Page 51

A sob rises in my throat; I swallow it back. Even though Alastair isn’t truly dead, it still feels awful to go through these motions. “Quietly would be best.”

Camille hesitates, fidgeting with the buttons on her shirt. “Will you be all right if I leave?”

I look down at my hands, my scarred arm, now bare of feathers.

Turning the band of my wedding ring back and forth, I realize now that Therion is here, in my world, I am safe from the threat of being pulled away.

I no longer need to be watched over, always with someone else close by that I can grasp like a lifeline.

Slowly, I nod. “Yes. I’ll be all right.”

Camille crosses to the bed with the towel in her hands and begins to dry my hair. “I keep thinking about Alastair, how it will be if he—when he—comes back. Are you going to tell your brothers what we did? Do you think we can trust them?”

“Yes, I do.” The answer comes easily, and I’m surprised by how certain I feel. But for all my brothers have done, all they have hidden from me, I know deep down that I can trust them with this secret. “I mean, I’ll probably give them the abridged version of what happened.”

I laugh, though I still feel hollowed. Camille sets aside the towel, and begins to braid my hair into two plaits.

“Lark, I have a hypothetical question.”

“Oh? What is it?”

She doesn’t answer as she ties off the first plait with a silken ribbon, but then as she moves on to the next, she says, “All I want is for Father to leave—to stay gone—so when Alastair returns, it will be safe for him. If I was able to forge Alastair’s signature and his handwriting, do you think I should use that to make Father leave us all alone, forever, if I can find a way? ”

I cast her a curious glance, one brow raised. “Is this actually hypothetical?”

“At the moment it is,” she replies with a subdued smile. “I’d like your opinion first, before I decide.”

“I think that if someone has been unscrupulous—cruel, or brutal, even—then it’s justified to be unscrupulous in return, to escape them.

” I turn to her, take her face gently between my hands.

“After all that’s happened, you and Alastair deserve a fresh start.

A life where no one will make him feel small, or always be sending you into exile. ”

“I’m glad to know I have your approval,” Camille laughs, tying off my second braid. She pulls me closer by the end of the ribbon, kisses my cheek. “I suppose I should get this over with. I’ll try to think of it like having a splinter pulled—it hurts, but it hurts much worse to leave it there.”

“Marcus Felimath is like a whole bramble full of thorns rather than a splinter. But you can do this, and I’ll be here waiting for you.”

“At least you’ll have Eline for company until I come back.” She plucks up my knitted bunny from beneath the quilts, laughing as I squirm with embarrassment. “Gods, you’re adorable.”

Camille tucks Eline into my arms, then kisses me again before getting up from the bed. Scouting around the room, she finds my boots under the dresser. I watch as she toes them on, hopping awkwardly on one foot as she ties the laces. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck, Camille.”

She leaves my room with a final smile. I find a nightdress on the floor nearby, pull it on, and curl up in my bed with Eline.

I’m suddenly, achingly tired. The pillow is cool against my cheek, and I bury my face against it, closing my eyes.

A few tears seep out from between my lashes. I let them spill slowly down.

For the first time in what feels like forever, I fall asleep alone. Dreaming of brave girls with their hair braided like a crown, of burning swans, of a boy and a god, lying together beneath the blackened salt.

Hugo has gone when I wake; I come downstairs to an empty house, with the quilt and pillow that he used folded neatly at one end of the chaise.

I search around for a note but there is nothing, only the folded pile of quilts and his sorrowful, murmured apology from last night taking the place of goodbye.

In the kitchen, I light the stove and fill the kettle. While it boils, I eat stale bread with strawberry jam, sitting on the threshold of the open back door. The air smells of salt and pollen. I can hear the drone of bees as they circle the flowers in the arbor.

Past the breakwater, the sea is flat as glass. It’s as though the high, violent tide that fought against the coastline last night was nothing but a dream.

The kettle begins to hum. I make myself a pot of Oberon’s strong black tea.

With a steaming mug in my hands, I drift through the house, taking a shirt to wear from Henry’s wardrobe, opening all the windows to let in the clean spring air, going back to the bathroom to gather up the handful of white feathers from the edge of the tub.

