In the garden, everything has gone to seed and flower. The stems of plants are crisped to air-light dryness. I move through the tangled orchard, a basket in my arms.
Trees and brambles make a screen behind me as I follow the path, and soon I’m alone. It’s quiet, with no sound except for my footsteps crunching over the gravel, then soft over bare earth.
At the very end of the path, the leafless, skeletal remains of two trees weave together into a bower, perhaps the tree house where Elan once daydreamed he and Rowan would live. I duck beneath the arch of branches. Inside, it’s cooler, and the latticework of wood shades me from the early sun. I sit down on the ground, the dry earth covered by a scatter of grass and twigs, and curl my hands around the nearest trunk.
I reach for my power, trying to picture the magic coiled in my chest and strung across my skin. It’s still a fight to draw it out. It feels as though I’ve put my hands into a dense fog to search for a single tiny seed. It slips and slips and slips, always just past my outstretched fingers. A metallic taste fills my mouth, and sweat streaks my temples.
I remember my father in our garden, the sparks of his magic over stems and leaves and flowers. I try to let that same bright warmth bloom from my own fingers.
I open my eyes to a world blotched white, with spots of color that dance and shift as I try to steady myself. I wipe the sweat from my face.
My power is still faint, but it was enough. For this, it was enough.
The bower above me is now verdant with delicate leaves. The branches hang low, heavy with fruit: round, ripe pomegranates. I reach for one large enough to fill my cupped palms and trace my fingers over the smooth, taut surface. When I tap the crimson-colored skin, a hollow softness resounds from inside.
I put the pomegranate gently into my basket, then reach for another. One by one, each fruit I’ve picked marks a beat of time. The morning sun tracks slowly across the sky. A sharp, needle-fine twig scrapes against the inside of my wrist. I rub my fingers against the welt and think of the promise I made to Rowan in the darkness. I’ll fix this.
We spent the whole night together, curled up into a crescent. His arm around my waist, his breath against my cheek. I slipped from his room early while all the house was still asleep and went back to my room to change. I put on a new lace dress and pinned up my hair, and then, before I came here, I looked in on Arien.
He was in bed, sleeping fitfully, his wounded arms tucked close against him. With his eyes closed he looked small and young and soft. And whatever hesitation I’d had until then about my plan, it was all gone in that moment.
Back inside, I tiptoe through the kitchen and find the sharp knife that Florence keeps on the topmost shelf of the pantry. I leave my basket on the table, take one pomegranate, and slip it into the pocket of my dress. The weight of the fruit bumps against me through my skirts, and I feel … anchored.
In the parlor, the air is dim. A sliver of light cuts through the drawn curtains. The air smells of wax and dust and candle smoke. It’s the first time I’ve been back since the night I was here with Rowan, the first time I’ve come past the closed door and not turned my face away.
I go over to the altar and look at the dual icon. The Lady, outlined in gold. The Lord Under, a darkened silhouette. I touch a sparklight to the bank of candles, one by one. Soon the room glows with golden light, and the flames paint movement on the lower half of the icon. On the floor beneath, there’s a faint, faded mark where Rowan once pressed his bloodied palms.
After what he told me, I should be afraid. But somehow—I think this is different. What passed between the Lord Under and me, that night in the woods at midwinter, it’s left a bond between us. I tried to forget him. I tried not to know him. I walked far from the border of death, and yet something drew him back to me when I came to Lakesedge. I am alive, but I can see him and speak with him.
And I think I can summon him.
I kneel down before the altar.
I take out the knife.
It’s precarious, to cut the pomegranate. The skin is hard. The knife slips before it slices through with a swift, wet sound. The fruit cleaves open. Two neat halves. Inside it glistens red and bright, like a heart filled with seeds. There’s a mark on the floorboards from the blade. I lick my thumb and scrub at it, but it can’t be wiped away.
I set the opened halves of the carved-up fruit on the altar.
And then I put the knife against my palm. My fingers shake. The blade scrapes my skin, but it’s not enough to draw blood. I close my eyes, picturing how easily Rowan cuts himself, without any hesitation. I tighten my grip on the handle, take a breath, and drive the blade deep. The pain sears through me; blood wells in my hand like it’s been poured there.
