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CHAPTER FOUR

Now

I wake alone, disoriented by the unfamiliar room.

At first, I think I am back in my dorm at Marchmain, and I sit up, panicking that I’ve overslept, that I’ll be late for class.

Then it comes into place piece by piece: our parents’ empty room, the grit of sand on the mattress beneath me.

The fact that everything is about to be lost—not just my life at Marchmain, but soon, my life here as well.

Unless… I put my hand to my aching head, the events of last night flicking through my mind like the rapidly turning pages of a book. Could it really be possible, that Therion looked into our world through my brothers’ mirror? That he promised to restore the mine if I agree to be his bride?

Sounds come from the kitchen, a clink of crockery, the hum of the teakettle. I scramble out of bed and make my way through the house. My head is pounding, and the morning light that comes through the kitchen window makes me flinch.

On wayward nights during our unsupervised term breaks, Damson would sometimes convince an older boy from the city to buy us a bottle of cheap wine at the tavern a few blocks from the school grounds.

We’d drink it beside the river, lying languorous and sleepy as the afternoon dragged into night and the moon lined a path of silver across the water.

I feel similar now to the way I had after those wine-soaked nights: a splitting headache and a taste of sour berries on my tongue.

But this is a thousand times worse. Those mornings, a walk in the fresh air and a cup of strong, black coffee would bring me back to myself.

Now, though, I feel changed, bruised. Like my skin is too tight, my bones are too loose.

Henry turns as I enter the kitchen and I expect to see the same disorientation on his face.

But he smiles, drawing out a chair as he gestures for me to sit down.

I remain standing, looking around the room in confusion.

The table is laid with three places; a vase of wildflowers sits beside an open teapot.

My brother sets a wooden platter at the center of the table.

On it is a heart-shaped cake, frosted with pink icing and stuck with eighteen unlit candles.

“It’s strawberry,” he says, meaning the pink icing. “That’s still your favorite, right?”

I stare at him incredulously. He’s neatly dressed, all traces of last night’s misadventures scrubbed away. Acting like this is any other of my birthdays before I left for Marchmain, when my brothers would prepare a cake for us to share at breakfast.

“Are you really going to pretend last night didn’t happen?” I pull a hand through my tangled, still-damp hair. “Are we not even going to discuss what this means? Therion, and what he offered, would solve everything.”

Henry shakes a cigarette from a crumpled packet and lights it. His fingers are trembling, and it’s reassuring, somehow, to catch this gap in his facade—to know I didn’t imagine what happened.

He takes a drag, exhales with a terse sigh. “It doesn’t matter what he offered. You sacrificing yourself to the chthonic world doesn’t solve everything , Lark.”

“It would only be for the salt season.”

“Every salt season, for the rest of your life!”

On the stove, the kettle lets out a piercing shrill as steam plumes from the spout. We both turn to it, startled, frozen in place at the sound. Oberon comes in from the front room and turns off the stove burner. With a cloth, he lifts the kettle and pours the water into the waiting teapot.

He’s wearing a fresh, ironed shirt and his hair is wet from the bath.

Even his glasses are shining, the lenses polished.

He glances between me and Henry, his brow creased into a frown.

“Lark, you’re our sister. Not some bargaining chip that we’d trade away to our god in exchange for a prosperous mine. ”

“I’m your sister, but I have my own free will. And I think we should at least consider—”

“No,” Oberon cuts in sharply. “We aren’t going to consider it.”

I fold my arms, letting out an irritated breath.

Henry and Oberon won’t even listen to me.

I’m dragged back to my awful last moments at Marchmain, when I tried desperately to explain myself to Headmistress Blanche.

Her closed-off expression, her mouth drawn taut, as she held up a hand to silence me.

And now my brothers are treating me the exact same way, like a child too foolish to make her own choices. It’s not that I want to sign away my life to Therion—but I resent the way my brothers have made this decision for me. Just like they made the decision to sell our house.

I feel trapped and desperate, like a bird beating its wings against the inside of a cage. “What about Alastair, then? We could ask him to forgive the debt or allow us more time.”

“We’ve already spoken to Alastair—and his father—more than once. They won’t negotiate. Marcus Felimath wants the debt settled.”

