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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Now

We drag ourselves from the woods; the world is a drunken blur.

I am between Alastair and Camille, clinging to them tightly.

I feel like a cracked pane of glass, like if I let them go, I will shatter apart and fall away, turned to nothing but countless broken pieces.

My stomach churns: my mouth is filled by the taste of salt water.

They take me to my cottage and help me upstairs. I stumble into my room, into bed. My hand finds Eline, still tucked beneath the pillow. I hold her to my chest.

Camille collapses next to me with a groan.

Our eyes meet, and her gaze is as amber-bright as Alastair’s was when we were in the woods.

Bloodied tears clot her lashes. She has been changed by Therion, too.

Shakily, I lift my hand, touch her cheek, trying to wipe the tears away.

My fingertips are stained with blood. There are pale feathers threaded in her hair.

Alastair hesitates at the edge of my bed, one knee on the mattress, his hand on my shoulder like a question.

I shift across, making space for him on my other side.

He stretches out, his eyes heavy-lidded, irises still changed.

He glances down at my knitted toy, manages a smile. “Does she have a name?”

“Eline,” I say, too overwhelmed to be embarrassed. Then I close my eyes to dreamless sleep.

When the next day comes, we gather in the kitchen with the items from our forest ritual spread out beside a pot of strong black tea.

I lay my hands flat against the table, staring down at the obsidian mirror.

My nose starts to prickle, and I can feel the hot rise of tears at the corners of my eyes.

“I can’t believe my brothers kept the truth from me for my entire life. ”

Camille casts me a guarded look. “How can you be so sure what Therion showed us was the truth?”

“Because we were there. We saw it for ourselves.” But even as I say this, I’m caught by uncertainty.

I think of how Therion overtook Alastair’s body—possessed him—in his attempts to speak with me.

The orange spark that lit Camille’s eyes when we first returned from Therion’s world faded by the time she awoke, and the feathers had drifted onto my pillow.

But he has changed us all, woven himself into all aspects of our lives, our bodies.

We are, in so many ways, at his mercy.

Alastair notes my expression, and his mouth slants into a troubled frown. “We saw what Therion wanted us to,” he says. “He’s on the verge of being banished entirely, lost forever. Wouldn’t he do anything to save himself?”

I touch the feathers that curl around my wrist. Therion may have held me gently on the night of our betrothal and sworn he would never hurt me, but right now he is desperate as a drowning man. Is it so unthinkable that he might be manipulating us all, if it means his survival?

I push my hair back from my face, let out a frustrated sigh. “He’s dragging me from this realm, he’s possessing Alastair. We need to know the truth. I wish we had more to go on than a vision.”

“How did your brothers learn to speak to Therion?” Camille asks me. “And where did they find this mirror?”

“Oberon told me the ritual was an old family story, and our father had told him and Henry about it. They only attempted it after he died. But—he’s not really my father, is he?

” It makes my head spin, and my heart ache, to realize that my brothers who raised me are more my parents than the long-dead mother and father I never knew.

“As for the mirror, our family have lived here for generations. The attic is filled with packed-away heirlooms. At least it used to be.”

Alastair picks up The Neriad , which he’s got with him as always, skimming through the pages with a frown. “Do either of them keep a journal?”

“I’ve never seen them writing in one. But if Henry or Oberon had a journal, or letters, or anything like that, and it talked about… what they did… it would be hidden away.”

“If we all look around—” Camille begins, but I shake my head.

“I’ll do it,” I tell her. “I need to do this on my own.”

As I go upstairs, the reality of it settles over me like a shroud. I’ve gone into my brothers’ rooms before, to latch the windows and borrow their clothes, to make sure the house is safe. But this—to deliberately search for hidden secrets—is different.

It feels wrong, but at the same time, I have to know the truth. And I’m not sure what I’d prefer—to find nothing, or to have my impossible origins confirmed.

In Henry’s room, there’s nothing at all. Even when I get down on my hands and knees and check the undersides of the furniture. I look through all the same places in Oberon’s room, his dresser and his bookshelves and beneath his bed. The longer I search, the worse I feel.

Then, at the very back of his wardrobe, tucked inside the pocket of an old coat, I find a pair of envelopes, held neatly together by a paper clip. Slumping down to the floor, I slide them free with shaking hands.

