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I twist my betrothal ring, looking out toward the inky sea. The silver caps of the waves are scalloped as feathers. I feel the weight of him against my chest; when I blink, his motionless swan-form is marked on the backs of my eyelids like a moon on a clear night.

He is on the edge of oblivion, our bond the only thing holding him tethered.

I’m so afraid of what might happen if I return: If Therion is banished, if we are still connected, then I will be dragged out of existence alongside of him.

Both of us will be lost. But Camille is on the mortal plane, left at the mercy of Hugo.

To keep everyone safe, I have to return to my own world.

And to do that, Therion will have to join me.

The feathers at my wrist rustles with the motion of my hands.

I stare down at them, then turn slowly to Alastair, examining the amber gleam of his changed eye.

Remembering Camille, her brief orange irises and the snowy down of feathers in her hair.

Each time we’ve slipped from our world to here, we’ve returned with a piece of something other .

Some piece of Therion that has marked us like a scar.

“When you came for me, earlier, to try and draw me here, you used Alastair’s body to speak with me.” I lay my hand on Therion’s folded knees. “If I were to allow you to possess me in the same way, then return to my world… what would happen?”

He exhales a long, slow breath, as he considers what I’ve suggested.

“What I did to Alastair was only temporary. It was like a projection: I never wholly left this place. But if I possessed you and we returned together to your world… we would always be together. Physically, in the same plane of existence. Unlike when I stepped into Alastair’s consciousness, our connection would be permanent. ”

“But would it save you?” I persist.

Alastair tightens his grasp on my hands. “You can’t do this.”

Therion casts him a troubled glance before he goes on.

“Yes,” he says, “it would save me. I’ll no longer be caught here, being dragged toward nothingness.

I will not vanish, and you will not be pulled from existence due to our connection.

Our bond will not be broken, and the terms of our betrothal could still be honored—but in reverse.

I will share your world until the end of the salt season.

Then, perhaps, I can attempt to leave you, for a time. ”

“You don’t sound very certain.”

His mouth tips into a rueful smile. “I’m afraid this is not a path I’ve traveled before.”

I shake back my tangled, dripping hair. I shift closer to him. “I am willing to risk it, if you are.”

“Lark,” Alastair says again. “Please, you can’t. If Hugo discovers the two of you are in one form… he’ll hunt you both down. You’ll never be safe.”

“None of us are safe now , either.”

“I know.” Alastair regards me, sorrow in his mismatched eyes. His hand slides, slowly, to cup my cheek. He bends to me, our foreheads touch. His breath casts over my mouth as he says quietly, “I will do it. I will take your place.”

“No,” I protest. “You can’t.”

He kisses me, cradling my face between his hands. “I’ve let him in already. That night in your cottage—I wasn’t sure it was real, but I chose to let him take control of me when he came.”

I remember the blur of their features in the kitchen, being dragged back into the lamplit room. Alastair’s changed eye. How angry he was, afterward, as he stormed away. “But you hated me, then.”

“I loathed you,” he laughs, but the way he says it makes it sound like a caress. “But more than that, I loathe myself, for what Hugo has done. Because I insisted on your debt. Because I haven’t been able to stop him harming you.”

I let out a shaky breath, my cheeks wet with tears. “Alastair, you know I don’t blame you for that.”

He looks toward Therion. “Will it work? Our bond is not the same as the one you share with Lark, but I accept you wholly, if it means she will be safe.”

Therion is contemplative, quiet, then he dips his head in a slow nod. “Yes. I can use you, if that is what you wish. As long as we return with Lacrimosa and the three of us are on the same plane of existence, our bond will remain, and no one will be lost.”

Alastair gazes at me with a fierceness that is so stark and real, I could clutch it in my hands.

Petals have fallen from the trees and stuck in his hair; with his intent, solemn gaze, he looks like a creature from a folktale.

He is a selkie kept too long ashore, a boy who recites the words of a dead language like they’re made of gold.

“I want this,” he says again. “I want you to be selfish, Lark. And I will be brave.”

