Night folds around me. I’m in the hall outside Rowan’s room, a candle jar cupped tight between my hands. His door is closed.
A thread-thin gleam of light edges the frame. But when I knock, there’s no response.
I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the paneled wood.
The house is silent and still. I feel as though I’m the only one awake—or alive—in the entire estate. After we came back from the lake, Clover mended Arien’s arms, but his skin still looked charred and raw and ruined. She promised him it would be fine. She said it the same way Rowan did, after the tithe—fine fine fine. Hope knotted up in a lie.
While she worked, I lit candles, as many as I could find. In Arien’s room, I lined the sills and the mantel and the bedside table with them, and set them on the floor in each corner. Never again would I let the darkness come for me or for Arien. When the wind stirred through the walls, when it sounded like my name, I refused to listen.
Florence came into the room and dragged a chair over to the bed. Sent Clover and me away and said she would watch over Arien. I left him shrouded in light, sound asleep. I went to my own room and tried to sleep, too. But when I closed my eyes, all I could see was the ritual. Images that came in swift, hideous flashes. The claws. The teeth. The sound of Arien’s screams when the Lord Under hurt him.
And Rowan. Poisoned and wounded and full of hard, cold resignation. Let it kill me. He’s lived for so long with that darkness inside him. Fought and fought, let it take him apart in a slow bloodletting to delay the inevitable. It makes me think of a dry well: the widening space between surface and water, the scrape of the bucket across the stones. He’ll give up, give in, and I’ll have to watch the Corruption slowly ruin him, piece by piece, before it destroys him entirely.
I care for him. But I still don’t know him.
We’ve hidden so much of the truth from each other. I have to know what happened to him in the past. What really happened when Rowan was saved by the Lord Under.
I knock on his door again, harder this time. The sound echoes through the hallway.
I try the handle. The door opens. I go inside.
His room is just as bare as the last time I was here. The curtains are flung wide, the hot night air drifting through the open window with the scent of leaves and earth. Everything is so still, so silent. But then I see him, curled beneath the quilt on his narrow, makeshift bed. He turns toward me as I cross the room, but his eyes are closed. He’s asleep.
His arm lashes out. His wrists are bandaged—he must have done it himself—and thick, black Corrupted blood has seeped through the cloth.
“Elan,” he calls out, pained. “Elan, please…”
A nightmare. He’s having another nightmare.
I tiptoe closer and set my candle on the floor near the bed, beside a tray bearing a half-drunk cup of tea. Three glass vials lie next to the cup. Empty, except for a few drops of the bitter sedative. My small light gleams weakly out into the rest of the room. In the corner, the shadows are heavy. I turn my face away from the darkness.
I lean over Rowan and put my hands on his shoulders. At my touch, he snaps awake, sits up and shakes himself free. “Violeta? What are you doing in here?”
His eyes are dark—pupils blown wide, sclera bloodshot. The scars at his throat are latticed dark, a tracery that spreads upward across his jaw, down over his chest. He isn’t wearing a shirt, and in the candlelight I can see his broad shoulders, his lean muscles, the scars all over his skin. A strange yearning fills me.
His hair is tangled from sleep and still damp from when he washed out the mud. A loose strand hangs over his face, the dark line crossing out his features. I reach to brush it back. “You had a nightmare.”
He catches my hand before I can touch him. “Don’t.”
“You had a nightmare, but it’s over now.” There’s a cloth, folded up on the tray beneath the teapot. I pick it up. “Your arms … Here, let me help you.”
He looks down and sees that the cuts have bled through the bandages. Sighing, he holds out his arms to me. I start to unwind the strips of linen. I shudder when I see the wounds, unable to stop picturing sharp teeth and hooked claws. I try not to touch the blood, but I can’t avoid it; when it smears my fingers, it’s thick and strangely cool.
Rowan takes the cloth from my hands. “There are bandages in the dresser. The top drawer. And—” He looks down, embarrassed. “And maybe a shirt, from the drawer beneath.”
I open the dresser and take out a roll of bandages, then search through his neatly folded shirts until I find the softest one. I take everything back over to the bed, then sit down carefully on the floor and start to unwind the bandages.
Rowan sits very still as I wrap his arms. After I’m done, I lean against the edge of the chaise. “You told me the Corruption wouldn’t hurt anyone except you. You swore it. But I saw how you looked when you fought to save Arien. It wasn’t the first time you’ve done that—tried to pull someone else back.”
