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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Now

I am hung at the edge of nothingness. I am laid beside a glass-smooth sea with my arm outstretched while my reflection in the water reaches up. Then I rise to the surface, emerge with a gasp. The waves wash me forward and I’m draped against the slick-smooth rocks at the edge of a tide pool.

The sky is pastel, hazy and lilac. Past the shore, a row of trees is overlaid by a corridor hung with gilt-edged frames. This is the halfway place where Therion dragged us from our forest ritual.

I look around hurriedly, searching for Alastair and Camille—the three of us tumbled into this world together last time.

But now I am alone. I think of them back in the mortal plane, beneath the marble sculpture.

Hugo’s blue-veined fingers, trembling from withdrawal, as he offered the bottle of wine to us.

They aren’t going to die. Forgive me . I was the only one who didn’t drink.

Hugo has subdued them and forced me here, using my connection to Therion as he attempts to complete the banishment.

Everything is still, too still. It feels like death. It’s nighttime and the air is warm, sticky with salt. Above the sea is a low-hung moon, impossibly purple, stark as a daub of oil paint. My swan boat lulls on the waves, tied to the iron ring of a pier post with a long silken rope.

I drag myself from the water and scramble past the rocks. I’m dizzy and clumsy, falling countless times as I hurry across the beach. When I reach the shoreline, my knees are scraped and my palms throb. I stumble past the line of sand and into the forest.

The woods are a fierce bouquet of springtime blossoms: trees all in bloom, petals filling the air.

The path ahead is stippled by the teardrops of fallen flowers.

It’s hollowly dark, with a whispering fog stranded through the trees.

The mirrored corridor lies dark and empty.

I cup my trembling hands around my mouth and call, “Therion?”

No answer comes. I call to Therion again but there is only my voice, echoing into the mist. Then, a few paces ahead, I see a crumpled, pale shape.

Hurrying toward it, I find a swan: twice as large as any of the birds I’ve seen in the sky above Verse, all pallid feathers, a charcoal-dark line across closed eyes.

Splayed on the earth, the creature is unnaturally still.

Wings outspread as though in flight, neck arched at a ruinous angle.

Sobbing, I try to gather the swan up from the forest floor.

I heave the unconscious creature into my arms, staggering as I use all my strength to bear his weight.

I can feel the faint beat of a heart beneath the feathers, and through my tear-blurred vision, the creature shifts.

For a moment, I am embracing Therion. He gazes at me with fear-bright eyes.

Then he is a swan again, curved against my body, as cold as an ice floe in the frozen north.

What has Hugo done?

Helplessly, I pinch at my wrist, wanting to reassure myself that I am still here .

If Therion has been destroyed, then surely I would be lost, too.

But rather than grounding me, the sting of my nails against my skin only makes me feel more frantic.

The nearest mirror reflects the troubled blur of my features.

A wide-eyed, tear-streaked girl with the enormous, feathered weight of her bridegroom in her arms.

Hugo sought to use my connection to Therion to banish him entirely.

We are still here—for now; caught, lost. But I can feel his heartbeat weakening within the heavy weight of his swan form, feel him sunk and blurring, as though his connection to this world is little more than a fraying thread, about to snap.

Frantically, I imagine Hugo back in the gardens at Saltswan. Alastair crawling toward me. Camille sprawled on her side, her lips stained with wine.

We are in danger—all of us.

Carrying Therion, I run deeper into the forest. The gilded frames and ghostly trees slip past as I hurry down the corridor, struggling with Therion’s weight.

Toward the enormous mirror at the end, which was, last time, the portal home.

The frame is empty, the space beyond only shadows.

A door leading into an unlit room filled with endless secrets.

It’s the only way I can think of to go back.

Before I can change my mind, I step through.

A rush of salt water rises up to meet me. I manage to gasp in a single breath, tighten my hold on Therion, then we are dragged beneath the surface of the sea.

The ocean swallows us with a greedy, bubbling rush. Caught by the current, we’re dragged down, down, down. I kick my legs, open my eyes to stinging blackness, and let out a desperate cry. Brackish water fills my mouth and I thrash, wild and panicked.

Just before the dark closes in I am caught up in strong arms. I turn on instinct, clinging to my rescuer. I feel warm skin and a rapidly beating heart. Sodden feathers between us.

