I go back to Rowan as the house rests in silvered silence. He’s no longer asleep, and inside his room everything has been made tidy, the mud swept away, fresh sheets on the bed. He’s changed his clothes—soft linen trousers and a shirt with the sleeves rolled back and the lacings at the collar loosened.
He sits on the chaise, curled up, his arms on the windowsill and his face turned toward the glass. Night has fallen, and the curtains are drawn back to reveal scattered stars in the sky above the granite-sloped hills.
He turns, startled, when he hears me close the door. I cross the room in a rustle of skirts until I’m before him. He grips the tangled blankets as he gazes up at me. His skin is marked with new, freshly healed scars. All of the cuts on his skin that bled that terrible lake-water blood have closed. There are bruises all over his throat, left from the magic Arien used to hold him still.
His eyes are clear, not crimson.
“When I said you weren’t a proper monster because you had no fangs or claws, I didn’t mean it as a challenge.” I’m trying to tease him, but tears start to fall, hot, down my cheeks. “I thought you’d be lost. I’m so glad I could bring you back.”
His fingers brush over my wrist, and he touches the new sigil. He’s quiet for a long time; then he asks, “Is it gone?”
The tiny seed of hope in his voice almost undoes me. I stretch out a hand toward him and close my eyes. He breathes. I listen. It’s a quiet, open sound, no rush or hiss of water. My magic stirs, a gentle curl of power that threads between us like a question. I feel him: burnt sugar and black tea and golden sunlight. I feel the Corruption: hunger and poison and darkness.
It’s still there. Buried down farther than it was. Quieter. But there.
“No. It’s not gone. But it will be soon.”
Rowan takes my hand and holds it gently, stroking a circle against my palm with his thumb. “I know what you did to stop me. What did you give up to him, Leta?”
“It was—I—” But just like before, when Arien asked me, I can’t put it into words. More tears fill my eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”
He leans closer, searching my face. “It matters to me.”
“It was an equal trade. Nothing more than you gave,” I manage. “And I gave it willingly.”
His expression darkens. “Equal to what? What did you give that would match my life, and the lives of my family?” I don’t answer, but after a moment passes, I see the realization settle on him. “Tell me the rest of the story from the night at the wayside cottage. You never did finish. I want to hear how it ends.”
I swallow back a sob and shake my head. “No.”
“Go on.” His voice gentles, and he strokes my cheek, wiping away the tears. “Beyond seven forests, beyond seven lakes…”
“I can’t.” My voice cracks. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything of my family. I gave them up—now and forever.”
For a moment Rowan hardly moves. Then his arms are around me, a sudden embrace. I sink against him, my ear over the rapid beat of his heart, and tuck my face into his shoulder. I start to cry harder. He rubs my back, strokes my hair, kisses away my tears. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “So sorry that I’ve brought you into this.”
He holds me for a long time, until I stop crying and the room is quiet, filled with just the sound of our twinned breath. We draw apart and look at each other. I wipe my face on my sleeve.
“I’m not.” It’s the first time I’ve spoken it aloud. The first time that I’ve realized it. He changed everything in my life, the day when he came to our cottage. And though at that moment I hated him and wanted him gone, now I find the memory is colored with tenderness. “I’m not sorry for anything. Not that I met you, or that I came here.”
“Right. You nearly died. You’ve bound yourself to the Lord Under. You gave up your family to stop me from destroying you.”
“Actually, you wanted to destroy everyone. You were very ambitious.” I press my fingers against the sigil on my wrist. Inside me, the magic stirs. The promise of power is right there, the magic like a flood, ready for me to unleash when the moon is full. “Do you remember what I said to you, that day in the kitchen after I first summoned the Lord Under?”
His mouth tips into a smile. “I’m sure it was something nonsensical, about wanting to risk yourself while we all stood back and watched you.”
“Well, yes,” I laugh. “I told you this was my choice. I’ve chosen this. My sacrifice, my promise, all of it.”
“Leta.” He catches my face between his hands. “I’d never have asked this of you. But now that you’ve done it, thank you. Thank you for stopping me. Thank you for saving me.”
I run my fingers over the marks on his neck, the scars and the bruises left from the magic. Light flickers across my palms as I touch him. “Did you know this would happen? Did you know the Corruption would change you rather than kill you?”
His eyes shutter closed. “I wasn’t certain, but I knew it was possible.”
“So you let everyone fear you and call you a monster, because you wanted them to stay away.”
“It’s true enough, isn’t it?”
“Is that why you didn’t want me to come here?”
“That wasn’t the only reason.” He laughs, embarrassed. “I’ve never—I never really wanted to be with anyone, to let them close. I knew it was impossible, that I couldn’t ever ask someone to be part of this.” He gestures to himself, to the landscape outside the window. An arc of his hand to summarize his entire life: the danger, the darkness, the Corruption.
