Lakesedge is silent when we return from the bonfire. Arien sleeps beside me the whole ride home. I help him stumble tiredly up to his room, my arm around his waist, his head drowsing against my shoulder. When I reach the top of the stairs, I look back at Rowan, who is still in the entrance hall. “Good night.”
He smiles at me. “Good night, Leta.”
When I’m alone in my room, I lie on top of my quilts, still in my bonfire dress. Petals scatter from my hair, and I breathe in the scent of ash and pine and smoke. It’s late, almost dawn, but I can’t fall asleep. When I close my eyes, all I see is the house. How it looked when we passed beneath the iron arch of the gateway. Wrapped with ivy, tucked between the hills, one window aglow with lamplight, a curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney.
Home. Lakesedge is my home. The thought rose, unbidden. And now it’s taken root in me. Found a place between heart and rib. Home.
I want it safe. This beautiful, vine-wreathed house. My tangled, half-forgotten garden. My family. My friends. I want to protect it all.
I roll over restlessly, stretch out my hands, look down at my palms. One marked, the other plain. I have two choices, but either way I am damned. I’ll be forced to watch the Corruption take everything away unless I make a terrible bargain with the lord of the dead. Maybe the only choice I have left is how I want the hurt to happen. My eyes drift to the corner of my room, to the place where the dark water first poured down.
“What would you ask?” My voice is a whisper, and each hesitant word feels more dangerous than the one before. As though the Lord Under might come to me, right at this moment. “How much would you want?”
A sound rustles inside the walls. I blink. A breeze blows soft through my open window. The corner darkens, for just a breath. I close my eyes. I think of his hand beside my cheek. How the air grew so cold as he moved closer to me. There’s no voice, no darkness. But I already know the answer. He will take as much of me as I am willing to give. He would have me, entire.
But I don’t want to be devoured.
What can I possibly offer him that will be enough, without destroying myself?
There’s a knock on my door. I sit up and uncurl from the bed, but when I open the door and look out, there’s no one there. Arien’s door, opposite mine, is still closed. I take a step forward, and my foot brushes against something. I bend down.
On the floor, at my feet, is a book. There’s a thin length of ribbon tied around the cover, a square of card tucked beneath with only my name on it. I recognize the handwriting; it’s the same as the inscription on The Violet Woods.
“Rowan?” I look down the hallway. Why did he leave this here instead of handing it to me? I take a few steps, then pause, resting my shoulder against the wall as I untie the ribbon. The book is small, with a paper cover, and the pages are soft and well worn. Some are creased; some have the corners folded over. It has clearly been read countless times. I leaf through it gently as my eyes scan the words.
It’s not a story. The lines have a shape familiar to the written verses of litanies. But this—this is different.
Place me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm;
For love is as strong as death.
Fair as the moon,
bright as the sun,
majestic as the stars.
You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
There is no flaw in you.
Heat washes through me. None of the stories I’ve told or read have made me feel like this. These words are a spell. Like I have put my hands into the earth, felt the spark and burn of the magic that’s woven through the world. This is the same thrill I felt at the Lord Under’s words. We are connected. This is another connection, just as magic and powerful and frightening.
This light, this heat, this love—to see it all laid plain like this, in these beautiful words—it levels me. Is this how Rowan feels? When he looks at me, am I some faerie creature, all sun and moon and stars?
I close my eyes and picture the orchard, the way he kissed me in the moonlight. I want him. I want him in a way that I’d not expected to want anyone, ever. He’s under my skin. In my blood. Tangled around my heart.
I close the book and hold it tightly against my chest. I take a few steps into the hall and peer onto the empty landing, where the arched windows show a bare space of pale sky. I want to call out into the silent house, call him back to me. But I don’t.
How can we do this? How can we be together when the world is set to shatter around us?
In the kitchen, the stove is banked to a small fire, and there’s a single candle lit at the altar. I touch my fingers to the salt, then look at the icon, watch the dance of the flame against the Lady. A door scrapes open, and Clover comes out of the stillroom.
“Oh!” She holds up a jar of dried chamomile and laughs. “You couldn’t sleep, either? I never can, after the bonfire.” She moves to the stove, sets the kettle over the fire. “You want some tea?”
