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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Now

The closed door of Marcus Felimath’s study is fortresslike as I stand before it, my heart pounding frantically.

From within the room, I hear the low notes of voices—Alastair, speaking quietly, then his father’s stern reply.

I’m wound tight, so anxious that I’m shaking; the metallic taste of fear is painted over my tongue.

I clench my teeth, knock loudly on the door.

I open it without waiting to be invited inside.

The study is all severe dark furniture with an enormous leather-topped desk at the center of the room.

Alastair sits on a wooden chair drawn up beside it; his sleeves are rolled back, his cuff links set aside.

As I come through the door, Marcus steps quickly back from his son.

He goes smoothly around to the other side of the desk, the lit cigarette in his hand trailing smoke in his wake.

I look from the burning coal of the cigarette to Alastair’s bared arm, and I can’t breathe.

On the table is a salt lantern, the light turned low.

It throws silhouettes over the walls; our shadows are pools of ink, dripping in reverse.

Marcus glowers at me, his jaw twitching as he grits his teeth.

Then, dark-eyed, he turns back to his son.

With his gaze fixed on Alastair, menacing as a drawn blade, Marcus puts out his cigarette in a silver ashtray.

Alastair sits motionless, his head bowed.

I go to him quickly. He doesn’t look at his father or at me, but his shoulders tense when I lay my hand on his arm.

He’s trembling, tensed with the effort of holding himself still.

And I—I am burning hot as that glowing red cigarette coal, a fever of protectiveness.

I am small and soft, nothing but a fierce heart and a borrowed dress, but in this moment I know I would tear out Marcus Felimath’s throat with my own blunt teeth before I let him put his hands on Alastair again.

Marcus grinds his cigarette down so hard that it becomes a crumpled stub.

He refuses to look at me. “We’re leaving tomorrow,” he tells Alastair.

“I was foolish to trust you here alone. It’s obvious that you and Camille can’t behave without my supervision.

I’ll close up Saltswan and you’ll both travel with me until your sister goes back to school. ”

Alastair wrenches down his sleeve, sweeps the cuff links from the desk into his palm. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Father.”

Marcus raises his hand, then stills, as if remembering my presence. He clenches his fist, his knuckles crack. “I’ll be in my room, packing. I suggest you do the same after you see Lacrimosa to the door. Neither she nor that other boy are welcome here any longer.”

He gives his cigarette a final twist in the ashtray, his eyes set on Alastair’s face with a laden, meaningful glare.

Then he shoves himself back from the desk and crosses the room in a swift stride.

I have to turn aside to avoid his shoulder colliding with mine as he leaves. He slams the door closed after him.

I fall to my knees beside Alastair. The rush of terror that filled me drains away and I feel wrung out, helpless; I was almost too late. I fold back his sleeves. His skin is marked only by old scars, but when I clasp his wrist, he’s shivering, burning up. “Did he hurt you?”

Alastair shakes his head. He slouches back in the chair, his face tilted toward the ceiling, his eyes closed. The scent of cigarette smoke fills the room, noxious and choking. It’s like Marcus is still in here with us. I take Alastair’s hands between my own.

Bruises bloom across his knuckles, bright as iris petals, from when he struck Hugo earlier.

I bend to him, kissing each of the marks.

His clenched fists relax beneath my caress.

I unfold his hands, turn them over, and kiss his calloused palms, kiss the hollow above his pulse where his father meant to burn him.

“Alastair,” I whisper, vehement, against his skin, “I’ll never let him touch you again.”

He exhales a tattered breath. Pulling free of my grasp, he slides his fingers through my hair. He wraps the ribbon around his fist, clutching it like a tether line. He draws me to him; we both get to our feet.

Alastair looks at me with his changed eyes. His jaw is tensed, his cheeks flushed red. He’s crying—heated, angry tears. He’s wound tight enough to snap. “Lark,” he breathes, “ Mea yvin elevrh .”

Then he catches me up, his hands at my waist, under my thighs, lifting me back against his father’s desk. The ashtray falls to the floor with a thud , spilling ashes and ground-out cigarettes over the floor. We gaze at one another for an endless, despairing moment.

And then he is kissing me, his mouth open and desperate, tasting of tears.

I clutch at him, one hand fisted in his shirt, his silk tie knotted around my fingers, pulling him closer as I’m laid out against the desk.

