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“Gods do not haunt .” Therion’s eyes narrow, anger sparking in his gaze. “I have been trying to reach you, to call on you, my betrothed. I need you to help me escape.”

I glance around us, confused. “Escape—from here? But isn’t this your world?”

“No. This is a place between—neither the chthonic nor the mortal realm.”

I look again at the forest, the water. Seeing it with renewed understanding. The shift and blur of the Arriscane woods and the familiar coastline as it’s transfigured by the otherworldly lilac sky. “You’re caught here.”

“Because of the ritual,” Alastair adds, his voice stilted. “Because I stopped it.”

Therion’s attention flickers to Alastair for a moment.

He dips his head in a slight nod, though he is still seething, furious.

“Yes. The ritual was incomplete. And now I am caught between my world and oblivion. But it will not last. As the darkness floods in, I am less and less able to hold myself anchored. Lacrimosa and I are both under threat.”

Realization settles over me. I stare at Therion in horror. “That is why I’ve been losing time? All the strangeness, the visions, the haunting… It’s because of our bond.”

“We are as one, Lacrimosa. This same darkness comes for you as well.”

Camille lets out a fractured gasp, and clutches hold of my arm.

On my other side, Alastair presses close.

But even hemmed between them, I am frightened and trembling.

All I can hear is Therion’s voice, the furious ire in his explanation.

Oblivion, darkness, banished. “Therion,” I whisper, pleading, “you have to let me go.”

“I will not let you go. You are mine . You have been ever since you first drew breath.”

Fear spikes through me, like a needle piercing silk. “What do you mean?”

“You were promised to me by your brothers on the night you were born.”

“No,” I say. “That isn’t right. The night in the cave, behind our altar, was the first time they’d ever spoken to you.”

Therion regards me unwaveringly. “Henry and Oberon came to me eighteen years ago. That was when we made our agreement.”

I glance toward Alastair and Camille, the small distance between us now feeling impossibly wide.

Before I can move, Therion takes hold of my hand.

His skin is as cold as mist; I can feel the sharpness of his claws.

He gazes down at me, the anger in his face transmuted to something wilder: a helpless desperation.

He’s holding me like he is drowning, and I am the lifeline that will pull him to safety.

“If you do not believe me,” he says, his voice like the drift of feathers, “I will show you.”

I force myself to square my shoulders. I hold out my other hand, the one Therion has not clasped, and reach for Alastair and Camille. “Show me, then. Show all of us the truth.”

Therion draws me forward, until I am in his arms. He glances at the others with his amber gaze, then tips his chin in a beckoning gesture. “Come closer,” he orders. Alastair and Camille move to him, and Therion gathers the three of us into an enclosed embrace.

We’re swept up in a rush. The air smells of the sea, of salt and brazier smoke.

Therion takes us toward the woods, into the corridor of trees.

Transposed over them, like the galleried walls of Saltswan, are endless gilt frames.

Inside each one is a rectangle of polished obsidian. The same as my mirror.

The mirrors catch our forms as we pass. Each one shows a different reflection. In one, I am veiled by crimson-embroidered tulle, silver feathers cascading from my wrists. In another, I am in my loose, plain gown with a collar of seaweed at my throat.

In another, I stand beside Alastair, and his features are changed—his hair sleeker, his eye brighter, as though more of Therion’s presence has slipped inside him. He is whispering into my ear, tender as a lover.

At the farthest end of the corridor is a frame so large it could almost be a window. The obsidian glass ripples and shivers as we come near, blurring until it reveals a view of bone-pale beach and silver-tipped waves.

In one blink, I am in the tidal caves, in the hidden alcove behind Therion’s altar.

The air is filled with bitter smoke. My brothers are there, far younger than I’ve ever known them—Henry with the shape of new adulthood in his angular limbs, Oberon’s cheeks still rounded by a boyish softness that has long since vanished.

They clutch the mirror between them, the silver frame enclosed by their white-knuckled hands. “We need your help,” Henry says. “Our parents are gone, and the mine is dying.”

Within the small circle of glass, Therion’s features shift and stir. A keen, bright eye. The rustle of his feathers. “What you ask is no small thing.”

“We understand,” says Oberon.

“If I’m to help you, then I will need an anchor to your world. My strength is here, in the chthonic realm. If you want me to restore the salt, then I must have someone who lives in the mortal world, who is bound to me.”

My brothers exchange a glance. I realize this is something they have discussed before. Oberon bows his head in supplication. My stomach aches at the sight of him, so young and vulnerable, offering himself as a sacrifice.

Therion looks out, grimly, from the mirror. “It is not that simple. I cannot forge a bond with someone who is mortal born. I am the god of the salt, of the sea, and I need someone forged from those elements.”

“But—” Oberon falters. “That’s impossible.”

“If you cannot be bound to someone mortal born, then tell us how to help you,” Henry demands, his teeth set in desperation.

Slowly, Therion begins to speak to them.

The scene changes, and my brothers’ actions are played out in a blur of images.

I watch as they move to the grotto, where candles burn on the velvet-clothed altar.

The sea floods into the cave. They cut their palms with a broken shell, they crouch by the edge of the water.

I see the swirl of blood mixed with the ocean.

I see my brothers emerging onto the beach. A boat washes ashore, shaped like a swan. Tucked within the cradle of its carved wings is a squalling, red-faced infant. Me.

“You were not born from a mother but made of your brothers’ blood, of salt and seafoam.

You are forged from my world, but exist on the mortal plane,” Therion tells me.

Then, his harsh expression shifts—the trappings of divinity pared back until he is only an amber-eyed boy gazing at me in desperation.

And in his face, I see true terror—an unveiled fear that I never thought could belong to a god.

“You were made to be mine, for this purpose alone. I am fading, Lacrimosa, and you are all that is keeping me from that wretched dark.”

“Please,” I whisper again, feeling as broken as shattered glass, “you have to let me go.”

Therion snarls, teeth sharp. All the softness and vulnerability falls away. He is a howling storm, the roar of a violent sea. “No. You are mine, and I need you.”

His claws scrape my wrist, his teeth are bared and gleaming. I flinch, frightened by his fury, trying to pull away from his grasp. Then Alastair moves forward. He steps close to Therion—steps into Therion—until the two are overlaid.

“Let her go,” he says through gritted teeth. His fingers are at my wrist, freeing me from Therion’s hold. “Let her go.”

Darkness crowds at the corners of my vision.

In one blink, I am in the tidal cave, watching the waves pour in from the beach.

In another, I am in a forest where the trees are painted in pastel tempera hues.

Where creatures slip between the trees, their faces changing from human to other with every step.

And in a row, the three of us—Camille, Alastair, and I—emerge from the woods in our pallid clothes with our olive-leaf crowns, stumbling back into the clearing.

Therion and his strange mirror-gallery world have gone.

I hear his furious cry echoing through the woods, caught up and swept away by the wind.

Then all that remains is a brazier of dimming embers, an empty flask of chthonic liquor, and the solemn drip of salt water from the trees.