When I don’t answer, Clover puts down the jar and comes closer, peering at me curiously. “Are you well? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Her eyes dart nervously to the parlor doorway. “I mean, you haven’t, have you?”
I shake my head. “This was outside my room.”
I hold the book out to her. She flips it open and starts to read. Her brows rise higher with each line.
“Wait. Did Rowan give you this?” She sounds gleeful. “I knew there was something going on between you both!” She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and leans closer to the book, as if she can divine secrets from the ink and paper. Her eyes widen as she turns through the pages. “Violeta, I feel like I need to sit by the altar after reading this.”
“Oh, give it back!” I snatch the book out of her hands and shove it into my pocket. “It’s not what you think.”
“There’s no use denying it. I saw you at the bonfire. The entire village saw you. They’ll be telling stories about you for years.” She pretends to be serious. “The maiden who tamed the monster…”
“Clover, this isn’t funny.”
At the look on my face, Clover quiets and puts her hand on my arm. “You know, it’s all right if you’re not interested in him like that. Not everyone wants a romance.”
I touch my hand to my pocket and feel the crinkle of paper. “I don’t know what I want.”
“There’s never been anyone who you liked before?” She nods to my pocket, where I hid the book. “Liked in that way?”
“You mean like you and Thea?”
She demurs, tugging at her braid. “If she writes me any poetry, you’ll be the first to know about it.”
“I never expected this.” I close my eyes. Picture words from the poem strung one by one, like golden motes in the air. Heart. Moon. Darling. “I never thought I could have this.”
“I expect Rowan feels much the same. He’s not let anyone close since his family died, except for you.” Clover’s expression is serious for a moment, then she grins lasciviously. “If you want my advice, you should at least kiss him once. Anyone who reads that much romantic poetry must be worth kissing.”
“Actually…” My eyes go past her, to the kitchen doorway. Warmth creeps through me as I remember the rasp of the wood under my hands. The feel of his scars—rough—against my mouth.
“Oh, you didn’t.” She claps her hands, pleased. “You did! Well, how was it?”
“It was a mistake. He and I, we absolutely can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“Would you like me to compile a list?” I fold my arms. “In another week we’ll have to go back and fight the Corruption. We barely have an idea of how to mend it. Unless…”
“Unless you do something ridiculously stupid, which you aren’t going to do.” She levels her gaze at me. “Right?”
“Right.” I swallow hard. “And all of that danger aside, there’s the fact that he’s lost his whole family to the Lord Under, who I can summon. Who I’m connected to. I’ll hurt him, Clover. If I let him love me, he’ll only be hurt.”
She comes over to stand beside me and slips her arm around my waist. “You and Rowan are perfectly suited. Completely stubborn and self-destructive.” She squeezes me gently. “We’re all in this together, you know that, don’t you? We’re going to figure this out. The ritual, I mean.”
I nod. My throat feels tight, and I can’t trust myself to speak.
“In the meantime, if you want help with the romance, I do have some contraceptive tea. It’s on the top shelf.” She nods to the stillroom, one brow raised. “Get him to drink it, too—it works better that way.”
My face goes bright with a sudden blush. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The room has begun to feel too small, too close. Everywhere I look is laden with a second meaning. The stillroom with the jar of tea. The door, the feel of the rough wood still tingling on my palms. The book with those words like a spell.
The kettle begins to hum. When Clover goes to take it from the stove, I slip outside quietly.
My skin burns with a restless heat as I walk along the path to the garden. I’m part magic, part fire, part wretched, wrung-out want.
I want so many things, all of them impossible.
I take a pen and trace the lines of ink on my wrist from long ago, a new sigil overlaid on the spent one. Magic sparks at my fingers. I pass a cluster of brambles and bend to them, wrapping my hands around the thorns. The sigil burns. I reach, roughly, and drag out the weak threads of my power. When I’m done, I redraw the sigil, and reach again.
Again and again, each time I snag and pull at the faint, golden thread that’s knotted through me. There is no easy flow of magic here, no light or wonder. None of the rightness I feel when I press my hands to the earth in observance. This is sheer fight and force. As though the power can feel my resentment. As though it wants to hide from me. I clutch it tight. Wrench it free. I make leaves and fruit and life.
