My magic wasn’t enough to free him. I raise my hands, but only a few bare sparks rise from my palms. The sigils on my arms are burned clear. I’m a candle, guttered out.
Rowan comes toward me. I go still, but when he reaches me, I shove him as hard as I can. Stunned, he staggers back against the ruined tree. His shoulder hits against the trunk. A scatter of ashen leaves shakes loose around us. I turn and I run.
“Leta.” He calls after me with the voice that is no longer his voice. It’s a floodwater sound. Swift and brutal. “Leta, Leta, Leta.”
I hear the crush of his feet behind me. He doesn’t run but takes even, measured steps. He knows, and I know, there’s no way to stop this. Fast or slow, I’ll still be overtaken.
I race across the lawn, trip my way up the kitchen steps, and go back into the house. Clover is at the table, drinking her tea as she pages through her notebook, when I burst into the room, panting.
Her eyes widen. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I—Rowan, he—” I fling my arm toward the still-open door. “He’s changed.”
Clover shoves back her chair and jumps to her feet. Her cup tips over, spilling chamomile tea across the floor. She looks past me, out into the garden, and sees the ground, the spread of darkness. She sees Rowan approaching, the Corruption spilled beneath him.
“No.” Her face pales in horrified realization. “Oh no.”
“Go and wake Arien,” I tell her. “There must be some way to stop Rowan, or at least hold him back.”
She nods, her mouth drawn into a resolute line. As she races past me, she gestures to my wrist. “The sigil, the one we used at the ritual.”
I snatch up her pen from the tabletop, push back my sleeve, and hurriedly trace over the lines for the spell I used to help focus Arien’s shadows. I blow a quick breath over the ink to help it dry. Outside, Rowan has reached the edge of the lawn, near the altar.
I hear the heavy thud of Clover’s hurried footsteps in the hallway above. Her voice, raised, as she calls out for Arien to wake up. They come back down the stairs together, Arien barefoot with tangled hair, hurriedly tucking his shirt into his trousers.
“The Corruption—It wasn’t supposed to do this,” Arien says. He scrubs his face, then quickly rolls up his sleeves to inscribe his arms. He passes the pen to Clover so she can sketch a hasty sigil on her wrist.
Only a moment has passed, but I feel as though I’ve stood here forever with the taste of poison in my mouth and the throb of bruised, desperate kisses on my skin.
We rush outside. Rowan comes toward me—faster now, eager—his eyes intent. He raises a hand, and strands of oil-slick liquid drip from his palms. Not blood. Lake water pours from his opened scars. He’s at the center of the lawn, at the center of the sigil we carved for practice. He crouches down and drags his fingers across the earth. It begins to split. The charred marks fill with mud. The ground slithers and writhes.
I see the next moments unfold before me, like a series of blinks. He’ll close the distance between us. Wrap his hand over my mouth. He’ll smear the poison across my skin. I’ll swallow it down, and then he’ll do the same to Arien and Clover. He’ll take us all to the lake. And meanwhile the wound will open beneath us, spreading to the garden, the house, the village, beyond.
I run forward and throw myself against him with the full force of my desperate strength. He falls; we crash together onto the mud, he on his back and me sprawled over his chest. I hold him down, putting all of my weight onto him: my knees on his shoulders, my hands at his throat. His fingers grip into my thighs, sharp and relentless. He glares up at me. Dark and cold and not him, not him at all anymore.
“Keep him still!” Clover shouts. She and Arien kneel down swiftly beside us. Shadows fill the air, illuminated by bursts of golden light. Arien tries to steady his magic, but it spills loose, uncontrolled, stinging against my skin. But we’ve done this; we’ve done this before. We’ve faced the Corruption. Never mind that we haven’t stopped it. Never mind that this is no poisoned ground but Rowan. This has to work, it has to—because if it doesn’t, there’s only one other choice.
I slip my hand free and wrap it around Arien’s wrist. My power is faint and small and hard to grasp. It’s not enough. It’s never been enough. I bite my lip and suck in a pained breath. Finally, I manage to catch hold of my magic. It sparks, and Arien pulls the shadows taut. The cloud narrows into thread-fine strands lit by Clover’s power. Together, we weave the spell into a latticework that unfolds around us.
Rowan snarls as the magic binds him. He fights me. I feel the grind of bone and muscle and tendon in his shoulders as I struggle to keep him still.
