I sit alone by the altar after everyone goes back to the house. I blow out the candles and watch as wax pools around the soot-smeared wicks. Smoke covers the icon like a veil.
The spell to focus my power worked. When Arien and Clover cast the spell they’re going to use to mend the Corruption, the sigil burned on my wrist and power unthreaded from me. Still faint, still weak, but it was enough. With my help, Arien kept hold of his magic. His shadows wove neatly around the glass as light spilled from Clover’s hands, and the water turned clear.
Afterward, Clover gave me the pen to keep. It’s in my pocket, and the small weight of it feels like another marker of how irrevocably everything has changed.
Rowan has stood far back in the garden, beneath an arbor of white-flowered elder trees, watching our practice without comment. Now he comes over to sit down beside me at the altar. Gently, he reaches for my arm. “Can I see?”
I nod, and push back my sleeve to show him the spell inscribed on my wrist. “What do you think? Have I done well, or will I need another writing lesson?”
He frowns at my teasing. Then he tentatively touches the mark. A few tiny sparks of magic scatter into the air between us. He watches them fade. “You’re far beyond anything I could teach you, Violeta.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You might give me some advice on how to split kindling. You missed observance while you were cutting all that firewood.”
Scowling, he turns to the altar. He touches the earth for the barest moment before he sits back, rubbing the dirt from his hands.
I laugh. “You know, you’re supposed to chant.”
“I don’t like to sing when people can hear me.” He picks up some fallen petals from the ground and drops them beneath the icon. His eyes are distant. “Anyway, my observance is different.”
An image flashes through my mind. The altar in the parlor. Rowan kneeling with his palms to the bare floor as the dual icon looms over him. “You really worship the Lord Under?”
He arches a brow. “That icon has two figures. All the noble houses have one similar. My father, and every lord before him, they’ve all worshipped there.” He picks up another handful of flowers. “That altar, it’s a reminder for me: I’m bound to this land and all within it, their lives and their deaths. I’m still their lord, even if they all think I’m a monster.”
I have a sudden, destructive urge to tell him what the Lord Under has offered me. Because Rowan and I have looked into the same shadowed dark and made the same desperate choices. But I can’t. No matter what I did in my past, no one can know about this.
All I can say is, “I think I understand. I wish the others did, too. Everyone is so busy fearing you that they don’t see it—how much you care for them.”
Slowly, Rowan reaches toward me. His fingers are smeared with pollen from the flowers. I hold my breath as he traces the line of my throat, a dozen images flickering through my mind of what he might do next—of what I might want him to do.
But then he hooks his fingers beneath the ribbon around my neck. He draws out the key and curls his fingers over it. I try to move back, but he tightens his grip and the ribbon snags. Laughing, he gives it a little pull, tugging me forward. “I knew you’d taken this. Violeta, you’re such a thief.”
I reach to my neck, trying to unfasten the knot. “Do you want it back?”
“No.” He pulls on the ribbon again, then the key slips from his hand and thumps against my chest. The scrolled iron is warm from being against my skin. I can feel the thrum of my pulse in my throat, in the place where he touched me.
Rowan gets to his feet. He looks toward the path that curves away from the house. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”
I stand up unsteadily and take his offered hand. He leads me farther into the garden. We push through a bank of grass, the seed-filled ends almost as tall as my head. Everything is dried out by the midsummer sun and heated air. We follow the path for a long time, and then we reach the wall. The gate, covered in vines.
When I was here last, when I followed him through the dark, the garden was all silver and shadow. Now it’s lit faintly by the twilight, the air faded and otherworldly, like an illustration from the book he gave me.
“Go ahead,” Rowan says softly. “Open it.”
I carefully move the vines away from the handle and slip the key into the lock. The gate swings open without a sound. Together, we step into the garden.
The orchard trees have spread from their ordered rows, and the flower beds are only tangles of dry grass. An endless bramble winds through it all, a sharp snarl of vine and thorn, leafless and bare.
But as I look around, a warmth hums under my skin. I can see how it all must have been once. This secret, locked-up place that’s been kept asleep. Fruit and herbs and flowers. The air all sugar and pollen and the drone of bees.