I tuck the feathers away inside my room, placing them like pressed flowers inside my book of Caedmon’s sketches. Then, standing before the mirror, I untie the ribbons from my hair and let it fall into soft, crimped waves.

I sit on my bed for a long time, finishing my tea as I watch the swaying grass and flowers on the clifftop fields. In the distance, Saltswan is a darkened thumbprint against the sky. Everything feels stilled, like time stopped last night when we watched the swan boat turn to ashes on the sea.

But though I am alone, my cottage as empty as a chambered shell, I can still sense a phantom pull.

As though there is a ribbon, loosely tied to each of my wrists.

It stretches out in two directions. Toward Saltswan, where Camille is, and toward the mine.

Where Alastair lies with Therion beneath the weight of crystalline salt, kept safely in the solemnest dark.

There is only one thing left to face, right now.

Quietly, I set aside my empty cup and go down the corridor. Past my brothers’ rooms, and up the narrow stairs into the attic. The door hangs open, the latch splintered where Hugo broke it to escape. I take the keys from the lock and slip them into my pocket.

With a deep breath, I step inside the room. It’s bright up here, the high window catching a shaft of sun. The air sparkles with dust motes. The attic is warmer than the rest of the house, and a bead of sweat tracks down my spine like a caress.

The evidence of the previous night lies scattered on the floor: the razor and the flask and the burned-out salt lantern.

I take Henry’s diary and put it back in its hiding place under the boards.

There’s a stain from the spilled liquor that will probably never come out; but it feels right somehow, to have a mark left behind, a reminder of what happened here.

Finally, with a scrap of cloth covering my hand, I pick up the mirror. I shiver as my fingers brush over the weight of it, as the familiar shape of the silver frame settles into my hand. Even shielded by the cloth, it feels unnaturally cold, like I have just lifted it out from the sea.

Slowly, I fold back a piece of the wrapping to reveal the broken glass. The obsidian mirror is shattered irreparably, the polished surface turned to fragments. I lay my fingertips against the center of it, feeling them shift slightly against my skin.

I stand, shivering, blinking, waiting. And for a moment, I’m not even sure what I want to happen. When the corners of my vision stay free of darkness, when none of me fades, I exhale with a mix of disappointment and relief.

I gather up everything into an empty wooden box: flask, razor, the wrapped mirror. I’m about to leave the room when a noise from outside draws my attention. I stand on tiptoe and peer out of the window.

Parked on the dirt road that passes by our house is a taxicab. And my brothers are beside it, Henry leaning down to the front window as he pays the driver, Oberon unloading their luggage from the trunk.

I run down the stairs with the box in my arms, slamming the attic door behind me. In my room, I shove the box underneath my bed. I take a final look in the mirror, tuck back my wavy hair, and go out to the landing. I’m at the top of the staircase when my brothers come inside.

Henry sets down his suitcase on the floor with a heavy thump .

None of us moves, or speaks. It’s as though we’re all pinned in place.

Then everything is in motion at once—I am tripping down the stairs as Henry and Oberon hurry up toward me.

We meet at the center of the staircase in a tangled, desperate embrace.

All the things I wanted to say are wiped clear from my thoughts. My cheeks are wet with tears, my heart is racing. I bury my face against Oberon’s chest as Henry’s arms wrap tightly around me.

“We missed you,” Henry murmurs into my hair. Then, drawing back, he inspects me with a puzzled frown. “Are you wearing my shirt?”

I snort out a helpless laugh, nodding as he pulls me back toward him. Oberon, his hand at the small of my back, starts to speak. “Lark, we’re so sorry—”

But I catch hold of his arm, squeezing tightly as I cut off his apology. “I forgive you.”

I was born of their blood and the ocean and the salt, made to belong to a god. And though it aches to know all the deceptions laid through my life, it is the way my brothers have loved me—and I them—that has always been the truth.

For now, I only want to be here, and held, with Henry’s cheek against my hair and my ear on Oberon’s chest, the sound of his heartbeat as rhythmic as the hush and sigh of the sea.