He lowers his eyes as he roughly pulls on the shirt. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Tell me.” I put my hand on his arm so he can’t turn farther away. “Rowan, what happened when the Lord Under saved you? What really happened to your family? I want to know the truth.”
He hesitates a moment, then he sighs. “It was as I said, before. I died. I came back. I was poisoned.” His gaze drifts toward the open window, and his voice sounds far away. “I was maybe five years old. I went to play near the lake and fell into the water. It was so cold, and I couldn’t breathe—then all at once everything changed. I wasn’t in the water anymore; I was in a forest. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen. It was dark, and there was no sky. I was there for what felt like a long time. Until he spoke to me.”
“The Lord Under.”
“Yes. What did you say about him? He was kind. I was frightened, like you. But he held my hand and told me that he could save me. When he asked what I would give in exchange for my life, I said anything. I suppose it’s a pity I didn’t have any magic to offer him.” Rowan laughs darkly, then his expression turns solemn. “When I woke up on the shore, the water had turned black, and I thought that had been the price. My parents were so angry and worried that I couldn’t bring myself to tell them what had really happened.”
“So you pushed it down.” It’s hard to speak, remembering how I felt when I was in his place, how hard I tried to forget what I’d done in the Vair Woods. “And after a while it felt almost like it hadn’t been real.”
“Strange to think we have such a thing in common, isn’t it?” He reaches out and traces over the sigil on my wrist. The gentle touch of his roughened fingers on my skin is like an offer, a question. I lean toward him, and he lifts his other hand to touch my face. “Leta,” he murmurs. “Leta, I—”
But then he starts to cough. He closes his eyes, fighting against it, as darkness spreads across his throat.
Light glows from my hand, drawn out by the surge of shadows within him. I put my fingers over his heart and try to focus. The blackened tendrils start to shimmer, just like the lakeshore did earlier today at the ritual. I think of a garden, my father with his hands in the dirt as he turned stems to flowers. His magic is my magic. Petals and seeds, leaves and pollen.
My power is a thread, tied to Rowan. What I have is only a single flower, the smallest candle flame. I wish so terribly that I were strong enough to mend him entirely. All I can do is picture my magic unspun inside him, a brief flare of warmth against the cold, poisoned darkness.
Slowly, the Corruption fades back to pale shadows.
“Thank you.” He holds my hand tightly for a moment, then moves aside to make space on the chaise. “Sit down with me. I’ll tell you how it happened.”
I glance at his makeshift bed, which is ridiculously neat, the linen sheets crisp and freshly ironed. But his hair is tangled, and there are creases on his face from where he’s lain against the pillow. He’s more undone than I’ve ever seen him.
I sit down next to him, close but not quite touching. I can feel the warmth, left behind from while he slept.
He stares pensively out into the room. “When I turned thirteen, my parents threw an enormous party. All their friends from other estates, from as far as Anglria, brought their children. I danced all night, trying to work up the courage to kiss Linden Hawke before he went home.”
I give him a little shove. “Who knew you had such a wild youth?”
He laughs softly, embarrassed. “Elan told me I had to choose whoever had the prettiest brother, then we’d all live together in a tree house in the garden.”
“That might have been a little chilly in winter.”
They’re bittersweet, these memories. Rowan and I exchange a small smile, and he continues.
“We made ourselves sick drinking spiced wine. Elan stole my cake from the kitchen table. We ate half of it together. Florence was furious, but Mother just laughed. She iced it again and told everyone it was supposed to be shaped like a moon.”
Arien and I never celebrate our birthdays; we don’t even know when they are. Each new year as the world turns, we just add another year of our own. When Rowan danced and Elan plotted their future house among the trees, I was eleven. I scrubbed floors and chopped kindling. I made up stories and sat, watchful, beside Arien in the dark.
I picture Rowan surrounded by his family. Loved and happy. I can see it so clearly: the now-empty house full of light and voices, lanterns strung along the drive, candles that shimmer over a crescent of freshly iced cake.
I know how it ended, but still, it fills me with a cold flare of envy. “It sounds wonderful.”
His smile fades. “At the end of the night, my father put his arm around my shoulders. He told me I was a man now. And then…” Rowan presses his hands to his mouth for a moment. When he goes on, his voice is muffled inside his palms. “The whole room went dark, like someone had blown out all the lights. The Lord Under, he came back for me. You’ve had your childhood, he said, the rest of your life is mine. That was his anything. He let me live; then he returned to claim me. It was the only other time I’ve seen him, aside from when I was saved. And that first time, he was kind. But this time…”
Rowan’s fingers clench over the space he can’t fill with words. But I’ve seen that same darkness. This will hurt. The Lord Under can be kind, but he can also be so terribly cruel. I shiver and pull the quilts higher around me.
