The Lord Under has released me, but each word, each syllable, of what he said is lodged inside my chest. I can help you.
I wrap my arms around myself, shivering, and look around the room. It’s as bare as a cell. Nothing but an unlit fire and a carved, upholstered sofa pushed up against the wall, flanked by two enormous windows. The vague shapes of furniture in the corners: a dresser, a desk, a chest of drawers. The only light is the outline of late afternoon sun around the heavy curtains.
From behind those curtains, the sound comes again. The frantic tap tap tap that pulled me free of the mud and the water and the dark. I draw in a breath. The room is dim, but these shadows are just shadows. There are no whispers, no presence at the corner of my vision. Slowly, I peel myself away from the door and move toward the window. My heart beats loud, in time with the sound. Tap tap tap.
My hand shakes as I reach for the curtain and draw it back. The room floods with sudden brightness. A glittering cloud of motes fills the air.
A bird.
There’s a bird, trapped inside the room. It’s small and delicate; frightened. The sound I heard was its wings against the glass. Smears of black stain its pale feathers. Maybe it flew down the chimney.
I reach past it to open the window, and the bird is so afraid it doesn’t even move away. The more I watch it flutter, the calmer I feel. I was so helpless before, pressed back against the door as the black water rose around me. But here, I’m not.
I take hold of the window latch. It’s stuck fast. I grit my teeth and lean in hard with my shoulder to the glass.
“You’re safe, you’re safe.” I struggle against the window, the bird’s soot-streaked wings brushing over my cheeks in a blur. “Let me get this open—then you’ll be back outside.”
Finally, the sash cord gives a high-pitched screech, and the window comes open in a rush. The bird flutters past me with a little chirp. I watch it disappear into the clear, hot sky. I’m breathless from the effort, and I lean out into the windswept sunlight, taking grateful gasps of the warm air.
I see something stuck in the gap between window and sill. I slide my fingers down and work it loose. It’s a heavy key, as large as my hand, engraved with a pattern of twined leaves that reminds me of the carvings on the front door of the house.
I curl my fingers around it. I don’t know what this key might open, there are so many locked doors here. A long length of ribbon is threaded through the key bow. I knot it at one end to make a loop, then slip it over my head.
The door creaks open. I hurriedly tuck the key down beneath my nightdress so it’s hidden. Footsteps come heavily across the floor. A hand reaches through the tangled curtains and grabs my shoulder. “What are you doing?”
I jolt upward. Hit my head—hard—against the edge of the open window. “Ouch! Ash damn it!”
I guiltily whisk the curtains closed over the opened window and turn to face Rowan Sylvanan, his brows knotted into a scowl, his gloves gone, and his shirt half unfastened.
My eyes drift, unbidden, toward his bared skin. The scars around his throat go farther down than I thought, crossing over his collarbones and onto his chest. Blood rushes into my cheeks. I look quickly away.
“Violeta.” His scowl deepens, and he pulls awkwardly at his shirt, quickly tightening the laces. “Why are you in my bedroom?”
“Your bedroom?” I look around. The bare walls. The scant furniture. The sofa beneath the window. Now I realize there’s a quilt spread neatly across it, a pillow at one end. “But it’s so empty.”
“I prefer it this way.”
“You’re the lord of an estate. Why do you sleep on a sofa?”
Rowan makes a sound halfway between a sigh and an incredulous cough. “It’s a chaise.” His eyes narrow as they trail over me. “Are you wearing my cloak?”
“I’m borrowing your cloak. You left it with me.” I take it off quickly and hold it out. “You can have it back now.”
He doesn’t move. The bundled weight of his cloak slips from my hand to the floor. He watches it fall with his arms folded. “What, exactly, are you doing in here?”
“There was a bird.”
“A what?”
“It was trapped in here. I had to open your window to let it free.”
A sudden gust of wind whips through the room. The curtains snap back and forth with a cascade of dust. We both sneeze.
“A bird? That’s why you came sneaking around?”
Rowan sneezes again, and I start to laugh at him when he scrunches up his face against the dust. He shoves his way through the curtains and pushes at the window, but it’s just as stubborn to close as it was to open.
“It’s stuck. Here, let me help.” I take hold of the frame. My shoulder brushes against his, and our hands are so close together they almost touch. “And I wasn’t sneaking. I have better things to do than poke around your bedroom.”
“I’ve had a long enough day without your particular foolishness, Violeta.”