“Violeta.” He hisses through clenched teeth. His mouth is black. Ink stained. “The lake will claim you. It will claim everyone.”
“No,” Arien snaps. He curls his fingers, and more strands of shadows draw across Rowan’s throat. “It won’t.”
We fight him. Arien and Clover and me. Their power. My power. Light and dark and the scraps of my magic. Rowan is snared. The threads of shadow tighten and cut into his skin. He cries out, hurt and furious. And I realize, horrified, that maybe he’s so far gone that destroying the Corruption will destroy him, too.
“You can’t stop this,” he snarls, as if he senses my thoughts. “It’s too late.”
Clover shoves her palms flat against his chest and unleashes a flare of light against him. He jolts, then his grip on my thighs slackens. He sinks back against the ground. His eyes close. Everything goes hauntingly still.
I shout in panic. “Is he—?”
“Of course not.” Clover puts her fingers against his throat and checks his pulse. “He’s not dead. Just unconscious.”
I take hold of his hand, trembling. His fingers are blackened, the skin slick. At his wrist, the scars still bleed dark. I lower his arm against the ground, so the wound is on the earth. I wait for the Corruption to take its tithe from him, the same way it has, all the times before.
But it doesn’t.
There’s no movement. Everything is silent. Then the ground gives an abrupt, remorseless heave. From the gate of the garden, the ground splits open. It tears and tears, spreading across the lawn toward the tree. The Corruption reaches the altar, slithering over the candles and around the edges of the frame. The Lady is framed in poison, her golden brilliance hung at the center of the dark.
“He has no blood to pay it,” I say numbly. “We can’t make it stop.”
I know now that the ritual will fail. There’s only ever been one way to fix this. There’s only ever been one choice.
“Can you hold him on your own?” I look at Arien. “Keep him bound?”
He shakes his head, his teeth dug hard into his lip as he struggles to keep Rowan subdued. “I can’t, not without your help. Leta, I need you. You know I can’t do it alone.”
“You have to.” I squeeze his wrist. “You can do this; I know you can.”
I slip my hand free, slowly, one finger at a time. When there’s space between us, I feel my power unfasten from the strands of his magic. His brows knit and his teeth clench. The tightly woven strands begin to waver. Clover puts her hands down onto the ground. She sends a new wash of light beneath the shadows. They shiver, then tighten. “That’s right, Arien. Hold it steady.”
Arien nods, but all his effort is tensed toward the magic as he fights for control. It blurs and trembles for a moment, but then it holds.
I get to my feet, my heart pounding.
“Wait!” Clover cries. “Where are you going?”
“Just hold him.” I call, already running toward the house.
I run through the kitchen. Snatch a pomegranate from my basket, still on the benchtop. Go to the pantry for the knife. Then I run to the parlor. It’s dim, the curtains drawn, the scent of candle smoke still in the air. I kneel down at the altar, where the dual icon looms over me. I give one hard slice of the blade; it cuts through the fruit and into my flesh. Blood wells up, mingles with ruby nectar, and I smear my palm across the floor in a determined swipe.
I find a sparklight and click it against the candles. They flare, turning the room to honey. I press my hand against the floor, fresh blood over old blood.
I close my eyes and I call.
I could pretend I’m desperate and afraid, but I’m not. I feel the hollowed-out space where my small remnants of magic sleep. Picture it alight and brilliant. I’m not afraid at all.
If I think it hard enough—that I’ve been forced, that I had no choice—then I can push aside the terrible part of me that is glad to be here: my blood at the altar, a promise ready on my tongue. The part of me that has longed and hungered for this.
Please. Please. Please.
The air stays bright and silent. No shadows wash the room. No voice whispers my name.
I call, but the Lord Under doesn’t answer me.
I bow forward until my forehead touches the floor and sigh out a hard breath. There’s a faint tremble through the room. It rattles the window glass and resounds through the walls. Distantly, I can hear the groaning of the ground as the Corruption spreads.
“I have to make it stop,” I whisper to the altar. “I need your help.”
I look down at my hands. Mud smeared and bloodstained and empty. Beneath the icon, the cut pomegranate is a torn-open heart. The seeds gleam wetly in the candlelight. I remember the Lord Under’s words to me when I last summoned him. It will take more than blood and fruit. I want him. I want his help. But he won’t come unless I have something to offer him first.
