Page 2

CHAPTER TWO

Now

Once Alastair is gone, Henry pulls a crumpled package of cigarettes from his pocket. He lights one and exhales a plume of smoke. A frown pinches between his brows as he looks at me expectantly. “Are you going to explain why you’re here?”

“Are you going to tell me why Alastair Felimath was in our house?” I can’t believe that cold-eyed, mocking boy was once my closest friend.

It’s been years since things between us ended and he revealed his true self—stark, arrogant, and cruel.

I’ve done all I could to push it aside, erase all thoughts of him from my memories.

But his presence here tonight has brought everything back, as indelible as a stain of spilled ink.

“Lark,” Henry says impatiently. “I’m not playing around.”

I fold my arms, matching his frown with my own. Part of me wants to tell him about Marchmain. To confess. Instead, I clench my teeth, biting down on the truth. As though by keeping it trapped and silent, I can prevent what I did from being real.

Henry and Oberon are both watching me now; beneath their stares I feel hot and restless. I push the strap of my satchel from my shoulder and let the bag fall to the floor with a thump. “I want to go to the altar before it gets too dark.”

In the sea caves below our cottage, our family keeps an altar for Therion, the chthonic god worshipped in this part of Verse. It’s been our tradition to go there after an extended time away from home, to tell Therion we have returned and thank him for his favor.

I don’t feel very thankful right now, but I’d rather be anywhere else than in this room, pinned by the scrutiny of my brothers and the memory of Alastair’s snide and bitter-tasting farewell.

Henry releases a taut sigh and crosses the room to take one of the candles from the windowsill. “Come on, then.”

He moves toward the open doorway that leads to the back of our house. Oberon hesitates for a moment, then follows him with a sigh. I trail after them, a thread of smoke lingering in the air from Henry’s cigarette.

As we go down the hall and through the kitchen, I see how much is missing from the other rooms. The walls have all been stripped bare, with darkened squares and empty picture hooks marking the places where artwork was hung.

What little furniture remains is set out of place; a side table that used to be upstairs is now in the hall, holding an unlit candle and a jar of tapers.

In the kitchen, the polished dining set has been replaced by a scarred worktable and three mismatched chairs.

The almost-empty rooms catch the sounds of our footsteps as we pass, twisting them into unfamiliar shapes.

The changes in the house fill me with a foreboding that I can’t escape.

Henry opens the kitchen door and we step out into the rear garden.

It’s just as overgrown as the front, with a tangled lawn of seaside daisies and oxalis, and more camellia trees that have carpeted the ground with their dropped flowers.

The wisteria vine, which covers a wooden arbor behind the house, sends wayward, spiraling tendrils up against the fading sky.

I tug at Henry’s sleeve. He turns toward me, the end of his cigarette glowing like a coal, the candle flickering in his other hand. “What happened while I’ve been away? Why is everything… like this?”

I gesture from the house to the garden, and Henry sighs. He slips his arm around my shoulders, and we continue onward to the breakwater that separates our cottage from the sea.

“You know,” he begins, “that Mom and Dad borrowed a lot of money from Marcus Felimath before they died.”

His voice has the tired gravity of someone beginning a story he doesn’t want to tell. I manage a nod. Our parents died only a scant few months after my unexpected arrival, and the debt they owed to Alastair’s father was part of the reason why.

They had gone on an expedition to the frozen north, to offer a harvest contract for a potential new salt vein. It would have been enough to repay what they owed, twice over. Instead, with a sudden storm and a lethal, ice-slicked coast, Henry, Oberon, and I became orphans.

An ache throbs in me, stark as a bruise, whenever I think of it. The senseless loss, the way I can’t even mourn them because I have no memories of them at all. Only an echo, an absence, the sadness I catch glimpses of in my brothers’ eyes.

I drag in a breath, renewed anger surging up at Henry’s mention of that debt. Our parents might still be alive if not for the money they owed to Marcus Felimath. “We’re paying him back, though,” I say, insistent, wishing I could sever this horrible bond between our families with my words.

My brothers pause at the apex of the stairs that lead down from the breakwater. The tide is drawing in, the waterline creeping higher up the shore.