The first contains a photograph of Oberon, around the age he was in Therion’s vision, with another boy, who I don’t recognize. He’s pressing his lips to Oberon’s cheek in a theatrically playful kiss. My brother is laughing.

The photograph makes me feel strange and sorrowful.

I’ve never known either Henry or Oberon to be involved with anyone, but here is a boy who may have been Oberon’s lover.

It feels like the worst intrusion to have found this, and I feel even worse when I open the second envelope to discover a letter.

Oberon ,

I love you. But I cannot bear your secrets any longer, and you are drifting further and further away from me. If I don’t leave now, I fear that I’ll be lost, drawn out in your wake, then left behind as the tides pull you onward.

I have returned the photograph of us, as you asked.

Nicholas

I fold the letter into the envelope, clip it to the photograph, and place them both carefully back where they were hidden. My stomach roils and I feel hot and wretched, sad for this boy with his beautiful, poetic words and sorry for the way my brother must have hurt him.

Perhaps the secret he spoke of was the ritual, but it isn’t enough proof. I go back to the landing and look to the end of the hallway, where a narrow staircase leads up to the attic.

I climb the stairs slowly, feeling condemned.

The attic is small and windowless except for a narrow triangle of glass. It’s a low-ceilinged space where the air is hot and close. The walls and floor are bare, unsealed wood. It smells like a forest, like salt. It’s so much emptier than I remember.

I pace a slow circle around the room, past the few leftover packing crates. Then my foot catches on a splintery edge of a raised board. Kneeling down, I notice that one piece of the floor looks different from the rest—a shorter panel of wood that doesn’t sit flush against the others.

I try to prize it up with my fingers, but I can’t get enough of a grip. Searching the room, I find a wooden clothes hanger. Hooking the metal top of it against the board, I manage to work it loose. Beneath is a small, hollowed space containing a cloth-bound notebook.

It’s identical to the ones I’ve seen Henry use when he writes down ledgers for our salt mine.

I stare at the book for a long moment, knowing I have to pick it up but too afraid to move. Finally, with trembling hands, I open the cover.

As I start to read, it’s like I’ve fallen backward across the years, spun through time to where Henry—the Henry of the visions, the Henry before I existed—marked his thoughts on these pages.

Today our parents have left for the frozen north, and I am in charge. One day this will be my life, always. Right now, it feels like I am playacting at being an adult. Maybe with enough practice it will all feel easier.

I flip through the diary, past sporadic entries that marked the shape of my brother’s days. His preparation for the salt harvest, columns of figures for a harvest crew.

I’m aching with anticipation, knowing that it will come, yet when I find the folded telegram announcing the death of Ariel and Oliver Arriscane , tears fill my eyes.

It’s like I’m hearing the news for the first time alongside Henry, who has written almost nothing after that day—only a sheaf of blank pages with a few lines begun and scratched out.

And then, the final entry. Dated at the beginning of spring, my birthday:

Tonight we call Therion from the sea .

I go back downstairs with the diary in my hands.

When Camille sees my stricken expression, she takes the book from me, setting it aside before she draws me into her arms. I press my face against her shoulder.

She strokes my hair, kisses the curve of my cheek.

But as she holds me, my sorrow begins to flare alight, hurt kindling to fierce, bright anger.

My brothers may have created me for Therion, but I’ve had eighteen years in the mortal world to make my own life. I refuse to succumb to this, to let him haunt me and threaten me, to pull me into the dark.

“I’m going to find a way out,” I tell Camille, scrubbing the tears from my face. “I won’t let him hurt me—hurt any of us.”

Alastair picks up Henry’s diary. He flips through the pages, his mouth drawn taut. In profile to me, his changed eye—amber and sparking—gleams like a gemstone in the morning light. “We need to find a way to sever your bond, before it’s too late.”

I look from him to Camille. The bond I have with Therion from my birth, from my betrothal, extends to them as well. We’re all at risk.

But what if severing the link banishes Therion entirely? I can’t forget the desperation in his voice. His mortal terror, the earnest fear in his eyes. So raw and visceral, those words of a god from a boy’s mouth. How he claimed our connection was the only thing keeping him from oblivion.