He gives the sash another shove, and the window slams shut, the impact rattling through the glass. We both jump. The curtains, stilled, flutter down and make a soft wall between us and the rest of the room. Unfiltered sunlight streams over us. I look at him, and I want to touch the scars that cross the side of his jaw, his mouth. I keep my hands at my sides to stop myself from reaching.
“Was it very awful in the village?”
“What do you think?” He sighs. “The latest rumor is that Clover and I are trying to perform some kind of blood sacrifice.”
I glance toward his bandaged arm. “I mean, they’re not entirely wrong.”
He lets out a tired laugh, then starts to unfold his sleeves and smooth them back down. “I’m sure it delights you to know everyone shares your opinion that I’m a monster.”
I pretend to study him. “You’re not even a very good monster. Really, you need fangs.”
“Fangs?”
“Or perhaps a tail. You could twitch it when you were angry.”
“If I did have a tail, it would be twitching now.”
I can’t help but smile. He’s a monster. He’s a boy. Sad and cross. He parts the curtains and holds them open for me. I slip through the narrow space, and he steps out of my way, looking at my nightdress with a grimace.
“You’re still covered in dirt from last night.” He walks out after me. The room dims as the curtains fall shut behind him.
I look down at myself. My nightdress is filthy, and my hair is tangled, with mud clotted at the ends of my curls. I start to laugh. “Have I infringed on your standards of cleanliness? I’ve not had time to change since we went to the lake.”
“You might want a bath before dinner.”
Unlike me, Rowan is neatly dressed. The bandage on his wrist is the only hint of disarray from last night. An irascible urge comes over me to loosen him. Make him untidy. To step dusty footprints onto his boots or untuck his shirt. Crumple him.
“What’s the matter? Are you worried I’ll ruin your nice clean shirt?”
I grab his sleeve and crush the fabric inside my fist. He catches my hand, horrified. “There’s still blood under your fingernails!”
“It’s your blood!” I fall against his chest, still laughing, warmed by the utter delight of teasing him.
He glares down at me. “You are a complete menace.”
He’s still holding my hand, and I lace my fingers through his. A spark flares through my whole body: chest to ribs to fingertips. Heat stirs beneath my skin, like there’s a garden of bright flowers blossoming in my veins.
Light flickers between our joined hands.
Rowan flinches back, shocked. “You have magic.” He’s guarded, but there’s a surety in his words. “That’s what you did last night. You used your magic against the Corruption.”
By rights that power belongs to me. I shiver, remembering the Lord Under’s words. “I don’t—”
Rowan lifts my hand and turns it palm up, then drags his fingers roughly across my heartline. We both take a breath, and I watch as the darkness uncurls at his throat, along the scars. As the threads of poison lace over him, I feel an echoing pull far down within me.
And the power, the magic, my magic, sparks and burns and burns. Brightness fills the room like a scatter of coals fallen loose inside a stove. For a brief, brilliant moment before the power fades, my hands, my palms, my fingers … they glow.
Rowan clenches his teeth as the darkness spreads across his neck and over his jaw. He closes his eyes, and slowly the lines start to fade.
“Why didn’t you tell Clover you had magic, when she asked you?” He stares down at my hands. “That day in your cottage, if I’d known about this, I would have—”
“You’d have known I was useful to you, just like Arien?”
“That isn’t true. I don’t want to use you, Violeta. I—” He lifts his hand, but I step back.
“Can we please just forget this?”
“I can understand you not confiding in me. But what about Arien? Why have you kept this from him?”
Because it never happened until now. My magic is a distant throb at the palms of my hands, but I can still feel the way it unspooled when Rowan touched me. The sparks that bloomed from my fingers. When I think of it, I want to shove him away—I want to pull him closer. Why has being at Lakesedge—being with him—made this strange, lost power stir within me?
“You can’t tell anyone about my magic. Not Arien, not Clover. I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Why are you hiding this? It could help. You could help.”
His words are an echo of what the Lord Under told me. I shake my head quickly as cold prickles over my skin. “No. You don’t want my help.”
“Violeta…” He bends down, until his face is even with mine. He reaches for me, eyes full of concern. This time I let him touch me.
His fingers gently trace my cheek, and for just a breath everything between us feels softer. I realize that Rowan may be the only other person who has seen what I’ve seen. The voice, the shadows, the darkness. The confession is an ache lodged in my chest, sharp against my ribs. I cast around, searching for how to tell him the truth. That the Lord Under offered me power. That I made a bargain with him on a moonlit night in the Vair Woods.
