and boils the kettle for tea. Henry paces restlessly in the hallway, a lit cigarette in one hand. A trail of smoke laces the air around him.

Oberon sets down a plate of toast spread with honey, and pours a cup of strong black tea. He watches while I eat, as though he expects me to argue. But I am starving; I crunch up the toast in four bites and drink the too-hot tea so fast it burns my tongue.

“There,” I say, putting down my empty cup. “Now can we go?”

We visit the main entrance of the mine first. Even from a distance it’s obvious there’s been a change.

Behind the wrought iron gateway that covers the entrance, the darkness shifts and glitters.

Slowly, I approach, with Oberon and Henry on either side of me.

We falter to stillness at the gate; my mouth opens in a soundless gasp.

The mine—the mine—it blooms with new salt.

I stare at it, entranced. Oberon pushes his glasses higher on his nose. “It did not look like this two days ago.”

The corridor is choked with salt, eager fractals spilling out from the veins toward the entrance, a gleaming snarl of teeth.

There is enough salt here to make up for all the missed harvests—enough for the debt, for everything.

My hands are trembling, my heartbeat wild.

Tentatively, I reach through the iron bars to touch the nearest crystal.

The salt is luminous as a new-moon night, with an opaque darkness that draws my hand to stroke one of the glimmering points. It’s cold as ice beneath my touch. My fingers, pressed to the crystal, look almost translucent, my skin traced with stark indigo veins.

Then a harsh, sudden ache spikes through my temples. Caught by a wave of nausea, I close my eyes. A cascade of images fills my mind. Pale feathers, amber eyes, jagged rocks falling all around me. The rush of the ocean tide as it floods the grotto cave.

Henry catches me as I stumble backward. I swallow thickly, tasting the bitter flavor of chthonic liquor. “I’m all right,” I manage. “It’s just—my head.”

He strokes my hair in concern, looking down at me.

My cheeks are damp with perspiration. I step away from him, my hand pressed to my throbbing temple, and move toward the edge of the cliff.

Past the protective wooden barricade, I can see down to the lower entrance.

The narrow stretch of beach, the pier jutting out into the water.

There is no sign of the swan boat. The cliffside is smooth, the shore untouched, with no evidence of the rocks that splintered away from the walls and fell to the ground as Alastair and I made our escape.

The boat, the stranger, and everything that happened in the depths of the mine, it all feels like a strange hallucination.

Even with my newly cut hair and the ring on my finger, I could so easily believe none of it happened at all.

But the truth is inescapable. I am supposed to be in the chthonic world until the end of the harvest season.

Instead, I am here. And it frightens me, this broken promise.

I should be with Therion right now. That was the price of the salt renewed. So if I am here—what does this mean?

Part of me wants to call it a reprieve. I’m free of Therion; my family is free of the Felimath debt. But apprehension snares at me like thorns, tighter and tighter. It won’t let go. As we walk back to the cottage in troubled silence, all I can think is I shouldn’t be in the mortal realm .

Inside the front room, we sit together on the threadbare chaise. Oberon picks at his cuticles; Henry lights another cigarette. “We’ll need to hire a larger crew,” he says. “After the last few years, hardly any of the regular workers have come to the village for the salt season.”

Oberon pushes at his glasses again, letting out a deep, anxious sigh. “We’ll have to go away.”

“Away?” I echo. “Where?”

“Driftsea, maybe? Or even farther, perhaps all the way down to Clovendoe. We’ll need a full team—double that, even.”

My brothers exchange a wordless, agitated glance. The way they always do when they’re trying to make a choice without involving me in the discussion. I shift restlessly between them, still too numbed by the shock of what’s happened to feel annoyed, the way I usually would.

Finally, Henry looks at me. “Do you want to come with us?”

I bite my lip. In the past, even when the regular workers still traveled here for the harvest, my brothers sometimes had to go away on business.

I’d always go with them, until I was at Marchmain.

And I loved it, especially when we went to Driftsea, which had a whole row of shops and bookstores along the waterfront, or to Astera, where I could visit the art gallery.

But now, leaving feels like the worst possible choice I could make. Despite the fact that the salt seems to be restored, everything feels so wrong, so uncertain. What if I go away from Verse and the salt vanishes as suddenly as it appeared?

I twist my hands anxiously inside the sleeves of my sweater. “I think it would be better if I stayed here.”

Henry takes a deep inhale from his cigarette. He and Oberon exchange another loaded, drawn-out glance. Reluctantly, Henry sighs, “I suppose one of us can go while the other stays behind.”

He sounds unconvinced, and I know it won’t work. In the past it took my brothers months to prepare for the harvest: hiring a crew, setting everything in order here to begin work in the mine. Now those preparations will be condensed into a scant handful of weeks.

“Don’t be foolish,” I say, trying to still my restless fidgeting. “You both need to go. I will be perfectly all right here on my own.”

“I’m not sure if someone who betrothed themselves to a god has the right to call anyone else foolish,” Oberon says, mouth drawn into a line.

“It would be more foolish for me to leave.”

“Debatable.”

Henry pinches the bridge of his nose. “If you stay behind, you’re to be properly behaved.

Keep near the house. Don’t go into the mine for any reason.

As soon as we arrive, we’ll telegram the address of where we are staying.

And if there are any problems, you’ll go to Saltswan and ask Alastair for help. ”

Pressing my lips together, I manage a stilted nod. Oberon squeezes my hand, then gets to his feet with a reluctant sigh. “We had better pack. If we hurry, we should be able to make the evening train.”

My brothers leave at sunset. We stand together at the front of the cottage to say goodbye.

The quiet stretches out between us; no one speaks, as though we’re all afraid to say the words that will acknowledge this moment.

I embrace Henry first; he holds me for a long time, his cheek pressed firmly to my hair.

Then he steps back, taking me by the shoulders. His hands are shaking slightly. “You’re certain of this?”

“Yes, Henry.”

He gives me a long, searching look before he releases me. With a sigh, he picks up his traveling bag, slinging the strap across his shoulder. I turn to Oberon and wrap my arms tightly around him.

“We’ll wire you as soon as we can. It might take a few days, depending on who we can find in Driftsea, and if we need to travel farther.”