House of Salt and Sorrows(88)

I grasped his hand, bringing it to my lips. “I’m here. I’m still yours.”

His mouth curved up in the shade of a smile. “Mine? Truly?”

“All yours,” I promised, and kissed his fingers again.

He drew me in, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. I wanted to stay there, wrapped in the warmth and security of his embrace, but we couldn’t linger. Old Maude needed to be lit again.

Blowing out a shaky breath, I stepped away from Cassius’s side. “I’m so scared to open this door.”

“I’ll do it,” he said, twisting the knob and pushing. After a second’s hesitation, he went in.

“Cassius?” I called out when the silence grew loud enough to be deafening. I ducked my head in, squinting in the dark. I could make out a low, narrow bed with a quilt neatly tucked around it and a small desk and chair. Fisher’s clothes hung on a series of pegs on the wall. But no Fisher.

“He’s not in here.”

“Maybe Roland woke him?”

“We would have seen him go down the stairs with the other men,” Cassius said, poking out into the corridor.

“He could have heard the commotion and come down earlier,” I tried, thinking out loud.

I pushed back strands of hair that had come loose from my twisted updo. It just didn’t make any sense. When had I gone from being awake to dreaming such horrific nightmares?

“Do you think he’s in the Grotto? Maybe he went down for the ball and—”

“There was no ball,” Cassius repeated firmly. “He’s not in the Grotto. I checked there when you never came down. It was empty. No people, no parties, no magic door.” He let out a sigh. “There are a hundred places he could be right now, but we don’t have the time to look. The beacon needs to be relit. As soon as possible.”

“I might be able to light it.”

Cassius looked surprised. “You?”

“Papa took me to visit Old Maude often when I was a little girl. I think I remember everything Silas showed me.”

“Get dressed in warmer clothes and meet me in the garden, out from under all the trees. Hurry.”

I raised my eyebrows. He’d said the same thing the night we traveled to the House of Seven Moons.

“We’re going to Hesperus.”





I heard the crashing waves before I even knew we’d left Salten.

Unused to the speed at which Cassius could travel, I clung to him for a moment, regaining my sense of equilibrium. Opening my eyes, I spotted Old Maude, her cheerful white-and-black spiral muted with a sheet of ice and jagged with hundreds of icicles hanging from her rails. In the dark starlight, they were like frozen teeth.

She looked so strange without her beacon to light up the night sky, a silent husk staring down over Salann with unseeing, dead eyes. I’d never seen the island so dark before. The moon hung low overhead, but dark wisps of clouds raced by. A storm was coming.

We’d landed at the east end of the island, far from Old Maude and Silas’s little house. I took off down the narrow path, keeping a watchful eye out for Silas. He would never have let the light go out. Something was terribly wrong.

Far below us was the shoreline, black sand crusted with white swirls of snow. Having spent so many hours here as a child, I knew this island like the back of my hand. Despite the anxieties and exhaustion weighing upon my chest, my heart rose at seeing the familiar rocks and crags.

We rounded a bend, coming out near the lighthouse’s cliff.

“Oh my,” Cassius murmured, seeing the vast ocean before us.

I smiled, pleased it impressed him. Waves pounded the base of Maude’s cliff, and the air was alive with crashes and a salty tang. Whitecaps dotted the water as far as we could see, and out at sea, a thick wall of clouds was building. Lightning danced through them—this promised to be a monster of a storm. We’d have more snow on Salten before the night was out.

Cassius spun in a slow circle, taking in the layout of the island and looking up at the enormous structure before us. “What’s that?”

I followed his gaze to the top of the lighthouse. “It’s a lightning rod. It draws bolts to it to protect the rest of the structure.”

“I’m sure it’ll get plenty of use tonight. It’s strange to see so much lightning with a snowstorm, isn’t it?” He squinted against the howling winds.

Down the hill from us stood Silas’s house. All the windows, narrow and thickly paned to withstand the winds off the Kaleic, were dark.

“The key should be inside,” I said, unable to tear my gaze away from the windows. It felt as if something stared back at us. I burrowed deeper into my scarf. “Silas keeps it on a hook in the kitchen.”

We entered the cottage through the side door and stood in the mudroom. Tall waders hung upside down off long pegs above a drip mat, and a heavy ulster, once black but now stained with salt, rested on the top hook of a coatrack.

“He wouldn’t have left the house without this,” I murmured, fingering the heavy overcoat’s worn wool. “Silas?” I called out, raising my voice. “It’s Annaleigh Thaumas. Are you here?”

We paused but heard only the wind building outside. It raced past the house, growing into a low howl.

“You said the key is in the kitchen?” Cassius asked, prompting me to step deeper into the house.