By the end of it I’m breathless. My temples are streaked with sweat, and my hands won’t stop shaking. There’s a new clutch of wildflowers on the lawn, a bower of green overhead, and the brambles are heavy with syrupy fruit. My fingers are stained with blood and blackberry juice, and my bonfire dress has streaks of dirt around the hem.
I slump down at the center of the grass, lean my back against a tree, and put my head into my hands. It’s only just morning, but the day is already hot. The air is like a stove that’s burned and crumbled to heaped coals. Sweat beads up on my cheeks and in the hollow of my throat. I feel it trickle from my neck to my spine. I can still smell the bonfire smoke laced into my skirts and my hair.
I breathe out a slow, hot breath against my stained skin. All my magic, all I have, is faint, ineffectual scraps. And it’s all the more frustrating now that I know how much more it could be. I think of what I could possibly trade to the Lord Under for that power. Weigh and measure, wonder which hurt would be the worst.
Footsteps crunch over the path. I see Rowan standing in the open gateway, at the very edge of the garden. The hood of his cloak is pulled up, and he’s a silhouette against the early sunlight.
“Rowan.” I look at him, shadowed and hidden and still, and touch my fingers to the book, the corner of it just outside my pocket. “We need to talk.”
I wait for him to respond but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. My dress rustles as I get to my feet. I brush my hands over the layers of lace and silk. They shift, cream, silver, gold. “You saw my life, before I came here. There was no place in it for something like this. I never imagined that might change.” I falter. He still hasn’t moved, and his silence is unsettling. “I never thought I’d want to be close to anyone, until I got to know you.”
I take a breath, trying to cool myself. I’m feverish all over. I tip back my head and sigh into the branches above. “I care for you. But we can’t do this. We can’t be together.” I take a hesitant step closer, trying to see his face. “You have to realize it’s impossible.”
My voice cracks on the words. But it’s the truth. There’s no place for this, for us. Not here, not now. When I picture what I want, there are two images overlaid. There’s Rowan and me in the orchard in the moonlight. He reaches to me, his fingers trail over my petaled hair, and I step into his arms.
And then there’s me alone at the shore of the lake, my hands pressed to the earth, the ground mended, the poison gone, everyone safe.
I want them both, each as much as the other. But they don’t fit together. Because in all the visions I have of myself where I’m strong and protective, I am alone.
Finally, Rowan crosses the path toward me, slow, and I brace myself for his response.
“I’m sorry,” he says at last. His voice sounds strange. “It’s too late now.”
Then he pushes back the hood of his cloak. His hair is loosened; the dark waves spill around his shoulders. His face is expressionless. And his eyes—his eyes are bloodshot. Crimson. Beneath his boots, the ground is shadowed. No, not shadowed. Wet. Corrupted.
I stagger back and cling to the tree behind me, trying to steady myself.
“Rowan?” Our eyes meet, but he is not there. “Rowan, you have to make it stop.”
He comes toward me, black water pooling beneath him, strands of darkness spilling across the lawn and through the brambles. Piece by piece the garden turns ruined. Leaves dissolve into dust; fruit withers. The air smells of ash and sour-sweet decay.
The ground begins to unpeel. A wound splits the center of the lawn. Beneath my palm, the bark turns rough. Charred.
All around, I hear the groan and sigh of the trees and plants being poisoned and destroyed. There’s a heavy crash as a branch tumbles to the ground. Rowan watches it, blank and still and not him; it’s not him anymore. I take a breath. I force myself to go forward. My boots sink into the mud, and it’s so cold.
I close the distance between us and put my hands around his face so he is forced to look at me. I bite out each word, hard and clear. “Make. It. Stop.”
He smiles at me, and his teeth are sharp. “No.”
Threads of poison twine across his skin. The scars at his throat are raised and raw and dark. I think of what he told me—how he made the Corruption, how the darkness went inside him and poisoned him. All this time, I thought it would kill him. That the end point of this would be his death, and the volatile danger of this magic would spread unchecked.
But now as we stand on the blackened ground, his face in my hands, his eyes bright with blood, I realize the truth.
It’s not going to kill him.
It’s going to ruin him.
