The Lord Under looks at me so sharply that I’m certain he can see right down to my bones, my blood, my frantic heart. It takes everything within me to hold my face calm, keep my voice steady.
I don’t move, and neither does he. I wait, daring him to call my challenge. If he means to harm me, if there is danger in this spell, then he won’t step forward.
My hand, outstretched, begins to tremble. “I want you beside me. I’ve given up so much to be here. Surely you can grant me this. You need me, and I need you. We’re connected.”
At this, the hunger in his gaze intensifies, and he smiles, baring his too-sharp teeth. He crosses the stones easily and enters the circle. His cloak sweeps across the ground, stirring the dust as he steps carefully over the lines of the sigils.
He looks at my outstretched hand, then at me, and I can see myself reflected in his eyes. The pale smear of my face, my bright hair like a captured flame.
“You know,” he says, “you may not like the taste of my magic.”
“I’ve cast with Arien before. I’m not afraid of shadows.”
He laughs. “We’ll see.”
The Lord Under reaches to me, darkness already drifting from his hands. The frost of his skin is a shock against the heat of my magic, but I force myself to weave my fingers through his until our palms are pressed tightly together. We stand facing each other, his hands clasped around mine, his fingers over my fingers.
I take a deep breath. I thought I’d feel reassured with him close to me like this, but I’m still as uncertain as ever. A nervous laugh catches in my throat. “Aren’t you going to wish me luck?”
He leans down until his mouth almost brushes my cheek. “Good luck, my Violet.”
I close my eyes and think of gold and heat and sun. When I call on my power, the ache of absence quickly follows, the vision of myself bereft and alone in a blackened field. I push it away, pretend I am in the garden with my hands around the bramble vines. I see the thread of my magic strung loosely around me, feel the petals of heat bloom at my palms.
I reach for the spell, and the Lord Under’s power is there alongside my own, another thread, one of sharp, spun steel. I clench my fingers closed, and his claws pierce my palms. I suck in a breath at the bright, sudden pain. The twinned threads of our magic snap tight, light pours through me, and our power ignites in a swift rush.
Shadows unfurl from his palms like silken ribbons. They weave around my wrists. His power is pale fire and new-moon shadows. It burns in me with a frostbitten ache. Apprehension rises through me but I force it down. I won’t flinch from this. I’ve touched shadows and darkness before. I’m not afraid.
Instead, I let my own power—unsparing, brutal, granted for a single moon—blossom in my chest. I feed more of my magic into the spell, sparks blistering at my fingertips. The ground trembles as the lines of the sigil ignite.
And then, a sound starts up above.
The Corruption starts to call. At first it’s soft and sibilant—like the wind. Then it turns sharper, harder. A plea, a snarl, a whine. It’s familiar now, this voice, this song of want and hunger. I’ve felt it. I’ve spoken to it. I’ve kissed Rowan and tasted its poison in his mouth. I know you.
I open my hands and turn them up toward the sky. I let my magic answer the call. Light pours from me and spirals upward in thin, golden strands. The darkness in the sky churns and seethes. The air is alight with frost and sparks and ash.
The Lord Under sends more of his own magic into the spell. As we cast the spell together, I feel as though I’m undressed past clothes and skin. I’ve shown him some hidden piece of myself I didn’t even know I had. His power on my power. His skin on my skin. His breath on my throat.
My power matches the cold slither of his shadows. At this moment, we are equal. We are connected.
I should be horrified. I’ve come to his world and seen things that aren’t meant to be seen by anyone human, anyone alive. But buried further down—so far that I could almost pretend I didn’t notice—is pride.
The Corruption writhes through the branches overhead. Water pours down over us, pooling within the circled stones. A cold, ink-dark wave washes over my feet. I send out more power into the seething darkness. Tendrils slither up from the earth, and I cry out, startled, as they snare my skin. Lines of darkness wind around my hands, my wrists. My mouth tastes of poison.
“Oh—!” I start to pull away from the Lord Under, but he tightens his hold on my hands. His eyes meet mine, and for one brief breath, his expression gentles. He blinks, slow, and his lashes fringe his frosted gaze. The darkness has spread over him, too, a tracery of thin, black lines beneath his bone-white skin.
“Violeta.” He whispers my name, low and tense. “It will destroy both our worlds.”
I know it will. I can’t pull back. I have to keep going.
From above, more darkened water pours down. And then I can make out shapes. Slender arms and sightless faces and razored claws. The creatures that rose from the lake. Their hands reach out and tear through the branches of the trees. There’s a pained, pitiful cry. Then another and another. They echo around us. The sound of souls turned gone as the trees are destroyed; devoured by the Corruption and absorbed to become part of the hunger.