I turn my hand and press it against the floor.
The air shivers, and the honey-warm haze of the room turns to ice. From far off comes a steady drip drip drip. I look up, my heartbeat spiking, as water beads across the ceiling and begins to trickle over the walls. Slow at first, the droplets fine as mist. Then it changes, becoming swifter, darker. I back away as the oily, ink-black liquid pours down. It covers the floor in an opaque wash that spills across my feet. I flinch. The cold of it runs all through my body.
And then I hear a familiar whisper.
Violeta.
The water begins to ripple. A shape rises from the center of the darkness. I’m frozen in place as the Lord Under steps out of the shadows and comes toward me.
The light goes through him until he shimmers, a pale smear against the gloom. He’s cloaked in a heavy robe that hangs loosely over his dark, close-fitting clothes. His shirt is fastened with silver buckles from his throat to his waist. A crown of driftwood circles his long, pale hair. At the floor, his form dissipates, the robe becoming shapeless mist, another part of the water.
At first his features blur and fracture. His mouth splits as he smiles until there are two sets of sharp teeth, one interlaid with the other. Slashes in the sides of his throat open and close in time with his breath.
I want to look away, but I can’t. I’m pinned by the horror of him. He’s terrible and beautiful and otherworldly. He is something I am not meant to see.
Then—it all settles. The cuts on his throat close over into thin, translucent lines; his mouth becomes one mouth, still curved into a smile.
He is here. Truly here.
“Hello, Violeta.” Even his voice is stronger, more real. He looks at the altar, at the offering, then at the floor, smeared with my blood. “So, you’ve called me.”
He is all I feared. He’s worse, because while I expected the fear, the horror, I didn’t expect his cold, stark beauty. The Lord Under is more than an opposite half to the Lady’s golden brilliance. He’s the silver of a sharp-edged crescent moon.
I am lost in the cold of him.
He looks at me. He sees me. He knows me. His smile widens and turns sharp at the edges. He makes a low sound. A pleased, satisfied hum. “I almost thought you had forgotten me.”
All my apprehension, and all I’d meant to say to him, is washed away. Replaced by a single endless shiver, strong enough that I feel it over my tongue, my teeth, down the sides of my ribs.
“No. I didn’t forget you.”
“My little Violet, lost in the forest.” He holds out his own hands to me, the candlelight dancing across his opalescent claws. Warmth throbs at my palms, like a faint, far-off heartbeat.
“Our bargain changed Arien. You changed Arien.” Memories nettle at me, all we faced after the Vair Woods. “And at the ritual, I asked you to save him, but instead you hurt him.”
“I had to hurt him in order to save him. My help always comes with a price. What is it they say … Once saved from death? It leaves a mark, that brush with death. Even I can’t undo that.” He laughs coldly. “A blackened lake, a poisoned magic, a wound, a curse … a girl who can speak to a god.”
“Is that why I can see you now?”
“Yes,” he says. “We are connected. We always have been, since that midnight in the woods.”
I look at his beautiful, inhuman face, and the wrongness of it fills me with a bitten-back panic. You shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t be able to do this.
His features are clear to me now, but around the edges of his expression—a blink, a smile, a furrowed brow—is something else. Something decidedly other is still there, beyond the pale gleam of his eyes, the curve of his smile, the sharp glint of his teeth.
He is an eternal, terrible creature. And he is connected to me.
It’s confirmation of what I already guessed. But to hear him speak it leaves me cold. “Why me? Of all those you’ve saved or bargained with, why me?”
“You were so brave when you faced me. You gave up your magic so willingly to save your brother. I suspect if I’d asked your life in exchange for his, you’d have given that, too.” He touches the tips of his claws against his chin, smiling. “It made an impression, your selflessness. Your magic warmed me for a long while.”
“What about all those times when I was hurt and scared and alone? If we’re so connected, where were you then? Why did you only seek me out now?”
The Lord Under narrows the distance between us slightly. His smile is still there, still sharp and hard. For just a beat, I remember the feel of his hand on mine. How he was gentle as he led me through the woods.