That I might still be in his debt.
“Rowan, what happened when the Lord Under saved you?”
“I told you already. I drowned. I came back. Everything was poisoned.”
“But what did he ask from you in return for his help?”
There’s a flash in his eyes that I can’t read. A mask slip, there and gone. Then the earlier softness evaporates, and he gives me a hard, cold look. “That, Violeta Graceling, is none of your concern.”
But my mind has started to turn, setting together the pieces of everything I’ve seen, and heard, and know. “You told me the Corruption started because of a mistake. It was your family, wasn’t it?”
“No. I am not talking about this—especially not with you.”
“You gave them up in exchange for your life.”
He pushes past me and flings open the door. “I think you should leave.”
The horror of it sinks in. Everyone said that he killed his family, but the truth is far worse. Rowan cheated death, just like I did.
Rowan gave his family to the Lord Under, in exchange for his life.
“I don’t understand. Florence told me your father died after your thirteenth birthday. But if you gave them up when you were a child, then why—?”
His expression darkens, raw and furious. “Enough. I’ll not discuss this.”
Desperation burns hot at the center of my chest. “Did the Lord Under come back to you?”
“He’s the lord of the dead. Only the dead can see him.” He glares at me, then tips his chin to the hallway. “Get out of my room, Violeta.”
When I don’t move, he comes toward me swiftly and grabs my wrist. Magic sparks from my hand as I twist against him.
As he looms over me, his bared teeth look sharp. “I told you to go.”
I try to pull away. His fingers tighten around my arm. We’re so close that when he exhales, I feel his breath, hot, on my skin. I taste ash and salt and blood, as though the poison inside him has spilled loose into the air. I’m not sure if it’s a trick of the light, but the scars at his throat seem to blacken. They look wet, like he’s been cut, like he’s bleeding.
Last night I said I wasn’t afraid of him, but right now I am. All I want to do is run. But instead, I stop struggling and put my hand over his.
“Rowan.” I say his name, say it over and over until it sounds like a litany. “Rowan. Rowan.”
He growls, then shoves me roughly away. I stumble out of the room, turning back to catch a last glimpse of him—poisoned and shadowed and wrong—as he slams the door closed.
I scour myself in a hot bath until all the mud is gone from my skin. I put on another of the new dresses, this one rose-petal pink with leaves embroidered at the hem, then find a pair of ribboned socks to wear with my now-clean boots. I tuck the key, on its long ribbon, down inside my dress.
The house is quiet as the day stretches toward an indolent summer evening. There are no whispers or shifting shadows. I hold the little icon between my hands and feel the fit of it in my palm as I stare at the walls and floor and hope they won’t change. They don’t. But when I walk past the parlor on my way down to dinner, I pause by the closed door.
I can still feel the power that the Lord Under showed me. The way I was strong and sure, and how I kept everyone safe. A small, reckless part of me wonders what would happen if I went inside the room right now. If I lit a candle and knelt down before that strange, sinister altar.
I go quickly toward the kitchen, trying to push away the want that sings in my fingertips. When I enter the room, Florence greets me with a stack of enamelware plates in her hands. She passes them to me, then balances a pile of folded linen napkins on the top.
“Here. You can set the table.” As I lay out the plates, she looks expectantly into the empty hallway. “Where’s Rowan, anyway? It’s his turn for chores tonight.”
I put down the last plate with a clatter. “I think he’s staying upstairs.”
I circle my hand around my wrist, feeling the place where Rowan’s fingers dug in. He’s losing himself to the Corruption. If the next ritual fails, it might just claim him entirely.
Florence frowns, concerned, but then she’s distracted by Arien and Clover coming inside from the garden. They’re both quiet, with worry lined deep around their eyes.
“I couldn’t do it, Leta.” Arien looks from me to the open doorway, where the sigil is still carved out on the lawn, the center lined with jars. “It worked, before, when you were there. But after you left, when I tried again, I couldn’t—”
He goes to the washstand and scrubs and scrubs at his hands. He wipes them against a cloth, then comes to sit at the table opposite me.
“You still have time,” I tell him.
He sighs crossly. “I don’t.”
“You do.” Clover’s smile doesn’t quite reach her tired eyes. “It’s only just past the dark moon. We have time until the next full moon, the next ritual. From tomorrow, we’ll practice harder.”
Florence puts her hand on Arien’s back. “I’m sure you can do this.”