I look back desperately toward the trees where the souls of Rowan’s family sleep. They’re untouched for now, but in no time at all, the darkness will be upon them. There are lives here, a whole forest of souls. I picture them all, enclosed in sap and bark, as mist trails through the branches. I picture Arien and Clover and Rowan, in the world Above, being overwhelmed by the creatures.
“No!” I feel the burn of my magic across my skin, my palms, my fingertips. “No. They are not yours to have. Come to me. To me.”
I remember what Rowan told me about the Corruption, how it first woke up and how he took the darkness inside himself to make it stop. I need to do the same. I need to let it in.
The dark lines on my skin snare tighter and spread farther, crossing my forearms and curving around my elbows. I cough, drag in a rasping breath. Blood streams from my nose and across my mouth. Even as the darkness covers me, I let the vicious brilliance of my magic burn through it all. The hurt, the fear, the darkness. I will fight this. I will mend this. I reach for my power. The threads of my magic, with the Lord Under’s magic, are knotted around my hands. I pull on them, drawing them tighter and tighter. Light fills my palms. I let the brutal power gather, then send it up toward the sky.
At my wrist, the sigil hums, and when I close my eyes, I catch the far-off flicker of the world Above. It’s the barest glow—rose and peach and gold—but it’s there. I want to go back. To the shore, to my garden, to my home. But I can’t. Not now.
I hope Rowan knows that I’m sorry. That I chose this, all of this. To fight with him and lie to him. To show him my scars. To make this terrible bargain. To fall in love.
I chose this.
I turn my face up to the wounded, ruinous heart of the Corruption.
“To me.”
I let the darkness come.
The creatures fall—hungry, hungry. Ravenous. They’ve waited so long. They were so desperate, so starved, and now—and now—
A memory flashes. My hands grasped around the idol. I throw it hard against the floor. Shards burst like a fallen star beneath my feet. I’m on the ground, and there’s glass in my knees. The shards are white hot. They cut me, but I don’t cry out.
Claws rake across me. Sink into me, sink through me. They scrape deep into my arms, my chest, my wrists, my thighs. The Lord Under grips my hands as the creatures tear through my skin. I taste blood, I’ve bitten my tongue. I taste the cold, ashen burn of my magic.
The creatures cut me.
I’m carved up, spread open, ready to be devoured.
They cut deep.
I think of shards. I think of knives. I think of claws. I think of sharpened teeth.
The Lord Under is still beside me. He holds me close. “Don’t be afraid.”
I call to the darkness. Come to me. The sigil on my wrist beats out a rhythmic pulse. The earth will be mended. The poison will be gone. Arien will be safe. He’ll turn fourteen at year’s end, have a cake shaped like a crescent moon. Clover will give him alchemy lessons. He’ll sit in the library and sketch patterns in his notebooks. He’ll be home.
And Rowan—
And Rowan—and I—
I remember how it felt to lie beside him in his room, in the moonlight. How I pushed aside the uncertainty and the danger and tried to forget everything. For that brief moment, when I was curled against him, I was only Leta. Loved and warm and safe.
The darkness gathers from the sky, from the air, from the trees, from the pieces that have poisoned the Lord Under. The ground beneath my feet turns to softened moss. The frightened voices in the trees turn gentle. I hear them whisper. They tell me the trees are hungry, too. They tell me there’s a hollow inside a new-grown heartwood, an empty space carved out for me.
But I’m not finished. I reach farther, up, beyond the world Below. I call to the poison that’s tainted the lake and the shore. The poison that’s infected Rowan. I call it down through the earth, through the worlds, and let it all in.
The darkness is inside me now. There’s poison in my blood, my heart, my bones. I’m bitten and bled and devoured. Piece by piece I dissolve. I am consumed by the dark. I let it take me. I let it become me.
At my wrist, the sigil burns. A seal on your heart, a seal on your arm. I feel a wash of colors, of emotions. Fear and elation. Resignation and relief. I picture the world Above mended and protected and safe. Everyone at Lakesedge—Clover and Florence and Rowan and Arien—safe. Because of me.
The Lord Under catches hold of me and I sink against him. Gently, gently, he lays me down in the water that has collected at the center of the stones.
All I can feel and taste and see is hunger. Darkness above and darkness beneath and darkness within.
“Let me go home,” I whisper. “Please.”
He bends to me, presses his forehead to mine. “I will.”