The Corruption wants to devour and devour and devour. It will take him over until all that I know and love of him is destroyed. He won’t be dead, but he’ll be consumed, entire. Unless I can draw him back.
I take hold of his shoulders and shake him, hard. He barely flinches.
“Fight it.” I tell him. “You have to—”
I let out a cry as Rowan grabs a handful of my hair, winds it around his wrist, and pulls. The pain is sharp, awful; it steals my breath. I knot my hands into his cloak. At first I think I’ll push him back, away from me. Instead, I drag him closer until his face is only a breath from mine.
I kiss him.
He tastes of the lake: silt and salt and the copper of old, dark blood. Of water and leaves and stolen things. He kisses me as if he wants to devour me. I kiss him back. Fiercely, desperately, as if this could solve everything.
He makes a sharp, wretched sound against my mouth. The monster, the boy, the monster. My skin burns with magic and heat and longing. He drags his hand down my body, rib by rib, until he reaches my waist. Then his fingers dig hard against me, tight enough to bruise.
All around us the ground churns and splits as the poison spreads farther through the garden. I wrench myself free. Rowan’s teeth cut against my lip as I pull back. I lick away the blood and we stare at each other, inches apart, our breaths stuttering. The taste of the lake is on my tongue, and my hair is still knotted around his clenched fist. Lines of poison wreathe his throat, there, gone, there again.
Rowan looks at me, and for a moment he’s returned to himself. His gold-flecked eyes are full of tender heat. Wary and confused and afraid and human.
“Leta.” Even now, tinged with ruin, my name from him is still like magic. “Leta, I—”
He blinks. Blackened water trails, like tears, from his eyes.
“Rowan.” My heart beats out a sharp, frantic rhythm against my ribs. “Please.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t.”
This has to stop. He has to stop.
I take hold of him and force him closer. He staggers forward. I kiss him again, swallowing down the taste of poison and blood and lake. And as he kisses me back, I run my hands swiftly over him, searching through his cloak, his pockets, until I find his knife. The silver-sharp blade is tucked neatly into the handle.
His mouth moves from my cheek, to my ear, to my throat. I burn with waiting as I’m held captive by the path he traces, pinpoints on my skin. He pulls at the collar of my dress, baring the curve between my neck and my shoulder. He kisses me there roughly, and desire floods through me in a sudden rush. He’s half-lost to the shadows; he’s ruined and wrong. He’s a monster, yet I want him still.
I have to make him stop.
I have the knife clutched in my hand. My fingers shake as I unfold it. Rowan sees the blade and makes a low, feral sound, too cruel to be a laugh. “Leta. It can’t be stopped.”
“It can.” I wrench the laces at his cuff until they’re undone, then push back his sleeve. Try not to think more than one step ahead. His skin. The blade. A cut.
I can’t do this. I have to.
I grab his wrist tightly, but his skin, his arms, his blood—all of the cuts have reopened. And his blood is dark. Black as ink. Lake water streams from him, from his countless, impossible wounds.
Rowan has no blood left to pay the tithe to the Corruption.
He is the Corruption.
The knife slips from my fingers and lands dully on the softened ground. I reach for him, the crescent on my palm throbbing with pain, and put my hand against his cheek. His eyes flutter closed, and he leans into my touch, breathing out a long, pained breath. It sounds full of thorns.
I kiss him. The sigils on my wrist burn. I feel the flare of my faint, weak magic gather in my palms. I picture a thread, knotted around my ribs, tied to his heart. Think of warmth and summer and seeds and flowers. I search desperately for Rowan, for the boy imprisoned in this creature of mud and poison. I know he’s still there beneath the darkness. I reach for him. And for the barest moment, I catch hold. But then I feel him slip and slip and slip.
I try to hold on, but he falls away.
Beneath us, the Corruption spreads. The brambles and flowers and trees are a blackened ruin. The mud slithers around my feet. It all feels so hungry.
“Rowan.” I touch my fingers gently to his cheek. “It will hurt everyone. Florence, Clover, Arien. It will hurt me. You have to make it stop.”
He regards me coldly with his crimson eyes, his skin laced with ever-moving shadows. When he speaks, his voice is the lake. A wash. A hiss. A rush of waves and tide.
“Let them all drown.”