It’s beautiful.
Rowan stays behind me as I walk along the path where weeds push up between the gravel stones. Quiet stretches between us. The only sound is our footsteps.
At the center of the orchard I pause and rest my hand against the trunk of an apple tree. He puts his hand just above mine. His eyes are distant, fixed on the curve of the path as it disappears into the garden.
“Elan and I used to play in here all the time.”
“Really?” I’m still not sure why he’s brought me here. But of everything I expected, it wasn’t this confession. Elan. The sound of his name seems to stay in the air, a note, resonant with memory. “What was he like?”
Rowan laughs. “A perfect terror. Any trouble you could imagine, he’d find it. He’d either convince me to join in, or blame me if we got caught.” He points toward the branches, where the leaves are colored by the diffuse, lilac light. “He used to climb up there and throw apples at me.”
“You probably deserved it,” I tease, and his mouth curves into an almost smile. “So why did you lock it all up?”
“After he died, I—I didn’t want to remember anymore. I closed up all the rooms in the house. I locked the garden. It was the worst, here. Because it was where he’d been the happiest.”
“You wanted to forget him?”
“Yes.” His eyes are dark and sad and far away. “I wanted to forget everything.”
“I know so little of my own family. I can’t imagine ever wanting to give up what I do remember. No matter how much it might hurt.” But then I think of the story I just told to Clover and Arien. How much I’ve still kept to myself, pushed down and buried and left unsaid. Maybe I do understand—just a little—why Rowan has closed up so much of his house, his life, and himself. “And did you? Did you manage to forget?”
“No.” He tips his head back and looks into the leaves above. He sighs. “It hurts to remember; it hurts to forget. And now everything here is dead, anyway.”
I look around the garden. We’ve come to the end of the path. The scattered gravel curls around a space of weeds that must have once been a lawn, bordered by more of the leafless brambles.
“No, it’s not. You locked it up. You left it. But it isn’t dead.”
I go over and kneel down close to the tangled curl of vines. I take hold of the bramble, careful of the thorns, and scrape my nails over the stem. The topmost layer of the plant peels back to reveal pale green, hidden beneath.
Rowan comes to stand beside me. “What are you doing?”
“It’s alive. See?”
He leans down to touch his fingers to the new, green place on the vine. “How did you know to do that?”
“My father showed me.”
I see my father, in the garden behind our cottage. A clear space of earth. A handful of stems, cut from another plant. One by one he placed them into the ground. He cupped his hands around them. Light flickered between his palms as he cast his magic. When he moved back, the stem had leaves and tiny flowers. It was alive.
I take out the pen and shakily trace over the sigil on my wrist. I’ve seen Arien and Clover do the same, retrace the same spell over a spent mark to rework it. Beneath the outline, my skin feels hot, like I have a fever.
I reach out to the vine again. Close my eyes and think of power. My power. It’s so small. I can barely grasp it. It’s like a tiny golden thread that slips through my fingers.
I wrap my hands tight around the bramble. Thorns pierce my skin, and I clench my teeth together against the hurt. I think of how it felt, before, with Clover and Arien, how our magic intertwined as we cast the spell. I think of how my power sparked up when Rowan touched the heartline of my palm.
And then the memory of my father in the garden comes back, so vivid that I can feel him here, right beside me. His hands over mine, his voice gentle as he shows me how to work the magic. I think of light and heat and sun and seeds. Of things that were not quite dead, now come alive. The sigil burns. I reach again for the thread. It’s about to slip. But I grasp hold, and I don’t let go.
I open my eyes and see what I’ve done. Most of the bramble is the same, leafless and dried. But between my cupped palms, there’s a small cluster of purple-dark berries. A handful of green, heart-shaped leaves.
Rowan kneels down and touches the plant. He smiles at me. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile like this, so unguarded. His mouth is tilted, lopsided and boyish. His front teeth are charmingly crooked.
“You were right,” he says, awed. “It isn’t dead.”