This, I realize, is his chance for the redemption he so desperately craves. A way to protect Camille, to protect me , to be as heroic as an ancient figure marked on canvas with oil paint or in the typeset lines of an epic poem.

“You are brave,” I tell him. “As brave as Naiius.”

He blushes, his mouth crooked into an embarrassed smile as he shakes his head. His thumbs draw worshipfully over my cheeks. He kisses me again: my mouth, my jaw, my closed eyelids. “Let me help you. Let me invite Therion in once more.”

Slowly, achingly, we draw apart. Therion observes us with a solemn laugh.

“You’re both so human,” he says fondly. He touches a claw beneath Alastair’s chin, gently lifting his head so he can gaze into Alastair’s eyes.

“I owe you my thanks. For allowing me in, and for saving me—saving us both—tonight.”

Therion takes my hand. He turns it, palm up, like an offering.

Together, he extends our hands, one laid atop the other, to Alastair.

Everything turns slow as a dream. Alastair’s fingers brush over mine, tracing the line of my palm, the feathers at my wrist. A shivering light spills out from where we touch, like a shower of sparks from a bonfire.

Therion traces his claws down Alastair’s cheek. He bends close, in a rustle of feathers, and presses his mouth to Alastair’s parted lips. I remember the feel of being swept up by him at my betrothal as I knelt at the altar in the depths of the mine. That same tremble is in the air now.

Slowly, the two of them shift and blur. I watch as Alastair’s mortal features take on an otherworldly cast: the brightness of his changed eye spreads to envelop his entire gaze, translucent feathers shiver at his temples like a crown.

Beside him, Therion slips in and out of my line of vision like a specter, a shadow.

“There,” he says, and his voice is still clarion clear. “It is done. We are yours, Lacrimosa. Both of us.”

He takes my hands and draws me to my feet. In this world, we are still three, and I am bordered by Alastair and Therion, one hand in each of theirs. We drift away from the shoreline, leaving the beach behind as we go deeper into the woods.

The corridor of mirrors rises around us, but each obsidian panel remains blank save for one. A large, oval-framed mirror reveals two figures, standing side by side. Another is half-hidden in profile behind them.

I’m dressed in a long, white gown. My hair is falling to my waist in golden waves, crowned by my bridal veil.

And Alastair—he looks like the image I saw when we were last here.

As though it was a premonition. Amber eyes and a petaled crown.

His dark hair has the sheen of feathers, an oil slick shimmer that catches the light when he dips his head toward me.

I look up at him, at his amber eyes, the familiar lines of his elegant face. “Do you still loathe me?”

“No,” he laughs. The otherworldly features shown by the mirror are still part of him, but when he smiles his mouth is crooked and charming, all boy , despite the ways he’s changed. “Quite the opposite. I’m horribly in love with you.”

I think of myself at Marchmain, trying so hard to be what Damson wanted.

How I fought for space alongside her and Jeune as she set me aside, moving on to a future that was no longer mine.

She weighed and measured all my failings and then she discarded me.

Yet to Alastair, I am worth saving. Someone he wants to be brave for.

A warmth spreads through me, a thing too delicate to be named. “I am horribly in love with you, too, Alastair Felimath.”

Therion reaches to us both and draws us close. “So human,” he says again, amused. We continue down the hall, and I snuggle between him and Alastair, my arm around Therion’s waist and my head against Alastair’s shoulder.

Therion is right. My love for Alastair and Camille is so fierce and human it feels like burning. For them, I am a row of salt lanterns all ablaze, a wreath of flowers woven beside a summer bonfire, the taste of strawberries and sugar, my name written between the margins of a book of ancient poetry.

I will do everything I can to keep them safe.

We walk in silence until we reach the end of the corridor.

The enormous mirror, where I saw the vision of my birth, is now an empty frame.

Beyond its scrolled, gilded edges, I can see a distant landscape.

It’s far away, like a scene viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.

Saltswan sits atop the windswept cliffs, a single light burning from a high-up window.

We join hands and approach the frame, and together, we step through.