All the bravery I felt a moment before melts away. I’m five years old again. Lost in the shadow-limned forest. And just like then, right now I want someone bigger than me, crueler and stronger. Someone to hold my hand and lead me through the dark. I think of how alone I felt. Those last desperate, impossible thoughts I had before the Lord Under appeared.
I want my quilt and honey tea and firelight. I want my mother.
The thought catches. Like a snagged thread that slowly begins to unravel. My mother my mother my mother. When I first told Arien my stories, it was her voice that I heard. When I first used my magic in the garden, it was my father’s hands I felt. My mother, my father. All this time I’ve clung to my memories of them, comforted myself with the knowledge that while they were gone, they weren’t lost. They’ve always been with me, within me.
I look up at the altar. The silhouette of the Lord Under is blurred by my tears.
“I know what I can give you.” A sob thickens my voice, but I don’t waver. I have no doubt in this. “I’m ready to make our exchange.”
The air turns to mist. Droplets fall from the ceiling; then water streams down the walls and over the floor as the light starts to dim. There’s a sound like a sigh, like the rise of a tide, and all other noise is closed out. I’m here, underwater, as the Lord Under comes through the dark.
I look up from where I’m kneeling on the floor. He stands over me, tall. The shrouded hem of his cloak spills into the darkness like a pool of ink. I know him now. His face, his voice, his pale hair, his pale eyes. His sharp teeth bared in an even sharper smile. It’s still such a shock that I can see him in this way, that I can draw him out of the darkness to look on his face and know him. Lord of souls. Lord of the dead.
“Violeta.” My name in his mouth is part threat, part caress. “What do you have for me?”
Once done, this can’t be undone. Once I speak, there will be no way to turn back. I take a breath. Let the words fall before I can change my mind.
“My family.” I close my eyes as the memories come. My mother. My father. Stories and firelight and our cottage surrounded by flowers. I’ve held them and held them. Given them strength each time I told Arien a story. Each time I felt the ghost of my mother’s touch on my shoulder. Each time I cast a spell and saw my father with his hands in the earth. I kept them alight, kept them alive, all I have of the family who died and were burned to ash after the winter fever.
And now, I’ll let them go.
“My memories of my family. I’ll give them to you for the power to save Rowan now, and to mend the Corruption at the next ritual.”
It has to be this. The Corruption began when Rowan lost his family. His family, my family, my power.
It has to be this. It could only ever be this.
The Lord Under lowers himself down, until he kneels before me. “This was more than we agreed upon. I offered my help—and your power—for the next ritual only.”
“Rowan is going to hurt us, all of us.” I pause, forcing myself not to beg, to plead. “It can’t wait until the full moon.”
“Then you’ll need to give me something more.”
My mind races as I stare up at him. What do I have that is more than the memories of my family that I’ve treasured all this time? I think of my parents, burned and gone—but not lost. The mourning litany speaks of how families will be reunited after death, and that’s what I’ve always believed.
“What happens after death?” I ask the Lord Under. “My family—when I die, will I remember them and be with them in the world Below?”
His mouth curves into the barest hint of a smile. “You will.”
“Then take that, too.” I try to hold back my tears, but they spill free. “I’ll give up my family to you forever. I’ll forget them in my world and in yours. Even when I die, I won’t remember them.”
The Lord Under draws in a deep, slow breath as he considers my offer. He watches me with a gaze that is vast and endless and entirely inhuman. Did I expect him to look softer? To be sorry? There is none of that. Only a deep, endless hunger.
Finally, he nods. “I will give you a spell to cast on Rowan that will work only once. Your full power will come on the next moon, and it will last until sunrise touches the shore on the following day. In exchange, you’ll forget your father and your mother. You’ll be without them, always. Alone even in death.”
“Yes. That’s my trade.”
He lifts a hand. “This will hurt. In more ways than one.”
Each piece of me cries out to undo this, to run, but there is nowhere for me to go. I am right where I need to be.
His claws scrape through the air above my face. My eyes are still open, but everything turns dark. Water rushes down the walls, and the room fills with mud, with black water, with shadows that I feel, sharp, inside my lungs. His darkness tastes the same as Arien’s magic. Salt and ash and smoke. It hurts.
As the Lord Under’s shadows tear through me, he starts to whisper. “They will be gone, forever. And when the time comes, and Arien dies, he’ll be lost to you, too. Your soul will sleep alone in the world Below.”
A sob comes out of my mouth at his words, but I bite down on the sound, hold it back. I have to do this. I choose to do this.