It’s the first magic I’ve worked from my own hands, alone. I stare down at the berries, the leaves. I feel wrung out, like I’ve used up all my strength for this single piece of magic. Can I truly protect Arien in the ritual, can I truly help, when this is all the power I have? And what if continuing to use it puts me back in the Lord Under’s debt?
It has to be enough. It has to be worth the risk. It has to.
“I don’t know that I’ll be invited to the Maylands to show off my skills anytime soon. But there you are.” I want to laugh, but tears sting my eyes and ache in my chest.
I clutch the pen tight in my hands for a moment, then throw it down against the leaves. My fingers are smeared with blood from the thorns. I close my eyes. I won’t cry over this.
“Violeta.” Rowan touches the newly leafed bramble again. He picks up the pen and tries to place it back in my hands. When I don’t move, he clumsily folds my fingers around it. “It’s beautiful. Your magic … it’s beautiful.”
“No. No, it’s not. I shouldn’t even—” All I can think of is that long-ago winter. Arien’s heavy weight in my arms. How the wind changed inside the woods and the air turned crystalline with ice and frost.
And then it tumbles out. “There’s more to it, to the story I told the others. When the Lord Under came to us, it was Arien that he wanted.”
Rowan’s expression darkens. “It was his life you gave your magic for?”
I nod. I’ve kept this terrible secret for so long. It’s almost a relief to have it finally revealed like this. “We were lost. It was so cold, and he was so heavy. He cried and cried, and it was awful. Then he stopped crying, and that was worse. That was when the Lord Under came for him.”
Rowan looks down at his hands. At the scars that mark his palms and his fingers. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. He was kind. He told me Arien wasn’t quite gone, but if we stayed in the cold for much longer, he would be. So I asked him to show us the way out of the forest. He picked up Arien and carried him, and he held my hand. He was … gentle. We walked for the whole night through the Vair Woods. Then, in the morning, we came to the road. He laid Arien down. He took my magic. And then—”
I blink hard against the burn and blur of tears as they rise. Rowan reaches out, his fingers brush over my wrist, and the sigil gives a single, muted throb. “You can tell me, Violeta.”
“After the woods, my magic was gone, but that wasn’t all. What I did that night, the bargain I made, it changed something in Arien. His magic. The darkness he has. What he is, and everything that happened to him afterward because of it—it’s all my fault.”
“You were a child.” He hesitates, then goes on. “There’s no fault in what you did when you were afraid.”
A laugh catches in my throat. “If I’d not done it, then we’d never have been able to help you. But what if using my power now will bring the Lord Under back to take Arien away?”
“You made your bargain; you freely gave up your magic to him. I don’t think that can be unmade. As for your help, do you really think that’s all I care about?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” Rowan wipes his thumb across my cheek. “It isn’t.”
I shake myself free of his touch. “I wish Arien hadn’t been the one to wear the wounds made by my choices.”
“You were hurt by it, too.”
He looks toward my arms, his eyes filled with emotion. I think of that day in the cottage when he saw my bruises. How his hands trembled above my wrists. The bruises are long healed now. But all I can think is that it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t keep Arien safe then, or now.
“It was my fault. All of it. Mother, however much she hurt me, I deserved it. It was my fault she was afraid of Arien.”
“You did nothing wrong,” Rowan says fiercely. He’s angry—but not at me.
“I was afraid of him, too. Of the darkness and his shadows.” Roughly, I grab the hem of my dress and pull it up. Between my crumpled skirts and my ribboned socks, my knees are bare. The scars where Clover healed me are snagged across my skin in fierce, deep lines. Rowan breathes in sharply when he sees them. “I deserved it.”
I didn’t cry then, even as the glass cut deep. How could I cry when all of it—Mother’s fear, Arien’s dark-tinged power—was because of me? But now I let the tears come.
I curl forward, folding in on myself. Rowan puts his arms around me. “Violeta. You made a terrible, desperate choice. And you never deserved to be hurt like this.”
I bury my face against his shoulder. Now that I’ve started to cry, I’m not sure I can ever stop. Sobs catch in my throat, and hot tears spill down my cheeks. He runs his hand over my hair, murmuring against my ear. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t, it wasn’t.”