“I couldn’t, until now,” he explains. “I’ve a strength here, at Lakesedge. All the lords of this estate have known me. Some have loved me, some have feared me, and every candle they’ve lit at the altar, every observance they’ve made has tended me well. When you arrived here, I was able to reach you in a way I could not before.”
“If that’s true, then why didn’t you help Rowan when he called on you? He’s been just as close to the world Below as I have. Closer. He’s lit the candles and made observance. He’s tended you with his fear.”
“I needed him in a different way than I need you.”
“What do you mean?”
His eyes narrow at me impatiently. “What is it you want, Violeta? Why did you decide to finally summon me?”
“I—You told me once that I could mend the Corruption. I came to ask you how.”
“No.” He moves closer toward me. Another wash of water trickles down from the walls. “No, that’s not what you want.”
Want. It pulls at me, that word. My eyes flutter closed. I picture myself and Arien before the night in the woods, when we had our family, when we were home. I don’t want to go back, but I want to feel that way again. Loved and warm and safe.
“I want the power you showed me.” Each word to him feels like a risk. The truth is a weight in my chest, heavy as stone. “I want enough power to keep everyone safe.”
“You have a soft heart, my Violet in the woods.”
“Better a soft heart than no heart at all.”
He smiles unkindly, not at all wounded by my words. “You want power. So do I. And there has been so much power in the fear and hurt and blood that Rowan Sylvanan has given me.”
I stare at him, numbed by horror. He’s a thing cleaved into halves. The relentless, cold creature who delights in cruelty and pain, who feeds on it. And the creature who held my hand, who cradled Arien tenderly in his arms as he showed us the way out of the dark.
“So if you want to hurt Rowan, then why did you offer to help me mend the Corruption?”
“Because,” he says simply, “I want it gone.”
“But you made it. Why can’t you just unmake it?”
“I made it?” He gives me a hard, searching look. “Has Rowan not told you the truth yet?”
“He told me everything, including what you did to him. But it’s your magic. Your darkness. You could call it back.”
“It was my magic, once. The Corruption began as a mark—the blackened lake—left from when I saved Rowan from the world Below. But he was the one who fed it blood and desperation. It’s changed, gone beyond my control. And his tithes of blood and hurt and fear are the only thing holding it back. For now.”
“You mean if he dies—”
“As things stand, it’s not a case of if, Violeta, but when.”
“When—” My voice catches. I can hardly say these terrible words. “When Rowan dies, the Corruption won’t be gone?”
“No. It will continue to spread, and it will consume your world.”
I put my hand against my mouth. A whole world like the blighted orchard near Greymere, or the grove in the wayside forest. Trees burned, the fields turned to ash, the air laced with wrongness. It’s too immense for me to even comprehend, because at the center of it all lies the horrible fact that Rowan will be gone. That his ruin will only lead to more destruction.
“It will consume your world. And it will—” He hesitates, then goes on. “It will destroy my world, too.”
A startled sound comes from me, not quite a laugh. “The Corruption is in the world Below?”
“Yes. So you see, I want it mended as much as you.”
“In that case, maybe you shouldn’t have murdered a family because a child broke a promise.” I know I shouldn’t fight him like this, but I can’t hold back my anger. “You’re the one who took it too far. So you should be the one to stop it.”
When I’m met with silence, I realize I’ve grown used to my arguments with Rowan, that I’ve almost come to enjoy the swift exchange of words, our matched tempers. In contrast, the Lord Under is immovable. I wonder, for a breath, what I’d have to do to stir him to anger. If it would even be possible. I shake my head. Why would I want to?
“If I could stop it on my own, I would. I need your help, Violeta. You have magic, and you can see me as no other can, outside the borders of death. I can’t ask this of any other alchemist. Not your friend, not your brother.”
“No, you can’t.” I’d never let him go to Clover or Arien, draw them into the dark with his whispers and promises. “If you want help, then I will be the one to give it to you.”
“Yes.” He lifts his hand, and I go still, but his fingers pause over my cheek. The air stirs, cold, on my skin. “It has to be you. I need you.”
“You need me,” I repeat. In the shadows, with the candlelit altar and the smell of ash in the air, my words sound like a litany. “You need me.”
