Page 32

CHAPTER TWELVE

Now

We’re chased back to Saltswan by the rising storm, the sky leaden with clouds, a swift wind sweeping in from the sea.

As we hurry toward the house, the petrichor-scented air is heavy as a veil.

It begins to rain the moment we step inside.

Enormous drops pelt against the windows, filling the entrance hall with a rapid-fire staccato sound that covers all else.

Alastair takes off his coat, hangs it back on the hook beside the door.

His wet hair is plastered against his face, sleek as silk.

He pushes it out of his eyes with his wrist, then notices his shirt is still undone.

He starts to re-button it, but his fingers are numbed from the cold, clumsy against the sodden fabric.

Laughing, I move forward. “Here, let me help you.”

He starts to laugh, too, a nervous edge to it, but he allows me to fasten his shirt for him. It feels dizzying, this closeness: my knuckles brushing against his bare chest, the rise and fall of his breath. He’s standing so still that he trembles with the effort.

The noise of the storm makes the space around us feel pressed close, the walls curled inward, the ceiling lowered. It’s impossibly intimate, the same way it felt the first time I was invited inside Saltswan. When Alastair took me up to his bedroom.

And now he’s watching me, cheeks flushed, gaze heated. Our laughter dims. His hands curve around my own. He touches me like I’m a pearlescent shell laid out on an altar.

His expression darkens, and his fingers are restless against mine. “This is all my fault,” he says, low and solemn. “If not for me, you wouldn’t have bound yourself to Therion. I was willing to ruin your family, just to please my father.”

In his eyes I see all my own pain and longing reflected back. All the unkind words and anger that have passed between us. I’m filled by a rush of tenderness, so fierce that it aches. I want to hold Alastair in my arms again, stroke my fingers through his sea-wet hair.

“You weren’t trying to please him. You were trying to protect yourself.” I look down at our hands, fingers interlaced, the shimmer of my betrothal ring. “What happened to me isn’t your fault. Perhaps I blamed you once, but I don’t anymore. Not when your father has treated you so brutally.”

His lashes dip, his breath comes out in a jagged sigh. Quietly, he asks, “Would you tell me about what happened at Marchmain, why you were expelled?”

I hesitate. Until this moment, I’d wanted to keep the truth of what happened shut away, locked tight. To put it into words was too painful. But now, standing with Alastair, the sound of the rain closing out the rest of the world, I realize… I want him to know.

“There was a girl: Damson Sinclair.” I swallow, feeling a shiver. It’s the first time I’ve said her name out loud since I came home. “She was my best friend at Marchmain…”

And so I give Alastair the whole story. He listens intently as I tell him about my years at school, my time with Damson. How it was so golden at first, like magic. How we built our own private realm. And then, finally, how it all fell apart.

When I’ve finished, the rain fills in the quiet that extends between us. Alastair slips his hand free of mine. He touches my face, painstakingly gentle. His thumb strokes my cheek and I realize that I am crying. “Lacrimosa,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Slow, slow, slow, I step toward him. His arms go around me.

I press my cheek into his shoulder, letting my tears join the seawater that has saturated the fabric.

His fingers comb through my hair, tucking it back behind my ear.

He bends to me. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and his voice is a plea, a supplication.

“I’m sorry for what I did, and how I treated you.

For the debt, for the way I spoke to you after the bonfire, for everything . ”

When I think of how things ended between us that summer, it aches.

But now I know the whole truth. Cigarette burns and broken bones, Alastair trying to survive his father’s cruelty.

The same way I tried to survive Damson, our last year at Marchmain.

I know how it feels to love someone who is like a poison.

To want so desperately to please them, even though it wounds you.

I look up at him, the sorrowful lines of his features, this boy who hurt me so much. “I forgive you, Alastair.”

His hand slides down my arm, gently touching my wrist. His fingers cast over the scar, over the feathers, over my rising pulse.

I press my lips together, remembering how it felt on the clifftops, our clasped hands, the way he exhaled when I first touched him.

Not for the first time, I imagine how it might feel if I kissed him.

It would be so simple. Only a half step forward, and his mouth would be on mine.