She sets a platter onto the table and begins to slice a loaf of sourdough bread. The food here is similar to our meals in the cottage. Wilted greens, nettle salad, sugar peas, and summer squash. There’s a clay bowl on the table filled with pink salt, a tin pitcher beside it full of mint tea.
Usually, the evenings together in the kitchen feel like a golden pause. A place where we can sit and talk and forget about the lake. Forget to watch the moon as it moves from dark to half to full in the summer night sky. But tonight feels grim and tense, and we all eat in silence.
Rowan comes into the kitchen just as Florence has started to clear the table. I quickly turn to him, my whole body wound tight with apprehension. But there’s no sign of how he looked before when he was changed.
“There you are,” Florence says. “It’s your turn to wash the dishes tonight. Don’t forget.” She goes over to the shelves to collect cutlery and another plate, which she fills from the covered dishes set aside by the stove.
Clover pours out more of the mint tea and passes it to him. “I was going to steal your share of dessert.”
She gives his arm a playful shove, but he only glares at her. Sighing, she goes back to her chair as Rowan sits down beside me. Our knees touch beneath the table, and he moves quickly away. We’re no closer together now than when we stood by the window earlier, but somehow, he feels closer.
I lower my voice, aware that everyone else can hear me. “Are you feeling better?”
“I’m fine.” He puts something down on the table. A book. My book. The Violet Woods. “You left this in the pocket of my cloak.”
Clover stares at the two of us curiously. “You wore his cloak?” she asks in a barely concealed whisper. She tries, and fails, to hide her smile.
Rowan ignores her and eats silently, his eyes fixed on his plate. When he’s finished, Florence brings out dessert: sour cherry cake, the top dusted with sugar.
“Is that from the tithe?” I ask Clover.
“Yes.” She makes a face. “I never want to lift another basket again. I love sour cherries, but I’m not sure it’s worth a whole day in the village being bossed around by Keeper Harkness and his annoying daughter.”
Florence starts to cut the cake into squares. “I thought you liked Thea?”
Clover tugs at the end of her braid, and doesn’t answer. Now it’s my turn to hide my smile.
“I think I made those cherries.” I laugh softly as I reach over and pick up a square of cake, feeling bittersweet as I remember all the time I spent in the orchard picking fruit, the days at the stove, and the endless stirring.
But my laughter dims as I recall the night in the kitchen when the air smelled like syrup, when I knelt with the shards of glass in my knees. Then, all I wanted was to keep Arien safe no matter how much it might have hurt me.
I can still feel the faint tug from the thread of magic that was tied between us when he cast the spell today. I look across the table at him. He’s been quiet for most of the meal.
He picks at his dessert, scatters crumbs across the table. “What happens if I can’t control my magic by the full moon? What happens if I can’t help Clover cast the spell?”
“Then you’ll wait,” Florence says gently. “You’ll try again on the next moon.”
I look at Rowan. He frowns, avoiding my gaze. My book sits on the table between us, the price that I teasingly demanded from him for my secrecy about the tithes. Clover and Florence don’t know about how much it will cost him to wait all that time longer.
“If we could wait, I know I could do it!” Arien chews at his lip. His face is all hope and nervousness. “It worked today. Leta, you saw me! I could—”
“Tell them.” Rowan looks at my hands. He means that I should tell them about my magic. I shake my head no. “Tell them.”
I can’t accept the Lord Under’s offer. I can’t tell the truth about my magic. I can’t let Arien go unprepared to the ritual, but we don’t have more time. And then there’s Rowan … it will cost him to wait. It will cost him to fail. It will cost everything with his death.
I’m here, fighting like I have a choice. None of us have a choice.
I shake my head again and whisper, “I can’t.”
Rowan gets abruptly to his feet. His chair bumps against the table, making all the plates and cutlery and cups of tea rattle. Florence looks at him, startled. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He shoves his plate and spoon roughly into the dishpan. “We need more wood for the stove.”
He grabs the lantern, snatches up the kindling basket and disappears out into the garden. Silence passes. After a while, the steady, rhythmic thud of the ax echoes back from the woodshed behind the house.
“What did he mean?” Arien asks, confused. “Tell them? Tell us what?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. We argued earlier, that’s all.”
“You really need to stop picking fights with him.”
Clover laughs. “No, don’t. It’s very entertaining to watch. You’ve really gotten him worked up. I thought he was finally going to stand up and confess how ardently he admires you.” She waves a hand in protest when Florence gives her a stern look. “You should be pleased! By the time he’s finished out there, we’ll have enough kindling to last until Summersend, at least.”