“I’m not afraid, Rowan. You know that, don’t you? Not even in the garden, when you were changed. When you fought me, when you kissed me. I’m not afraid of you.”
“I know.” He takes a slow breath. “When I first saw you, with your sunburned nose and tangled hair, with your poor, bruised arms … You looked as though you would tear me to pieces, but still, I was drawn to you. And I knew if I let myself care about you—if I let myself want you—it would be worse than leaving you behind in that awful cottage. You’re right: I didn’t want you to come with us. I needed to mend the Corruption. I didn’t have time to worry about feelings. But even as I intended to leave you there, I still—I wanted—” He sighs. “I just want you to be safe.”
“I am safe. And I am going to stay safe.”
“I’m not sure safe is the word I’d use.” Rowan looks down at the sigil on his arm. He touches it and frowns. “It hurt you, to use this magic. When you stopped me, it hurt you.”
“Yes. But it was my choice.”
“It’s still there.” He touches the sigil again, puzzled. “What have you done to me?”
He traces his fingers along the lines of the spell, and I shiver as the magic sparks, in response, across my own skin. I look down at my hand, marked with the blackened crescent. My wrist, marked with the sunburst spell. Then I place my fingers around the sigil. Rowan shivers as the spell sings between us. I catch the rush of emotions that are mine but not mine. A mess of heat and despair and want. We are connected.
“I’m bound to the Lord Under.” I show him my palm, then I touch the sigil. “I’m bound to you.”
He wraps his hand around his own wrist, frowning. Colors wash through my mind, rose, peach, gold. “Leta. Just because we’re connected, doesn’t mean you have to—” He lets his hand drop away, and the shift of colors fades into darkness. “You know how I feel about you.”
“Do you mean the fair as the moon part, or the part where you wanted to drown me?” When his frown deepens, I laugh gently. “Yes, I know.”
“You saved me. But that doesn’t mean you owe me anything more. If you still feel this is impossible, tell me so, and I won’t speak of it again, ever.”
Slowly, I climb into his lap, my mud-stained skirts frothing around us in an opalescent cloud. I put my arms around his neck, and press my forehead to his. It steadies me, this closeness. My fingers in his hair, the prickle of his eyelashes against my cheek when he blinks. My heartbeat slows. Whatever hesitance I had before—the want and can’t that I struggled against—it’s gone.
“Everything about this is impossible,” I murmur. “I can speak to the lord of the dead, and you are a monster.”
I lean forward as he melts back, until I’m folded over him with my ear against his heart, my cheek against his rumpled shirt. He runs a tentative hand over my hair, and a tangle of dried leaves and wilting petals tumbles loose.
He catches one of the flowers as it falls, confused, then looks down incredulously at my still-filthy clothes. “You’re all muddy. Why haven’t you changed your dress?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I was too worn out from saving your life.” I push his hands away, laughing. “Do you want me to take it off?”
His eyes widen, then his expression turns heated. “Yes,” he says, low. “I do.”
My laughter changes into a shy smile. I’d only meant to tease him. But now it’s said, all I can think of is that long-ago day when he helped with my buttons and I felt the roughness of his fingers against my bare skin.
“It unfastens at the back,” I whisper into his ear. “You’ll have to help me.”
He gives me a careful look. “You’re certain of this?”
“Yes.” My hands have started to shake. But I know, undoubtedly, that I’m sure. “I’m certain.”
“Turn around, then.”
I turn. Rowan scrapes the weight of my hair from my neck and slips it forward over my shoulder. He reaches for the topmost button at the base of my neck. Each time he undoes a button he marks the newly bared place with a kiss, going all the way down my spine. My pulse beats hard in my throat, my chest, my stomach. With each button, with each kiss, I unravel further until I’m breathless and unsteady.
My dress slides away from my shoulders. The air is cold against the heated flare of my skin. I slip free of the mud-stained tangle of my skirts, until I’m only in my undergarments and camisole, all lace and ribbon.
Rowan stares at me like I’m a poem, a wonder, a story. He puts a tentative hand on my waist. I shift toward him. Then his gaze lowers to my thighs, still marked by when he clawed me. “Leta,” he says, stricken. “Leta, I’m sorry.”
I take his hands, push back his sleeves, and kiss every mended cut on his arms. I unlace his shirt and gather the fabric into my fists, pulling until it untucks. He sits very still, letting me lift his shirt slowly over his head. His skin is warm, patterned with scars. It’s so strange and precious to see him like this, bared and flushed and mine.
