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Camille moves around the table, uncovering all the platters.

The dishes are the type of food my family would often prepare for large harvest dinners, when we’d eat outside on a trestle table with the rest of the mining crew.

New potatoes, steamed greens, a loaf of sourdough bread beside a dish of butter.

The main meal is a mixture of vegetables in bright crimson sauce—Versian stew.

Marcus gives a disapproving look at the rustic meal but doesn’t comment.

Camille sets the platter covers onto a sideboard and refills her father’s wine.

He watches as she serves the food onto his plate.

I hate the way that he sits and expects her to wait on him, like she is a hired servant rather than his daughter.

Alastair, Hugo, and I all help ourselves to the food. Camille slides into her chair beside me.

Marcus takes up his knife and fork and begins to cut a slice of bread into smaller pieces. Not looking at me, he asks, “Lacrimosa, how are your brothers? Still carving their way through the salt mine, it seems.”

“Yes. They’re about to bring in the new harvest, and—”

“I’d heard that you were off to be married, though I see that wasn’t the case.” Marcus talks over me, as though he didn’t even hear my answer. “As a matter of fact, I’m surprised that neither of your brothers have announced a betrothal yet.”

My chest tightens as I think of Oberon’s hidden letters, the love he gave up to protect our family’s secrets.

Beneath the table, I slip off my betrothal ring and place it into my pocket.

I’m afraid that if Alastair’s father looks closely enough at me, he will see everything—he will see right down to my bones, and know all the secrets I’m hiding.

I pick up my spoon and stir it through the sauce on my plate. “Henry says that miners are like sea captains, only they’re married to the salt rather than the ocean.”

“Don’t play with your food, Lacrimosa.”

Startled, I lift my spoon to my mouth and swallow a too-large portion of stew. It hasn’t cooled enough, and I feel it burn all the way down my throat. On my scallop-edged plate, the bright red sauce looks like blood. I sip from my water glass, fighting desperately not to cough.

A large, arched mirror hangs on the wall opposite the window, reflecting the view of the clifftop fields—burnished grass, swaying flowers—and us, all at the table.

It’s disconcerting, to see our movements doubled as our reflected selves unfold linen napkins and spread butter onto sourdough bread.

I keep expecting to see the surface blur and change to the obsidian glass of the mirrors in Therion’s world.

Yet each time I look there is only my own face, my lips bitten raw and my eyes wide with worry. The landscape unfolding behind me as the night draws in.

“Camille,” Marcus says, “have you given more consideration to your future studies?”

She lays down her knife. It clinks loudly against the edge of her plate. “I thought that… perhaps I could remain at Saltswan, instead.”

Her father waves aside the suggestion impatiently. “That is not an option.”

“I’ve already graduated, Father. I don’t want to go back.”

“And I don’t want a child who avoids responsibility to her family. I’ll wire your school in the morning and enroll you in their postgraduate program. You can take a remedial course in mathematics first.”

“I want to stay here.” Camille is tense, fighting against the quaver in her voice. But Marcus turns away, ignoring her blanched expression, ignoring the way Alastair grips the edge of the table in quiet fury.

“We’ll discuss this later, in private. Now, tell me—Hugo, was it?—how, exactly, do you know my son?”

Hugo shoots Alastair a startled glance. “I—we—met at the same convalescent hospital.”

There’s an uncertain note in his voice, and Alastair flinches. Mouth drawn taut, he nods in agreement. “Yes. It was in Driftsea, wasn’t it?”

Alastair has named a place far from the Salt Priest compound, and I clench my hands in my lap, hoping his father doesn’t connect Hugo with Alastair’s ill-fated attempt to run away. It frightens me, the way that Marcus stares at both of his children with the promise of violence in every gesture.

He arches a brow as he looks at Hugo, whose hands have begun to tremble. “You don’t look well, even now. You’re not contagious, are you?”

Hugo looks truly awful, with violet bruises beneath his eyes and his nose all swollen.

He’s clearly struggling against the pangs of withdrawal; sweat beads at his temples and he’s clumsy as he tries to butter a slice of bread.

The stains he showed me on his hands have spread farther up his arms, marking his wrists in poisonous lines.

He shakes his head. “I’m just a little tired.”

The knife slips from his hand, clattering against the plate.

I push myself to my feet and reach across the table to help him.

I can feel Marcus’s eyes on me, the heat of his disapproval.

Determinedly ignoring him, I finish spreading butter onto Hugo’s bread and slide the plate back.

He takes it from me with a tentative smile.

I feel so restless that I want to climb outside my skin.

I need to question Hugo about Therion. Before that, I need to talk with Alastair and Camille.

We have to decide how much to say, if we should even trust him.

But everything is overlaid by Marcus Felimath’s pointed questions and watchful stare.

All I can do is sit in helpless silence as the air grows heavy as a gathering storm.

He lifts his glass, drinking more of his wine. His mouth tilts into a sneer as he glances in my direction. “Your guests, Alastair, have dreadful conversation skills and even worse manners. I thought I made it clear that I didn’t wish you to keep such unfit company.”