“He meant to take me to the world Below, but I … I refused.” His eyes shutter closed, and he shakes his head. He’s not frightened by this memory, I realize. He’s ashamed. “I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that he would argue, that he would ask me to bargain again. But he only laughed. Then he went away.”
Rowan tries to steady his words. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? The whole story. The truth. I could stop him now. Put out my hand and whisper enough. But I have to hear him tell it. I’m terrible and greedy and afraid. I need to know what happened to him.
“My father was dead the next morning.” He looks at me for a heartbeat, then turns away, going on quickly, like he’s afraid if he stops, he won’t be able to speak again. “They found him in the water. All of the guests left, terrified. That’s when the rumors started about the estate. How something dark had come into the house, and then my father had drowned in the cursed, black lake. Only I knew it was my fault. The Lord Under took my father’s life because I refused to give up mine.”
“Oh, Rowan.” I shift closer to him. He goes still at my touch but doesn’t move to widen the distance between us. “You didn’t tell anyone?”
“No. My mother, after it all happened, she was changed. It was like she didn’t know who she was without my father. How could I tell her that he was dead because of me? And so I tried to forget.”
I think of how I kept my own secrets locked up so tightly. How I’d tried so desperately to pretend that Arien’s dark magic was only dreams, because it was easier than facing the truth. “I understand.”
“I was the lord now. I had to do all the things my father once did. I went to the village. I collected the tithe. I made observance at the altar you saw.” He sighs heavily. “I didn’t know the Lord Under would come back, but then my mother heard a voice at night, in her room.”
“He spoke to her.” I recall the whispers I heard in the dark. How the Lord Under drew me out through the halls. Follow.
“She thought it was a nightmare. She’d had so many of those since my father died. But the next day, I found her at the lake. Drowned. And the darkness that had been in the water had spread onto the shore beneath her. In the village, everyone said I had killed her. That I had killed them both.”
“If he had the power to take their lives, then why didn’t he just claim you, instead?” My stomach sinks as I understand the reason. “He took them to punish you.”
Rowan nods. Even after what happened with Arien today, it still shocks me to realize the depths of the Lord Under’s ruthlessness.
“And then Elan began to hear the same voice. The Lord Under meant to take him, too. I’d promised him anything, after all. Once I knew what was happening, I was desperate. I had to find a way to protect Elan, to keep him safe. I’d heard stories of people who used an offering of blood to call on the Lord Under. So I tried to summon him.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to our altar in the parlor. I lit the candles. I cut my hands and let my blood fall on the floor. But he never came. I stayed with Elan in his room every night, and tried to hear the voice, but only Elan could hear it. He told me it wanted him to go to the lake. So I went there. I went to the place where my parents had been found, the same place they had found me, all that time ago. I cut my arms this time and bled into the ground. When that didn’t work, I…”
He raises his hand to his throat and traces his fingers across the scars.
“You cut—You tried to—” I fall silent, struck cold by the horror of what he did.
“Yes, I meant to end my life.” He looks at me, his face shocked, as though he didn’t mean to speak so plainly. “I didn’t want to die and leave Elan alone. But I knew if the Lord Under didn’t take me, then Elan would be lost.” He shakes his head. “But when my blood touched the Corruption, it changed. It was like it woke up. It started to spread. It was hungry. I could feel it, what it wanted, and I knew it would spread to the house, to claim Elan. I had to stop it. I put my hands into the earth, like I was at observance, and the darkness went inside me instead. Afterward, I was like this.” He motions to the darkness around his scars, the poison beneath his skin. “And when Elan told me the voice had gone quiet, I thought I’d saved him.”
“But if it worked”—I feel terrible even asking, but I have to know—“what happened to Elan? How did he die?”
“To keep him safe, I had to keep going back to the lake. The Corruption would stir, and the poison inside me would call, and I knew if I didn’t let the Corruption claim more from me, it would spread, and it would hurt Elan. But each time I gave my tithe, I took on more of the darkness. I wrote to the Maylands for an alchemist, to see if there was anything else that could be done. They sent Clover, but before she arrived…” Rowan closes his eyes as tears trail a slow path down his cheeks. “One night when I went to the lake, Elan followed me. He saw what I was doing and tried to stop me. And when he stepped onto the shore, it was like he was entranced. He started to walk into the water, and I tried to pull him back. Then the darkness changed me. I was still there, but alongside me was this other thing. I couldn’t do anything to stop him. I didn’t want to stop him. I watched him drown, and that terrible, poisoned part of me was pleased.”
