Page 27

We return to the house in conflicted silence.

I should feel relieved, but instead all of me is wound tight enough to snap.

The sound of the ocean threatens to become the rush of water, the remorseless rise of waves.

The cuffs of my shirt are snares of kelp.

I jump at every flicker of shadow, skittish as a hare.

My skin feels sticky with sweat; sand is gritted on the soles of my feet.

I go upstairs and take a bath—the water hot and shallow—scrubbing myself until all traces of the feverish night are gone.

I try to ignore the feathers on my arm, the way they curl around my wrist like a fetter once I step from the water.

I put on an old cotton dress and pin my wet hair back from my face with two barrettes. Daub some of Oberon’s aftershave on my wrists. The bathroom is filled with steam, the mirror clouded. My reflection is a blurred, impressionist landscape.

I am standing still. But in the glass, something moves.

Clutching the sink, I lean closer to the mirror.

I hold my breath. I am motionless as a statue.

The reflection is, too. Then, slowly, I see the sprawl of pallid light behind my silhouette.

Like outstretched wings. Trembling, I clear a space in the fog with my hand.

Amber eyes stare back at me, bright with desperate fury.

Behind me, a wave of water sloshes over the edge of the bathtub.

It floods around my feet, cold as the altar cave, briny with salt.

A strand of kelp snares my ankle. I stagger forward with a startled cry, wrenching open the door.

The water recedes, drawn back like a tide as it vanishes into the drain.

Camille comes running up the stairs. I fall into her arms. I’m shaking, frantic. I hold her like a tether line, press my face into the curve of her shoulder. “What happened?” she asks. “What did you see?”

My voice is choked, the taste of chthonic liquor painted over my tongue. “Therion.”

We turn together and look through the door. The tub is filled shallowly with my bathwater, a lazy curl of steam rising from the surface.

The mirror reflects nothing but an empty room.

I press my hands to my face, sighing out a ragged breath into the cupped space of my palms. I feel as though I’ve lost my mind. Camille gently touches my shoulder. “This arrived, while you were in the bath.”

She passes me a yellow envelope stamped with the mark of the telegram service. My fingers are shaking so much I can hardly get it open. Inside, two lines are typeset on yellow paper:

Evelyn Hotel

#4 Fourth Street, Clovendoe, 000 241124

At the bottom, signed in indigo ink, are my brothers’ initials. Tears fill my eyes at the sight of them. I need my brothers more than ever, and they’re so impossibly far away. All I want right now is to hear their voices.

“Can I use the telephone at Saltswan?” I ask Camille.

“Of course you can.” A thoughtful expression crosses her face, and her mouth curls into a smile. “In fact, pack your overnight bag. I think you should stay there; we should all be together. It’s… safer.”

“Why are you helping me?” I ask quietly. What I really mean is, Why are you being so kind?

Camille regards me levelly. Then she takes my face between her hands.

Her thumb strokes my cheek. The motion of her touch raises goose bumps all over my body.

“My entire life, nothing has ever been of my own choosing. Alastair is the heir. I’m to keep out of the way, go to school, learn to manage the family accounts.

I hate sums. I’m home now, but Father is set on me going back to Beauvoir Academy for a postgraduate year in mathematics.

I know how it feels to have your future taken out of your control. ”

Her gaze is vehement, lit by the same protective spark as when she held me in the altar cave.

I press my lips together. I feel a hum of heat rising between our skin.

She doesn’t move away, but only watches me.

A guarded, careful question in the tilt of her mouth, the arc of her thumbs on my cheeks.

My lashes flutter, my breath sighs out, quiet as a secret.

In a fractured whisper, I ask, “Is that the only reason?”

“No.” Camille leans closer. Her voice turns quiet. “I care about you, Lark.”

My heartbeat quickens. I’m caught by a snare of desire, thorned as brambles. The scent of her strawberry perfume fills my lungs. I could lie forever in her touch, curl up in the crescent of her neck and shoulder, the blanket of her hair like the lowering night.

I falter, feeling shy as I tip my face upward, closing the distance between us. I brush my lips against hers, tentative, the unsure answer to her silent question. She sighs against me, her mouth yielding under mine.

It’s like kissing her for the first time, no veil between us, only her chapped lips, the heat and softness of her mouth.

She’s so careful, so gentle, that when her teeth notch playfully against my lip, it’s a bright, delicious shock.

“Camille,” I say, all tattered, and she kisses her name from my lips, kisses me until I am helpless.

She laughs against me, and her tongue is in my mouth, hot and insistent.

We stumble backward until I’m pressed to the wall.

Her knee slots between my thighs and I can’t help but gasp as I rock against her.