I slide my hands over his chest. His breath catches. He knots his fingers through my curls and pulls me gently toward him. Our faces are so close that when I speak, my words cast across his mouth. “Rowan, I love you.” He makes a wretched, helpless noise and shoves me back against the tangled quilts. All breath is gone from my lungs in a single, sudden gasp. He pulls sharply on my hair and crushes his mouth against mine
His kiss is like fire. It burns through me until I am razed clear. There’s none of the hesitation of when I kissed him that first time. This is rough, a mess of feverish heat. Magic sparks from my fingers. Desire spirals through me, coiling tight at my center where it becomes a persistent ache. I gasp and he kisses away the sound. He tastes of blood and silt and shadows.
His hands are all over me, tight against my waist, tangled in my hair. His teeth are at my throat. He bites down—softly, then less so. I dig my fingers into his shoulder, drag him closer. I want the space between us to become invisible. I kiss him, tracing a path down the line of his jaw to the side of his throat. I kiss his bruises and his scars. His heartbeat is a captured moth. His skin is honey and poison.
When I touch him, I feel the shift and shiver of darkness beneath his skin. Threads of black vein his neck, his chest, his arms. I don’t know if I’m kissing the boy or the monster or both, and I don’t much care.
He catches hold of my hips and lifts me against him. I put my hands over his and our fingers, together, press into my skin. He smothers my breathless moan with another endless kiss. Then he bends to the scars on my knees, kissing them tenderly as he strokes the fresh cuts on my thighs. He pauses and looks at me, a question in the heat of his gaze. A heartbeat passes before he asks quietly, “Can I touch you?”
A fervent shiver runs through me, right down to my toes. I bite my lip and breathe out, “Yes.”
He slides his hands higher and higher still. Heat burns across my skin, lingering long after his touch passes. He’s above me; I kiss the shadowed curve of his neck. He traces the edge of my undergarments, following the pattern of the lace. Then his fingertips graze over me.
“Oh—” It’s a shock, at once bright hot and feather gentle. It feels like I’ve shared a secret. I’ve let him into these hidden corners of myself, where so far only my hands have been. Magic dances through my veins, and light glints across my palms. All my words are gone. I press my thighs together around his hand, dissolving into a warmth that spreads through my entire body. At my wrist, the sigil aches with power, and the tether strung between us begins to glow, turning to a bright golden thread.
I reach for him and hook my fingers into the waistband of his trousers. Then I stop and hold back, waiting. He looks at me, then to my hands. His eyes sink closed. He nods, once. There are so many buttons, and it takes me a long time to unfasten them. He rocks against me, impatient, and groans, “Leta.”
I laugh at him teasingly. I slide my hand lower and lower. His breath hitches as I finally touch him.
We lie facing each other, our legs tangled. At first we’re both clumsy and unsure, all caught breath and tentative, searching touches. But it’s still so right, so perfect. We soften into a steady rhythm. His hands on me, mine on him, the heavy cadence of our shared breath. Being close to each other like this is such a fragile, tender magic; its own kind of alchemy.
All that’s ahead is a blank unknown. On the full moon, I’ll go to the lake with the terrible, wonderful power granted to me. But for now, in this stolen moment, I try to forget. Forget the ruined ground and the ink-dark lake. The poison that waits to claim us all.
Now I am only little gasps, liquid fire. Melted candles. Sap dripped from a pale-trunked tree. I’m thorn and lichen, lace over stone. I’m an orphan with scars on her knees. A faerie creature in a gossamer dress. I am light and heat and power and magic.
Rowan circles his hand around my wrist. His thumb finds the raised edges of the sigil. He presses down against it. The world turns golden bright.
I let myself shatter. For just this moment, I forget it all.
Afterward, we’re both breathless, perspiration like dew on our heated skin. I sit up and draw the curtains closed. They fall heavily across the window, and we’re muffled in dark, with only an almost burned-down candle to light the room.
We curl up together. Rowan winds my hair into his hands, places a row of kisses against my neck. His breath is warm on my bare skin. “It was brave, what you did. Very, very foolish. But also brave.”
I want to tell him I’m not afraid of the ritual. But I can’t. It isn’t the truth, and I’ve already told too many lies.
For a moment I let myself picture the shape of our lives, in the blurred space of after. We’ll eat dinner together. Tell stories in the firelight. At the lake the water will be clear. The shore will be a harmless stretch of sand. There will be no more blood, no more payments. No more dangerous attempts at the rituals.
And Rowan—and I—
My future with him is such a dangerous hope. I can only allow myself the barest taste. Like picking up a final crumb. I turn over to put my arms around him, resting my head against his shoulder as I fold myself against him. He trails his fingers through my hair. Combs gently at the tangles, picks loose the scraps of leaves and tiny flowers still woven there.
I run my fingers lightly over the inside of his arm. He shivers when I touch the sigil. I feel the spell that’s woven between us. A slender thread, delicate as filigree, but strong as steel.
“I’m so afraid,” I tell him. “But I’m going to do this anyway.”