“Marcus Felimath is a wretch.”

Oberon laughs sadly. “He’s a wretch we owe a lot of money to.”

Henry crosses the kitchen to stand beside me. Gently, he lays his hand on my shoulder. “Lark, if we don’t repay the debt ourselves, the Felimaths will send creditors to claim it. I won’t put our family through that humiliation.”

“But—”

His fingers tighten, and he strokes his thumb against my clavicle as he gives me a stern look. “The discussion is over, Lark. Now sit down, and we can have breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry.” I step away from Henry, pushing his hand from my shoulder. Moving past the table with its teapot and pink-iced cake, I open the back door.

“Where are you going?” Oberon asks.

“I want to take a walk, to clear my head. You can eat breakfast without me.”

Before either of my brothers can argue, I go out into the garden and close the door.

I wait for a moment, wondering if they will follow.

But they remain inside. I turn away from the cottage, going barefoot past the wisteria arbor and toward the path that leads through our gate and away over the clifftops.

Everything about the day is still: the ocean flat as glass where it presses the rocky breakwater, the wildflowers in the field as motionless as a painting.

But I am alight with restless frustration.

I walk swiftly, my fists clenched at my sides.

Keep my gaze fixed to the distance, where Saltswan is a darkened shape against the morning sky, perched at the far edge of the cliffs like a carrion crow.

I swore I’d never speak to Alastair again. Not after what he did, the summer when I was fourteen, when everything changed. He cleaved me so neatly from his life, it was as though I’d never been there at all.

But I refuse to give up, to sit as powerless as the water nymph in Caedmon’s Annabel by the Sea , chained to a rock and watching helplessly as the tide draws out, leaving her stranded on the shore. Even if that means appealing to Alastair Felimath.

The first time I went to Saltswan with him, when I still thought him a friend, the house had been shuttered and closed.

Now the windows are uncovered and the tall panes of shining glass watch, keen eyed, as I approach.

Then, as I round a curve in the path, I notice a lone figure on the beach below the house.

In spite of everything, seeing Alastair down by the shore gives me a small flash of relief. At least this way we can meet on neutral ground, rather than beneath the accusing stare of Saltswan’s windows.

He’s at the farthest point of the beach, where the sand gives way to tide pools and rocks.

Here, the coastline slants abruptly into the water, and the ocean is deep, the water a cold blue-black.

A riptide carves lines of foam across the waves; it’s so fierce that even the seabirds refuse to settle on this stretch of water.

But Alastair sits calmly at the edge of the rocks, with his trousers rolled up and his bare feet dipped in the inky sea. He’s reading a book, all his attention focused on the pages. His legs move idly back and forth, tugged by the current.

I imagine pushing him, hard, right between his broad shoulders. Watching him sink below the water, blurry and lost as he’s caught up and dragged into the depths. But a boy who sits fearlessly at the edge of a riptide could surely swim free of the strongest current.

He turns at the sound of my approach. The sleeves of his linen shirt are pushed back, and his collar is unbuttoned. On the winter-bleached skin at the crooks of his elbows, his veins are raised and blue—the same color as chthonic liquor.

Alastair closes his book. I catch a glimpse of the title, written in an unfamiliar language. “It’s Tharnish,” he says haughtily when he notices me trying to read it.

No one has spoken Tharnish for hundreds of years.

If anyone learns it at all, it’s only scraps of obscure phrases from The Neriad , an epic poem detailing the wanderings of an ancient folk hero.

One of Caedmon’s earliest sketches was of a scene in which the hero crosses through an ethereal forest while the old gods watch him from the shadows between the trees.

“I should have known you were the type to read a dead language for fun.”

Scowling, Alastair tucks the book away beneath his arm. He looks at me more closely, taking in my appearance for the first time. “Lacrimosa, you look like hell.”

I shake back my hair, feigning indifference, even as I feel the itch of sand against my scalp and the dampness that clings to my disheveled clothes. The bandages on my arm are tattered and loosening; my stitches sting from salt.

I’d wanted to come to him aloof and icy, like a queen granting favors. Now, though, at the edge of the sea with my tangled hair and the taste of chthonic liquor still on my tongue, all of that melts away.

“Change your mind,” I demand.