He’s crying in earnest now, though he fights to hold it back. I reach out to him, feeling sick, thinking of the cold, lightless silence at the bottom of the lake.
“Rowan.” I wrap my arms around him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He struggles for a moment, trying to move away, then he relents and leans against me. “I was ready to die for Elan,” he says, the words ragged between sobs. “But in the end I just let him go.”
His hand goes to my waist and he pulls me closer, his fingers clutched into the fabric of my nightdress. He presses his face into my shoulder, and I rest my cheek against his hair. I’m almost certain he’s never let anyone comfort him like this before. His shame, his grief, is like an open wound, and I know there’s nothing I can say that will take away the hurt. So I just hold him. I hold him, and I let him cry, like he did with me in the garden.
We stay like that a long time, then he takes a deep breath and roughly wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “It wasn’t a lie when I said everything you’ve heard about me is true. My family, they’re all dead because of me. Even if it wasn’t by my hand, I still killed them.”
“No. You made a mistake, a terrible mistake.”
“How can you be so kind after what I’ve done, Violeta? When I’m to blame for the Corruption?”
“That night in the garden, when I told you how I’d traded my magic for Arien, you understood me immediately.” I remember his words. There’s no fault in what you did. “You were afraid. You wanted to protect your brother. I would have done exactly the same.”
Rowan is a monster. He’s put all of us, especially Arien, in terrible danger. But I can’t hate him for it. Because when I look at him, all I can see are my own choices. I have been in those same shadows. I have faced that same darkness.
And I would go there again if it meant everyone I care about would be safe.
I brush back a loose fall of hair from his tear-streaked face, then run my fingers across his scars. His brow, his jaw, the edge of his mouth. He leans his cheek against my palm. The gesture calls to something buried far within me. Hurt and want, all mixed together. I can feel my heart pressed hard against the inside of my chest.
“I’m sorry.” His voice is a newly tender bruise. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
He lies back onto the bed. He looks up at me, sad and shy, a hesitant invitation in his silence. I stretch out beside him and he tucks the quilts over me as we settle together. Neither of us move for a long, drawn-out moment.
“Leta.” He breathes my name and reaches to me. He takes my hand. He bends to my wrist, to the place where I’m marked by the sigil. Then—so slowly that it aches—he brushes a kiss across my skin. It’s the barest touch, but it echoes through me with liquid heat.
I gasp. A soft note that turns to a whimper. I’m pleading, though I don’t know for what.
I’ve never wanted this before, to be so close to another person. Sometimes, in the cottage, in the dark, I’d curl up far down beneath my quilts and trace my fingers against my skin. But I never pictured, never wanted someone else there. Following the paths I made in the hidden corners of my body.
And now, here with Rowan, I’m not sure how to find words for what I want from him. He lost his parents to the cruelty of the Lord Under, then stood powerless as his brother died. How can I ask him for this, to care for me, to let me in?
I reach out, tentative, uncertain, and draw him closer. He starts to stroke my hair, following the length of it down to the curve of my shoulder. His fingers are hot on the bare skin above the ribboned collar of my nightdress. My breath comes loose in a desperate sigh. Sparks of magic light from my hands. They drift upward and glimmer over us for a heartbeat, gone by the time I’ve blinked.
He leans over me. His skin smells of the same lavender soap that I use. And something else. Spice and honey. Burnt sugar. Black tea.
I put my hand on his chest, above the unlaced collar of his shirt, then trail my fingers upward. I touch the scars on his throat, the same way I did in the garden. He shivers, but doesn’t pull away.
Everything between us feels strange and new and fragile. But I know with absolute surety that I want to protect him, whatever it takes.
I want to mend the Corruption on my own.
I want to be strong enough to ensure no one I love is hurt, ever again.
“Rowan.” I whisper his name against his cheek. “I’m going to find a way to fix all of this.”
He draws back from me warily. “What do you mean?”
I realize I’ve slipped and said I will mend things, rather than we.
“What are you going to do?” He takes my face between his hands so he can look into my eyes. “Leta. Whatever you’re thinking—don’t.”
With my face cupped by his scarred, rough palms, I can think of countless foolish things I want to do. In the end, I do the most terrible of them all. I lie.
“I won’t. I promise.”