Once again, Alastair Felimath bears me away from the hungering sea.

He carries me—and then Therion—across the beach and to the far edge of the shore.

Lays us both out, side by side, beneath the trees.

We are still here: in this strange, other world.

I bow forward, my whole body coiled tight, and cough out endless amounts of ocean.

Alastair strokes back my hair, murmuring reassurance, though his hands are trembling. “You’re safe, Lark. I’ve got you.”

“Therion,” I rasp. “Is he—?”

Distantly I am aware of motion and warmth, Alastair with his hand laid on the space between Therion’s wings.

I hear him speaking in Tharnish, the poetry of his words so incongruously beautiful in this horrible moment.

I recognize the phrase as the same one that guided our forest ritual: “Tear away the veil at the heart of the woods.”

The light in Alastair’s eyes glows brighter, bloodied tears spilling over his cheeks. I watch as he begins to blur, as though he is allowing some of himself to pass into Therion, strengthening him, drawing him back. The ground is covered by billows of mist, gossamer as a bridal veil.

Piece by piece, the swan’s outstretched wings and the elegant, curved throat begin to change.

Becoming a boy with tangled, feather-wreathed hair and sand-gritted skin.

I reach for him as he rises to his knees.

Therion catches hold of my hand. He touches my cheek, his fingers trembling, his claws skating over my skin.

His eyes are bright as bonfire embers, lit with fury as he gazes at me. “Who did this to you, Lacrimosa?”

“It was the boy—the boy from the Salt Priests—the one who tried to banish you.” My throat is corroded by salt. I cough, trying to clear the ache from my lungs. Alastair draws closer to me. His arm goes around my waist, fingers clutched protectively in the fabric of my skirts.

I look around frantically. If Alastair came through, then is it possible that Hugo followed him? But the shoreline is mercifully empty, the three of us the only ones here. “Hugo used me to try and harm you again. To finish the ritual. He wants revenge.”

“Revenge,” Therion echoes. There’s something blackly curious in his gaze, and he arches a brow. “For what?”

I sit back on my knees. The earth is cool and loamy beneath me as I think of Hugo, how sorry he looked as I spiraled away into the dark.

His sister lost to the waves, a Salt Priest sacrifice.

“Don’t you know the terrible things the Salt Priests have done in your name?

They killed his sister in a ritual, hoping for a vision of you. ”

Therion’s hand is on my thigh. His claws flex, an instinctual motion, pressing sharply into my leg. I squirm at the sudden sting. He glances down, noticing what he’s done, and with a solemn expression, he loosens his hold. “I am not responsible for their cruelty.”

“But you let it happen.”

“You are all born with free will. I am a god of the salt and the woods and the sea. I cannot control mortal lives like they’re puppets on a string. I could no more stop them than you could, and what they wanted of me… it was not in my power to give.”

It all seems so achingly pointless—the loss, the cruelty, the suffering. “You answered my brothers when they called to you.”

Therion touches my cheek again, his thumb tracing an arc against my jaw.

“The Salt Priests seek to harness my power and bend it to their own means. They do not wish to honor the local gods but to claim them. They harness our magic, and they burn it up until we’re forever lost. Like a handful of ashes scattered to the winds. ”

Beside me, Alastair’s mouth is drawn into a scowl. I wonder if he’s thinking, like me, of the atmosphere at the compound, the grim altar, the desolation. Everything gray and loveless, as hopeless as a ruin.

“What your brothers asked of me was not the same as the Salt Priests,” Therion continues. “They came to me with tenderness. They wanted my help, not to make me their captive.”

“Still, it isn’t right.” I scrunch my fists into my lap, overcome with frustration. All of us are caught up in such a tangled web. “And now Hugo is going to destroy us all.”

Alastair takes my hands between his own, holding me tightly. “I won’t let that happen, Lark.”

I look to Therion. “We need to go back.”

Therion wavers. The godlike planes of his face shift and stir, feathers softening, broad wings dimming.

Replaced by the boyish lines of his mortal guise.

He gazes at me with open, earnest fear. “I am afraid of what will happen if we are parted again, Lacrimosa. What that boy did on the night of our betrothal, and what he did just now, has weakened me. Drawing you here was the only way I could keep myself from vanishing. I—I need you.”