But I’m so conflicted. I’m drawn to Camille. I’m drawn to Alastair. I care for them both in equal measure. We were always a trio, and it feels impossible to divide that, to choose one part and set aside the other.

The noise of the rain momentarily fades. Into the quiet comes the sound of footsteps. We draw apart swiftly as Camille makes her way down the stairs.

She’s changed into a pair of trousers and a sloppy woolen sweater; the oversized sleeves bunch around her elbows as she folds her arms, regarding us with a frown. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Lark, what did your brothers say?”

I hesitate, casting a quick glance at Alastair. I don’t want to tell Camille what I overheard when he was on the telephone. “I wasn’t able to reach them.”

“So why did you both run out into the rain?”

Alastair lifts one shoulder in an evasive shrug. He tells Camille, “It wasn’t raining while we were out.”

“You’re hilarious,” she says, unamused. “If you weren’t in the rain, why are you dripping water all over the floor?”

“If you must know, Father telephoned. After we spoke, I wanted to clear my head, so I went for a swim.”

Camille’s frown softens. “Was he as bad as usual?”

“It was just one of his regular lectures,” Alastair says, a forced lightness in his voice. He turns toward the stairs, studiedly avoiding Camille’s skeptical look. He plucks at the wet collar of his shirt. “I’m going to change.”

I stand beside Camille as he leaves. She sighs, her shoulders slouching. After he’s gone, I head toward the sitting room, where I left my satchel, and she trails after me. “So, it seems like you and Alastair have reached a truce.”

I glance back at her, resisting the urge to fidget. “We might have.”

“You both looked very sweet, standing so close together when I came downstairs. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

Her mouth tilts into a sly smile. My face heats instantly, and I press my palms to my cheeks. Faltering, I try for an explanation. “I’d never do anything to hurt either of you.”

Camille watches me squirm for a moment, then laughs gently.

“Listen, Alastair and I aren’t possessive with each other.

We never have been. Father always tried to make us enemies.

But I love Alastair. I’d never begrudge him anything that makes him happy.

He’s the only one in the world who is truly mine . ”

“I thought you just said you weren’t possessive,” I tease. Camille rolls her eyes at me, still laughing.

“No matter how often Father tried to force us into competition, Alastair and I refused to play along. It was one of the few ways we could rebel. Father hated it. That’s partly why he sent me away, not that he’d ever admit it.

If he couldn’t make us enemies, then he wouldn’t allow us to be allies.

” She bites her lip, shifts toward me. Her fingers lace through mine.

Already there’s a thrill of familiarity in her touch, as though even my bones, my blood recognize her.

Camille’s voice lowers, her expression turned shy. Her thumb casts restlessly against my knuckles. “What I’m trying to say is that we’re never envious. We’d never ask you to… choose.”

The way she looks at me makes me feel incandescent; I’m so hot with embarrassment that perspiration beads at my temples, traces down my spine.

All I can think of is the golden ratio, and pressing my lips together as I gather myself, I say, “In painting, the best compositions are able to be divided into thirds.”

“Hm, I like that. The thought of us all being like art.” Camille smiles. Then, gently, she goes on, “I heard what you said to Alastair before, about why you were expelled. I’m sorry, too.”

“At least coming home meant that I was able to see you again.” I’m trying to be effusive but my words come out raw, hot tears blurring my eyes.

I wipe them away, sniffling, trying to fight the tide of my rising hurt.

I don’t want to still be so wounded, to let the ache of Damson’s betrayal intrude on this moment with Camille. But it’s inescapable.

She tugs me closer, her hand sliding to my waist. “You deserved so much better, Lark.”

“It’s just—I’m so afraid,” I admit, my voice unsteady, edged by sobs.

“All I wanted was to be a curator, to spend my life with Caedmon’s paintings.

Who am I without that? Sometimes it feels like there’s a limit to all the good things in the world.

That by the time I realize what I want to do, now, instead, it will be too late. ”

Camille’s eyes turn bright, lit by anger—anger on behalf of me. “I wish I had been at Marchmain with you. And when those wretched girls made you hurt, I would have hurt them right back. Lark, the entire world, and all the good it has to offer, will be limitless, and yours .”