She tastes of syrup, impossible sweetness.

Chamomile tea. When I close my eyes, all I can see is a calm, flat ocean.

Her hand slips beneath my hair, fingers tracing patterns against my nape, my collarbones.

It feels like words from a secret language, something only the two of us can know.

When we pause for breath, she lets her head drop forward, burying her face against my shoulder. “Gods,” she sighs, her lips grazing down my neck, “can’t we do this forever?”

I laugh, feeling breathless and dizzy. “I wish we could.”

Slowly, slowly, we draw apart. As Camille steps back, I look at her guardedly. She smiles, and there is no artifice in her, nothing I need to earn or give. Her cheeks are flushed, her mouth reddened. I go into my room, my fingers at my lips, pressed down on the memory of our second kiss.

I fill my satchel with a change of clothes, my hairbrush, a velvet ribbon. The book of Caedmon’s sketches. I go downstairs, with Camille at my side. She waits while I put on my boots, tie up the laces.

She trails after me as I pace through the house for a final time.

In the kitchen, I notice Alastair’s copy of The Neriad , left behind on the table.

I pick it up, opening it to a random page.

The margin is filled with more of the tiny, intricate pencil sketches.

Leaves and seashells and wildflowers. A face, in profile: a girl with long hair crowned by flowers.

My name, written between the lines of poetry, so darkly that the pencil has smudged. Lacrimosa.

I close the book, tuck it into the bottom of my satchel. We leave the cottage through the kitchen door.

Saltswan is solemn on the clifftop, the windows sheened gray by the reflected sky. I keep my hands in my pockets, clutching the folded telegram like it’s a talisman. I try to figure out what I’ll say on the telephone, how to explain this to Henry and Oberon.

Inside the house, none of the lamps have been lit. In the quiet front hall, the framed portraits watch us from the shadows. A taut red mouth here, a set of narrowed gray eyes there. There’s no sign of Alastair in any of the rooms we pass.

Camille leads me into a sitting room at the rear of the house.

Here, on the wall between two ornate portraits, is a framed photograph of Alastair and Camille with their father.

Camille is posed stiffly, in a severe, dark dress.

Alastair wears a suit, a silk tie knotted tightly at his throat.

Marcus Felimath has his hand on Alastair’s shoulder, and even in the grainy black-and-white picture I can make out the firm, hard way he’s grasped his son, the harsh press of his fingers.

I touch the edge of the photograph frame.

Even though Camille and Alastair look unhappy, standing on either side of their grim father, it raises a little prickle of envy in me.

I wish that Oberon hadn’t burned all the photographs of our parents.

It’s as though my life is a book, and when I try to turn back to the chapters before my birth, there are only the barest lines of text.

Beside Marcus is an unfamiliar woman with elegant, aquiline features and long, dark hair. “Is that your mother?” I ask. I have never met Alastair and Camille’s mother, but I remember Alastair mentioning her briefly, saying she lived in another city and had little contact with her children.

Camille nods. “Yes. Her name is Romilly. I think this photograph was taken the last time I saw her; she has an apartment in Gardemuir now. She writes to us sometimes. But whenever we’ve tried to visit, it’s never the right moment .”

We’re standing so close that the backs of our hands almost touch; I reach to Camille, lace my fingers through hers. Romilly Felimath stands slightly apart from the rest of her family, her eyes focused on a point beyond the camera lens. She looks distracted, as though she is already somewhere else.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Camille, because it’s all I can think to say.

She offers me a wan smile. “All I remember of her was that she taught me and Alastair to play the piano.” Her smile dims. She looks at me, her expression starkly bitter, lit more by anger than sorrow.

“I still don’t know if it would be better or worse if she had stayed, but I’ll not chase after someone who doesn’t want me.

Alastair has always been the only family I truly need.

” She drags her thumb across my knuckles, then slides her hand from my grasp.

Indicating the table below the photograph, where a telephone sits beside a stack of glossy architectural magazines, she goes on.

“I’ll wait upstairs while you make your call.

Come and find me when you’re done. And good luck. ”

I set down my satchel and take the telegram from my pocket as Camille leaves the room. I pick up the receiver, cradling it between my shoulder and ear. I’m about to dial when a voice comes on the line. Alastair, in mid-conversation. “—I’ve done what you asked.”

He sounds bored, annoyed. I can picture him standing beside a window, his eyes on the sea, barely paying attention to the call.

I need to hang up, but then, before I can move, he continues, “I know it was a mess, what happened in the mine, and with the Arriscanes, but I told you—I’m taking care of it. ”

I clap a hand over the receiver, holding my breath. Alastair is talking about me—about my family. He’s talking to the Salt Priest.