I stare down at the silvery waves capped by their latticework of froth.

The taste of it paints over my tongue: salt and shell grit, the stippling haze of sea spray clinging to my lashes.

Usually my first sight of the ocean is a balm.

No matter how I felt, all my fears and sadness would melt away when I looked out across the crescent-shaped cove that bordered our home.

But now, apprehension winds so tight around me that I can hardly breathe. I turn to Henry, waiting for his answer. “Wasn’t that the agreement you and Oberon made, to pay back the debt with the annual salt harvest?”

Henry continues onward without response. Oberon takes my hand and squeezes it gently, urging me to keep moving. We climb down the stairs and walk a short distance across the beach, to the base of the cliffs where a hollowed arch creates a large sheltered grotto.

Most people outside of Verse worship the Canticle god, a single, omnipresent deity who rules over the space between the worlds.

In Astera, the city where Marchmain Academy is, there are chapels in every quarter.

Their bells rang at dawn and dusk, a familiar part of my days when I lived there.

Inside those chapels, the hallowed silence reminded me of an art gallery.

How everyone moved with quiet reverence, the stillness unbroken except for a low murmur of voices.

The gods of Verse are as numerous as a menagerie, different for each region.

On this isolated stretch of coastline, we worship Therion, who is sometimes depicted as a swan—the reason our Arriscane ancestors chose that creature for their sigil.

Therion has affinity with the untamed sea, and the salt mine, and the wild woods; and I can’t imagine him anywhere near a Canticle chapel, all neat rows of benches and white-painted walls.

Our altar is on a ledge at the rear of the cave, laid with a velvet cloth and decorated by iron candlesticks, an array of seagrass, driftwood, and shells. As we enter the space, the captured sound of the ocean is like an indrawn breath.

Henry takes a listless drag from his cigarette. “The mine has failed, Lark.”

I reel to a sudden stop, but he continues inside the grotto. I watch his retreating back, struck silent with confusion. He sets his candle into one of the iron holders, then takes a small flask of chthonic liquor, a spirit made from steeped herbs, from beside a scalloped seashell.

The mine, filled with veins of black salt, has been part of our family for so long it may as well have been forever.

Each season, the salt is hewn from the ground and shipped to faraway cities—Astera, mostly, but also Gruoch, in the north, and Trieste, across the sea—where it is turned into energy in power plants.

Everything from gramophones to lamps to the train that brought me home is powered by salt.

The last time I went into the mine was the night before I left for my first term at Marchmain.

There was no sign that anything was wrong.

And not once in any of the letters my brothers sent in the past four years have they mentioned this.

They wrote together, in separate shades of ink.

Stories of their days, told innocuously in red and blue.

A new book Henry had read. A song Oberon learned for the piano.

Nothing about the failed mine, nothing about the debt.

“How long have you known?” I ask, hating the way my voice is wavering. There’s a hot ache behind my lashes, and I know I’m about to cry.

Henry opens the flask and drinks a mouthful of the sea-dark liquor.

“At first, we thought it was just a bad harvest, the same as when Mom and Dad went north. But each year, there was less and less salt. We managed to keep up with the repayments at first, though we barely had enough to pay the harvest crews.”

He holds out the flask to Oberon, who moves forward to take it from his hand. Oberon drinks, then wipes his mouth on his wrist, leaving an inky smear. “Last year we didn’t even need a crew. The mine is empty. There’s nothing left.”

His lips are stained dark as he speaks. He offers the flask to me. I approach my brothers at the altar slowly, betrayal sinking through me, as heavy as a leaden weight. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come back right away if I’d known.”

Though we’re siblings, our dynamic has never been wholly even, since Henry and Oberon are the ones who raised me. But I’d never expected they would keep something so important—so dire—a secret.

Oberon presses the flask into my hands. “Leaving behind your education wouldn’t have solved anything.”

I raise the flask to my mouth and drink. The chthonic liquor tastes of herbs, of altars. The burn of it across my tongue always felt, until this moment, like solace, like home. Now it only sends a spike of headache to my temples.

“You might have used my tuition money for the debt.”