Alastair refills Hugo’s glass from the pitcher of water that sits on the table. With studied calm, he says, “I see nothing unfit about either their conversation or their manners. I’m sorry you don’t feel the same.”

Marcus narrows his eyes, but then, as Hugo reaches for his glass, his hands give a tremor. Camille and I watch in horror as the glass falls to the floor, shattering into a burst of shards and spilled water. The sound of it splits through the quiet room, and we all jump.

Hugo pushes out of his chair and kneels beside the glass, trying to blot up the water with a napkin. Then, biting back a cry, he doubles over, eyes closed as he presses a hand to his mouth.

“Gods,” Marcus snaps, exasperated. He gets up from the table abruptly. “Alastair, I want to speak with you alone.”

Throwing down his napkin beside his untouched food, he sweeps out into the hall. The sound of his heavy tread against the stairs echoes through the silence that has sunk over us. Hugo sits back slowly on his heels, cheeks pallid, eyes glazed as he surveys the broken glass.

I go to Alastair and take his hands between my own. His skin is chilled, his palms slick with tense sweat. He pulls me close, wrapping his arms around me. He buries his face in the crook of my shoulder and exhales a fractured breath.

“Don’t go to him,” I murmur. “I’ll lie for you, say I don’t know where you are. You can stay in my cottage until he leaves.”

“No,” he whispers against my neck. “I can’t.”

I look despairingly toward Camille, but before I can speak, Marcus calls from upstairs. His voice is like a sharpened blade. “Alastair, I meant now!”

Alastair steps back from me, but I clutch his arm, refusing to let him leave. Gently, he peels my fingers away. Cupping a hand to my cheek, he straightens his shoulders. “I have to go to him, Lark. It will be worse if I don’t.”

I watch him leave the room, wanting to follow, feeling torn and helpless. Camille starts to pick up the shards of broken glass, stacking the largest pieces onto a clean linen napkin. She catches my gaze, and nods toward Hugo. “ Ask him ,” she mouths, but I don’t know what to say.

I press my lips together, try to swallow past the anxiety that snares my throat like a strand of kelp. “Hugo, why did the Salt Priests order you to banish Therion?”

He struggles to stand up, clutching the edge of the table for support, his knuckles white. “They didn’t. All they wanted was for me to interrupt your betrothal, so he wouldn’t be wed to an outsider . But that wasn’t enough.”

My heartbeat rises, and a tremor of hope lances through me. Forcing the desperation from my voice, I ask, “The ritual you used to banish Therion… is there a way to reverse it?”

Slowly, Hugo looks up at me through the veil of his tangled curls. “Why would I want to do that?” His expression shutters, his eyes turned hard as stone. “My sister died for a vision of Therion. Banishment is what he deserved.”

“But he wasn’t the one who killed her. The Salt Priests were.”

“They killed her for a vision of him! In his name they’ve poisoned us, destroyed us, taken our lives, and he barely deigns to answer. Why should Therion be given our fealty?”

I think of the night I went into the tide caves and saw my brothers wreathed in smoke.

How perhaps only days before, on the far end of the peninsula, Georgiana Valentine was murdered by the Salt Priests.

The spring equinox rising, waves trembling on the cusp of the shore, a girl with the same golden hair as Hugo being held under the water.

“I don’t blame you for wanting it to end,” I tell him. “But punishing Therion for the cruelties of your priests isn’t the way to make that happen.”

“What would you know?” Hugo snaps. He takes a heavy step toward me. “You have sacrificed nothing to be chosen.”

I stand my ground, my arms folded. “I have sacrificed plenty .”

He regards me for a moment. His eyes are glittering, with the dangerous coldness of broken glass.

Then, he picks up the bottle of wine from the table and raises it to his lips, drinking deeply.

A bead of ruby liquid slides down his chin, dripping along his throat until it marks a stain on his shirt collar.

“I need some fresh air,” he says, as he saunters toward the doorway, the bottle still in his hand. “I’m going outside.”

Camille and I watch, incredulous, as he vanishes into the front hall. Moments later, the door closes with a heavy, final sound. Camille pinches at the bridge of her nose. “I’m tired of this little Salt Priest and his games.”

“Maybe I should speak with him on my own.”

She tightens the ribbon in her hair, smooths down her gauzy skirts. “No. Let me.”

We go out into the front hall. Camille draws me close, presses her lips to my cheek. I feel the smudge of her lip stain left behind. I lay my hand against her nape, stroke the sleek line of her bare neck. We stand for a moment, our faces touching, breathing a shared breath. Then we draw apart.

Camille leaves the house with a whisper of silk. I stand at the foot of the stairs, press my hands to my face, exhale a desperate sigh into my palms. I can still smell the scent of Camille’s strawberry perfume, sweet and sugary, on my skin.

Then I turn and go up to the second floor, in search of Marcus Felimath’s room.