It terrifies me, this truth, but buried beneath my fear is the glimmer of another, more hideous emotion. We are connected. There’s power in this. A wilder, more dangerous power than any magic.
“I do.” The water rises and ripples, a blackened wave rushing across the floor. The room seems to fade as the Lord Under glows brighter. White as the moon. White as bones. “And you need me. You want power.”
“I just want to keep everyone safe.”
“And what do you think power is?” With a smile, the Lord Under holds out his hand, palm upturned. Magic sparks in my chest. It sings through me. The full force of what I could have. What I will have. My whole body hums and burns. “You feel it, Violeta.”
I nod, overcome, and watch the light dance across my palms. The air glows. It reminds me—unsettlingly—of how my magic stirred that day when Rowan touched my hand.
“I’ll grant you this power to use at the ritual, on the next full moon. You’ll be able to cast the spell to mend the Corruption. Alone. Everyone will be safe.”
“That only gives me a single night.”
“That’s all you’ll need. Unless you desire more?” He grins, and I see the glint of too many teeth. There’s a hunger to him, the same dark eagerness that I’ve felt from the Corruption.
“No. One night will serve.” It’s such a short time to wield this power, but if I can cast the spell on the next full moon, it will be enough.
“Then it’s done,” he says. “All you have to do is tell me what you will give up in exchange.”
I look at him, startled by the sting of betrayal. A small, foolish part of me thought he would give this to me freely, because we’re connected, because I am special to him, because he just told me how much he needs me.
But I know, have always known, his help comes with a price. “What would you want from me?”
He laughs. “Do you really want me to set the terms? Go ahead. Promise that you’ll give me anything.”
“No,” I say quickly. “I’ll choose.”
“Go on, then.” His eyes flick to the altar. “I’ll want more than blood and fruit.”
I hesitate. What can I give him? As I search for my answer, he reaches for me, claws scraping past my cheek. My breath catches. I falter back, but he moves forward. The edge of the chaise hits the back of my knees. I collapse onto it.
The light from my magic dances over him. I can see tiny details that I missed before. The branches that wreathe his head are woven with strands of lake grass. He has delicate eyelashes, like a fringe of lichen over stone.
If he can speak to me now, really speak to me, instead of whispers in the dark, will he be able to touch me, too?
I force myself to meet his gaze. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“A pity. I like your fear. It’s very sweet.” He smiles as he runs his tongue over the points of his teeth. His hand hovers just beside my jaw. “Now tell me your offer.”
I tip back my face for one desperate moment. I feel like I’m at the lake’s edge, the water before me—deep and dark and endless. With one word, I’ll plunge beneath the surface.
When I speak, my voice is rough. “I need more time to decide.”
His hand slips past me, only a stir of air, and my breath comes loose. He can’t touch me.
Then the power that flooded me only moments ago turns dim. Back to the faint, small remnants that I had before. With the strength gone, I feel hollow. My heart gives a single, desperate thump against my ribs.
There’s a sharpness in the Lord Under’s eyes. He goes over toward the altar. Touches the pomegranate. The tips of his claws pass right through the fruit, but the inside turns black, the smooth skin charred.
“So. You want more time.” He licks the juice from the edge of his thumb. “You may have until the night before the next full moon. Do you think we can come to an arrangement by then?”
I can’t do this. And yet the answer that sticks against my tongue is a desperate yes. I swallow it back. Hardly even dare to think it. “I do.”
“Very well.” His eyes go to my hand, still smeared with blood. “Let me see your cut.”
Shakily, I stretch out my hand to him. His claws scrape through the air above my bloodied palm. A cold shiver prickles over my skin. He makes a pleased sound as the wound closes into a dark crescent, then he touches his mouth. I look away quickly as I hear him swallow. I don’t want to see it—the stains of my blood across his sharp teeth.
“Goodbye for now, Violeta.” His mouth tilts into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I hope Rowan will have enough strength to keep the Corruption quieted while you make up your mind.”
The shadows around him start to clear from black to gray. His gaze is fixed to mine as a shaft of sun cuts through him. He hangs for a moment, suspended at the center of the paling dark.
His eyes are the last thing to fade. Hard as polished stones.