Page 29

“You are. An insufferable prig.”

“I hate the way she fusses over me,” he mutters, putting on the coat.

“It makes sense for her to worry about you, considering how you were ill so much when we were younger.”

“That’s why I hate it. Whenever she treats me like I’m going to break, it reminds me of the truth.”

He glances at me, then quickly away. He’s so tense: the angles of his wrists and his shoulders sharp enough that I imagine they might cut me if I touched him. Carefully, I ask, “And what is the truth?”

For a long moment, neither of us moves. Then, as though he’s afraid to lose his nerve, Alastair quickly reaches to the topmost button on his shirt.

I watch, my cheeks burning, as he unfastens it, revealing his lean, bare chest. Dozens of scars are crosshatched over his ribs and abdomen.

Some have faded to silver, others are bruise-dark, badly healed.

The newest are above his heart, a scatter of pigmented, circular marks: an irregular constellation of cigarette burns.

“When I was five, I spilled a pot of ink on my father’s desk. He broke my arm so badly I needed a surgeon.” He gestures to an arrow-straight scar on the inside of his bicep. “After that… he realized it was easier to hide if he sent me away whenever I was hurt.”

“You mean… all the times you were sick, when your father kept you away from Camille and me, when he sent you to the clinic…”

I trail off. The images from our past are now colored in a new, horrible light. Alastair’s expression shuttering when I mentioned his time in Driftsea. The way he’d be separated from Camille inside their house, their father saying he was contagious.

Alastair dips his head in an acquiescing nod. “There was never any illness. There was only him .”

“Does he…” I hesitate. It feels too awful to ask, but I have to know. “Does he hurt Camille as well?”

“No. As much as I’ve missed her, I was glad when Father sent her away to school. It meant she was safe. And that I could keep the worst of this from her.” Slowly, he glances up. His eyes are stark, laid bare with desperation. “You can’t tell her, either.”

I pick restlessly at the strands of grass beside me, twisting them around my fingers until they snap.

All I want to do is tell Camille what I’ve heard, what I’ve seen.

If one of my brothers were hurt like this, I would want to know.

But Alastair stares at me so pleadingly that I can’t bear to argue. “I won’t.”

He lets out a tired sigh and his gaze drops away from mine. He turns back to look at the sea. “I wish you hadn’t overheard.”

There’s a hitch in his voice, a rise of color on his cheeks. He’s ashamed. But I don’t want to apologize, because I’m glad to know the truth of how awful Marcus has been toward his son. I’m glad Alastair doesn’t need to be in this alone.

I bite my lip, shift closer to him. “It’s silly, but when I first heard you on the phone, I thought you were talking to the Salt Priest. The one from the mine. I’m certain I saw him that night in the arbor, outside of my house. What if he’s still here?”

“He couldn’t have stayed in Verse. The Salt Priests use a tincture in their rituals that’s highly addictive.

If you stop taking it suddenly, it will poison you.

It’s part of how they control the sect. None of them can leave the compound for longer than a few days before they start to sicken and have to return for another dose. ”

“How do you know that?”

Alastair is silent for a drawn-out moment. Then he looks at me, gray-eyed and troubled. “That night in the mine, the boy who interrupted your betrothal—I know him. At least, I did. His name is Hugo Valentine, and when we met, he was a member of the Salt Priests.”

I stare at him, reeling as I set the pieces together. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because when I tell you how Hugo and I met, you’ll hate me even more than you already do.”

The terrible softness of Alastair’s voice makes my heartbeat swoop.

I tip back my head, letting the salt-scented air pass over my face.

I’ve spent so long nursing the wounds he left me, hating him for the way he broke my heart.

But now, as we sit in the windswept field, all I feel is longing for how things were before.

I look at him, this sea-drenched, solemn boy. With his wet hair and stark gaze, he’s like some oceanic creature that ought to be captured in delicate strokes of paint. And it feels like instinct, like breathing, to reach for him, to take his hand. So I do.

He goes terribly still, as though my touch is a danger. But slowly, he relents, his fingers curling tentatively over mine.

“If I promise not to hate you,” I ask, looking down at our joined hands, “will you tell me?”

Alastair’s mouth tilts into a sad smile.

“It all began the summer you came back from Marchmain, the night of the bonfire. Father always hated how close Camille and I were with you. But when he saw us together, and he realized how I—” He looks at me, then quickly looks away, a flush creeping over his cheeks.

“You were my best friend, Lacrimosa. And he knew how much I cared.”

I tighten my grasp on Alastair’s hand, feeling the prickle of unshed tears behind my lashes. For a fleeting moment, the salt air has the scent of bonfire smoke.

“He told me to end it,” Alastair goes on. “ Break her heart, completely , he said. So she’ll stay out of your life. I refused, at first. But eventually I gave in.”

I look at the scars on his skin, the healed-over cuts, the cigarette burns. It aches, to imagine Alastair as he was then, the boy who hid with me from his father on the night of the bonfire. Trying to stand up against Marcus Felimath and his brutality.

“You didn’t mean it?” I whisper, my voice catching in my throat. “Those things you said to me…”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it, but I said it all the same.

” A tear slips down his cheek. He scrubs it away with his sleeve.

“After you left that day, I was so angry with my father. I shouted at him, called him weak, pathetic, told him it was petty, how much he hated your family. He struck me; I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my arm for the second time.”

“Oh, Alastair,” I breathe, caught by the cruelty of it, by my rising helplessness.

He turns his face away, closing his eyes against more tears.

“The clinic where I recovered was near the Salt Priest enclave. That’s where I met Hugo.

It took me a long time to heal, and we got to know each other while I was there.

He’d sneak away and meet me on the beach.

I didn’t expect to have feelings for him.

Not after—” He pauses, avoiding my gaze again as his blush deepens.

Everything that lies between us feels like a battlefield, all churned mud and senseless ruin.

“Then,” Alastair says, “I asked if he’d run away with me.”

He looks bereft, stricken with guilt. I shift closer, so our shoulders are touching, our joined hands resting on my knee. “I can understand why you wanted to trust him.”

“I was ready to let Camille face the brunt of our father’s anger, to walk away and never look back. What kind of wretched, heartless person does that? Especially after the way I treated you.”

“It doesn’t make you heartless to crave safety.”

Alastair laughs harshly. “In the end, it didn’t matter. On the night I was supposed to meet Hugo, my father came instead. Later, I found out there’d been an anonymous message at the clinic, warning them that I was planning to run away. I never did find out why Hugo betrayed me.”

“Did you know he would be there, on the night of my betrothal?”

“No. What I told you was the truth. Camille and I were worried about you, so she followed you to the altar. Later, I walked away from the crowd, saw you in that strange boat, and saw Hugo going into the mine.”

“And so you came after him. You saved me.”

Alastair closes his eyes in a slow blink, as tears spill down his cheeks. “Lacrimosa, I know it doesn’t make up for it, but I’m going to help you with Therion—if you’ll let me. We’ll find a way out of this. I’m going to keep you safe.”

I cup my palm against his jaw, wipe away his tears with the edge of my thumb.

He bows to me; our foreheads press. Then we are both moving toward one another, and I am holding him; he is warm and trembling in my arms. It’s just like the night of the bonfire, time spun back, and I wonder if it can be mended, all these wounds between us.

Alastair has bared himself to me, shown me his scars, told me things that even Camille doesn’t know. Everything feels delicate, like a ribbon of new silk. But in this moment, I am as fierce as an ocean storm, as unstoppable as the violence of a rising tide.

I frame his face between my hands, and the spilled ink of his hair trickles over my fingers.

“Yes,” I manage to tell him. “I want your help.”