His magic is cold, a steel-sharp swath that scrapes through my body. My heart. My bones. The inside of my skull. A swift, clean slice that severs everything. Alone forever, even in death. I see a single, final image: my father, the way he smiled as his magic filled the earth in our garden.
Then it’s gone.
It’s all gone.
Tears stain the corners of my eyes when I blink them open. In place of my memories there is only a blank space, a strange, hollow feeling. Like my hands were closed tenderly around some precious thing, and now I’ve found them empty. When I try to remember my family—the shape of their faces, their names—there’s an absence, and it aches.
My heart is pounding, and my breath comes in short, sharp gasps. “It still hurts. I’ve forgotten them. Why does it still hurt?”
The Lord Under touches his claws to his mouth. Swallows down my pain and my fear and my memories the way he once ate fruit and blood. “You’ve forgotten them, but the hurt won’t go—it won’t heal over.”
Another tremor shakes the room, and I go tense and still, straining to hear the sounds outside.
I need to go back, but first I need to be sure of my power. “We have our trade. Say it.”
“We have our trade. Hold out your hand.”
I quickly reach my hand toward him. He leans forward, until there’s almost no distance between us. The cold of his breath burns across my cheeks.
He traces his claws over my heartline.
Though I can’t feel his touch, the power hits me all at once. Sudden and all encompassing, like a wave that’s washed over me. It’s cold. It’s hot. My skin burns and turns to ice. The world evaporates into a heady rush of light and heat. I am magic. I am power. It’s all I tasted before in those fleeting glimpses.
But better, but worse, because now it is mine.
Light blooms at my palms, and the room is illuminated in crystalline brilliance. Power. My power. The power I’ll have on the next full moon. The Lord Under watches me, and the flare of magic dances in his pale eyes. For just one, ruinous moment, I wish he could touch me. I want to feel his cold, clawed hand on my cheek, on my hair.
I let the power burn through me. Let it burn away all the helplessness and uncertainty in one last brilliant flare before it dims, settling back into the barest glimmer. I want to be safe at Lakesedge. I refuse to let the life I’ve found here be destroyed, not now. I won’t let it be taken from me. With this bargain I can finally protect everyone—and everything—that I care about.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.” His mouth curves into a hard, pleased smile. I’m not sure what pleases him most. My awe over the power or the hurt I’ve paid to gain it. I push away the thought. Stare at the light until my vision blurs and refuse to think of what it’s cost me.
“Now.” I shiver as aftershocks of the power flicker through my body. “Tell me what I need to do to save Rowan.”
“You will need a spell. Listen carefully. Blood. Salt. Iron. Silt. Mud.” He looks at my wrist, where the sigils are drawn. “Mark it on both of you. The same sigil. That will hold him until the full moon.”
“And the rest…?”
“Come to the lake for the ritual, as you did before. Your power will be enough to cast the spell.” He flexes his fingers open and closed, mimicking the gestures that I’ve seen Clover make when she draws out her magic.
“You will give me enough power to mend it. Alone.”
“Alone,” he confirms. Then he looks to my hands. “Shall I heal your cuts?”
I scramble to my feet and scrub my bloodied palms against my skirts. “No. Rowan needs me. And I can’t afford any more of your help.”
He smiles coldly. “Best of luck with your monster and your ritual, my Violet in the woods.”
The shadows thin, and the light comes back into the room. This is the last time I’ll see him. I’ll have no need to summon him again. The realization comes with a tiny pang of sadness that I try very hard to ignore.
As soon as he fades, I run through the kitchen into the stillroom. On a shelf beneath the jars of tea and garlands of dried flowers is a stack of notebooks. I grab the one I’ve used in lessons and flip through quickly, searching for the right symbols. But as I rifle through the pages, I realize I have no idea how to combine the symbols into a spell.
I hurriedly shove the notebook into my pocket and rush back outside to Arien and Clover. After the darkened house, the sunlight is disorienting. I blink and blink until my vision comes clear. Rowan is still trapped beneath the shadows. He’s awake again, now, fighting against the magic as it cuts into his skin. The ground has torn open all around them.
Arien holds the shadows taut, his teeth set, his eyes closed in a grimace. When he hears me coming, he looks up. At first, the magic holds, and holds, but then it snaps. Rowan tears loose, reaching his hand out swiftly to grab Arien’s throat. They fall down together into a tangle of magic and shadows.