Our kisses deepen, his tongue rasping over mine.

Everything is hot and helpless, sobs filling the space between our lips, the air laced by desolation.

I weave my fingers into his hair, press my thumb against his nape.

Alastair bends over me, paused at the barest, gasping distance. He stares at me like I am his benediction. I curl my leg around his waist and urge him closer.

His hand slides beneath my skirts, fingers pressed to my bare thigh, his thumb dragging a crescent shape against my skin. I think of his father, walking back into the room and seeing us here like this, together on his desk. By the flash in Alastair’s eyes, I know he’s thinking the same.

There’s a thrill in the transgression of it, that we are rewriting the fear and wretchedness of before. It’s a slate marked clear, replaced by this: our ragged breath, the question of his fingers hesitating at the ribboned edge of my underwear.

Desire pierces me, an arrow landing true. I want this, more than anything. Alastair looks at me, eyes dark and starveling. “Can I—?”

I nod. Taking hold of his wrist, I draw his hand higher.

My head falls back as he starts to touch me.

I feel like I am drowning. But Alastair is the one who raised me from the currents, the boy who braved the riptide.

I gasp and shiver, rocking against him as I slide my hands beneath his shirt, sketching lines with my fingertips over bare skin and scars.

Then, lower, lower, unfastening, greedily mapping the heat of him, the plane of his stomach, the divot of his hip.

“Is this all right?” I whisper, hesitating.

“Gods,” Alastair groans against my shoulder, his mouth hot on my collarbone. “Yes. Lark, please, keep going.”

I feel dizzy but it’s a dizziness of my own making; I am lost but still here. I let the heat unspool between us and pretend there is nothing else—only myself and Alastair and Camille, and that we’ll be safe from gods and fate and the whole world.

Alastair whispers feverish, shapeless words beside my ear. It’s all heated yearning, the scrape of his bared teeth on my skin. His eyes are closed, lashes dark crescents on his flushed cheeks.

He starts to breathe sharply, coming apart beneath my touch.

It’s so raw, so fragile, that it makes me ache with a depthless, endless wanting.

Then I’m gasping, arched against him, my voice turned to fractured cries.

It’s so much louder than when I’m alone but I can’t help myself, even when I bite at my lip, trying to stay quiet.

Alastair kisses away the sounds, laughing breathlessly against my mouth.

He takes my face between his hands, rests his forehead against mine as I shiver and shiver and then go still.

I run my hand up the length of his arm, feel the tensed angle of his shoulder, then trace my fingers along the line of his jaw.

He leans his cheek into my palm. Everything is silent, punctuated only by the sound of our breath, the echo of my heartbeat in my ears.

I gaze up at Alastair: his flushed cheeks, his drying tears, his amber-lit eye.

“The world is ours,” I tell him. I feel as fierce, as unrelenting, as a chthonic god. “And we will be together—and we will be safe—no matter what I have to do. If Hugo won’t help us, then I’ll go to Therion myself. I’ll make him let me go.”

When we go back downstairs, the house is quiet and empty.

But through the front windows, I catch the shape of movement: Camille’s silken, flowing dress as she walks beside Hugo in the gardens.

She carries a flashlight, the glow of it tracing gold over their feet.

Hugo is still drinking from the bottle of wine.

The path turns, leading them behind a bank of manicured hedges and out of sight.

Alastair and I go out into the garden, following the sound of their footsteps, their voices.

I inhale deeply, letting the scent of salt and petrichor wash away the memory of cigarette smoke as we walk toward the hedges.

The sky is dark as black plums, streaked with clouds.

On the beach below Saltswan, white-capped waves break on the shore, mirroring the whorls of visible stars above.

“What did it mean,” I ask Alastair, “those words you said to me in Tharnish, before? Mea Yvin Elevrh ?”

Alastair winces at my terrible pronunciation and I can’t help but laugh.

Then, quietly, he repeats the words. The gentle lilt of his voice, speaking that long-dead language, is as musical as careful notes picked out on piano keys.

He folds back my sleeve, touches the feathers on my arm. “It means my little swan .”

“Oh,” I say, renewed warmth spreading through me. “I like that.”

Alastair turns away from me, his mouth tipped into a shy, helpless smile. He’s blushing so starkly that I can see it clearly in the moonlight. Even the tips of his ears are flushed.