Then slowly, hesitantly, he touches the scars on my knees. He is so gentle. He doesn’t say anything else. He just sits with me and lets me cry until, finally, I shudder into stillness.
The light begins to fade, and the garden turns to velvet in the dusk. Between the branches above there’s a bare space of sky where a few bright stars encircle the new moon. The whole world is quiet.
I wipe my face with my sleeve. “Please don’t tell Arien about what I did. He spent so much time thinking he was dark and ruined and wrong. He’s only just begun to see that it’s not true.”
“I understand. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret. I won’t even demand a book for my silence.”
“You have enough books. But I could probably grow you some more blackberries.”
He laughs, and I lean against his chest. His skin is warm beneath his shirt, and the fabric is stuck to him where he sweat from cutting the wood. And though he held me before, when I cried … this feels different. My magic starts to stir awake; I feel it spun loosely within me. I like the weight of him, close, and how my cheek fits against his shoulder.
“Leta.” He speaks my name in a low, tender breath. “Leta.”
His hands are still on my knees, stroking gently back and forth over my scars. I start to think of him moving higher, how it might feel if his fingers pressed into the backs of my thighs. A throb begins in my throat. It flutters alongside my pulse, then travels lower, through my chest to my stomach. Then lower still. Heat pools within me, aching and tender.
I reach up and trail my fingers along the line of his jaw. He tenses. I can hear the slither and hiss of the Corruption as he breathes. Rivulets of darkness vein the edges of his throat as the shadows uncoil beneath his skin. Magic rises from my hands in a faint, warm glow.
One breath passes, then another. My face is a pale heart reflected in the depths of his gaze. There is only the barest space between us. It would be so easy for me to lean forward, to close that distance.
Scars brush the side of his mouth. How would it feel, that place, if I kissed him?
Rough.
Soft.
Slowly, slowly, I lift my hand and trace across his lips with the edge of my thumb. Sparks light from my fingers, and the lines of poison spread farther, covering his throat and creeping up over his cheeks.
Rowan catches hold of my wrist. “Stop.” His voice sounds like the wash of lake water. “Please, stop.”
“I’m sorry.” I pull away from him, and we both stand up quickly. I brush down my skirts until the gossamer layers of fabric cover my legs again.
“Don’t be sorry.” He’s so quiet. I can barely hear him. “I can’t, Leta. I just can’t.”
I nod, but I’m embarrassed. What right do I have to want this? What right do I have to ask anything from him, when he has already given and lost so much?
I reach for the ribbon around my neck and slip the silken loop over my head. I draw out the key and offer it to him on the flat of my palm. “Thank you for showing me the garden, Rowan.”
He doesn’t move for a long time, only stares down at my outstretched hand. His fingers are pressed against his throat where the darkness is still fading back under his skin.
Then he says a single word. “Anything.”
I look at him, confused, as I realize what he means. “That was your trade? You offered the Lord Under anything in exchange for your life?”
“Yes.”
The enormity of it sends a cold, terrible shiver through me. An offer like that would have meant the Lord Under could set his own terms. He could take whatever he wanted. “Oh, Rowan. I’m—”
“No.” He stops me before I can finish what I meant to say. I’m sorry. Roughly, he folds my fingers closed around the key. “I want to give this to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This.” He gestures to the trees, the brambles, the tangled beds.
“You want to give the whole garden to me?”
I look all around us, at this beautiful, forgotten place. The trees and the brambles, the crooked orchard and the wildflower lawn. The plants are half-dead and gone to seed, but it’s so much grander and larger and more than anything I’ve ever had. Mine.
“Yes. It’s yours.”
It hangs between us, unspoken, that there might be a time beyond the mud and poison and darkness. That on the next full moon the Corruption could be mended. And after that, I’ll have this piece of earth as my own. I’ll plant seeds and pick flowers. Bring this whole locked-up, too-long-asleep place back to life.
My throat still burns with salt and tears. I close my eyes and feel the faint spark of my magic. Traces. Leftover.
For just this moment, I let myself believe that it will be enough.