“No!” I rush across the ruined lawn. “Rowan, don’t hurt him!”
My boots sink into the churned mud. The blackened earth seethes and boils around us. It’s angry. It’s hungry. Clover casts a burst of light as Arien struggles against Rowan. Darkness spills from his palms, and they’re lost in a cloud of uncontrolled magic.
I fall to my knees and grab for Arien’s wrist. Send my power into him. The strands weave tight, and Rowan is caught again, writhing furiously beneath the snare of shadows. Roughly, I reach into my pocket, then shove the crumpled notebook into Clover’s hands.
“Blood. Salt. Iron. Silt. Mud,” I tell her. She looks at me, confused, but I keep repeating over and over the spell the Lord Under gave me, until the words lose meaning. “Show me how to mark it.”
I bare my arm, but she shakes her head. “This isn’t even a spell. These symbols don’t mean anything. It makes no sense.”
“You have no idea how little sense this makes. Please. It will work, I promise. Do it, Clover, or he’ll be lost.”
She sets her pen to the page and quickly sketches the spell. I copy it onto my wrist, the lines hurried and unsteady, then grasp Rowan’s arm. He’s caught so tightly in the magic that he can’t move, but he glares at me, feral and vicious, when I shove back his sleeve. Tendrils of Corruption drip between his clenched fingers.
“Why are you marking him?” Clover looks at me, her face pale. “Where exactly did you get this spell?”
“Leta,” Arien breathes, horrified. “You didn’t.”
“We can argue about this after—” I gesture to Rowan and the Corrupted ground. “After we’re done with this.”
Rowan snarls as I hastily write the spell on his wrist between the reopened scars. Then I take hold of his hand and press my palm to his palm, our skin slick with mud and blood. I weave my fingers through his. I close my eyes. I reach.
My power is a low simmer with the feel of a larger flame far beneath it, the strength that waits for the full moon. But when I call my magic, there’s no light, or flowers, or warmth. There’s an awful, hollow emptiness, a terrible feeling of absence. I’m all alone, on an ashen field. The thread of my power winds around me, and it’s red, red as blood. I choke back a sob as the overwhelming loneliness rises up, aching, a wound.
My skin burns, and the sigil on my wrist ignites. The magic comes to me, swift and fast and strong. Sparks scatter through the air, the world turns to fire, but I am cold, so cold. It hurts so much, knowing what I’ve given up to do this, the price I’ve paid for this power.
I grip Rowan’s hand. Put my other hand to the earth, the way I would for observance. But as my fingers sink into the softened mud, there’s no light or glow, none of the warm current of magic that flows through the world. I feel the Corruption. The poison. The endless hunger. The wound, the imbalance that Clover spoke of all those nights ago. And I know I can’t mend it—not here, not now.
But with this spell, I can make it quiet.
Magic fills me—my heart, my lungs, my skin. It hurts. I feel it blister at my palms, spark from my fingertips. I see myself, alone, only ash and decay and darkness all around me.
“Lie still,” I tell it. “Be quiet.”
The ground gives a final shudder. Arien and Clover watch, wide eyed, as the tremors stop.
“It heard you.” Arien’s whisper hangs between terror and awe.
I pull my hand from the mud and put it against Rowan’s chest. He looks at me—crimson eyed and poisoned and gone—and draws in a sharp breath. I feel the tremor of his heartbeat. I lean close and bury my face into the curve of his neck. I’m shivering, feverish; my bones are fire. Light flares and everything glows. I try to push away the ache and emptiness, remember a time when my magic was gold and sun and wonder. Slowly, the thread unspools between us. I can do this. I can save him.
“Lie still,” I breathe across his skin; the same words I used on the Corruption. “Be quiet.”
Rowan flinches as the sigil flares like a sparklight set to lamp oil. The thread of my power is knotted around my ribs, my heart; the other end is tied to him. I take a breath. He takes a breath. He sighs it out. My own breath slows, matching his, as though the sigh has passed between us. He looks at me, and his eyes blink clear. Under my palm, I feel the air move through his lungs. There’s no hiss or rush of lake water.
My temples thud with a headache, and my hands begin to tremble uncontrollably. A hot stripe of blood drips from my nose and across my mouth. I wipe it away quickly, but more comes.
I try to draw back the power. But instead it floods all around me. The thread between us winds tighter, tighter, until it aches. The sigil burns. My skin burns.
The world turns white.
I close my eyes and I let go.