Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(25)

A voice calls out to me through the darkness.

The shadows creep toward us, closer and closer.

Then everything fades and shifts.

I’m back in my new room. The candle is burned down; silver light from the full moon shines brightly through the window. Wind stirs the lace curtains. They flutter back and forth like pale ghosts. Strange sounds come from outside. The rustle of leaves, the far-off cry of a night bird. Shakily, I untangle myself from my quilts and sit up.

The air begins to shimmer, the way light reflects over the surface of water. A droplet lands on my cheek. Then another on the back of my hand. A damp splotch, dark as ink. I look up, my heartbeat quickening. The ceiling is a shadowed pool, blurred and rippled, and dripping.

The air is cold, cold as a midwinter forest, cold as the Vair Woods.

My room is filled with water. It spills down over the walls and pools in the corners. It starts to spread across the floor. It rises and rises, until the cold, black waves wash against my bed. My breath catches, and a horrified sound escapes my throat. It’s just like the water in the lake.

But this isn’t real. It’s just a dream. The same dream I had last night.

I close my eyes and fold myself down beneath the hem of my sodden quilt. Breathe in deep, until my lungs are filled with the scent of camphor and dust and rose petals. All I can hear is a hush hush hush, which might be the wind, might be the lake, might be my own erratic breathing.

Then another sound comes through the wall. It’s soft at first, like the wind as it hisses and stirs through sedge grass. Then it twists and sharpens, skittering around me, until the whisper becomes a voice.

Tell me your name.

I curl up tighter and try not to listen. None of this is real. Not the darkness, or the voice, or the water on the walls.

The sound comes again, closer now. From between my ribs, I feel a sharp wrench. As though there’s a thread knotted around my bones and it’s been pulled.

Tell me your name.

“Violeta.” It tumbles out, unbidden.

Open your eyes, Violeta.

I think of the maiden in the labyrinth. How she faced a monster with only a ball of twine held tight in her hands. I don’t want to look. But I don’t want to lie here cringing in the dark. So I open my eyes.

The room is empty. The corner is just a corner. Silver and shadowed. The floor is just a floor. Bare, dry boards covered with a patina of dust. I peel back the quilt, stretch out a hand, and touch the wall. There’s no water. Just faded paper, rough beneath my fingertips.

There are monsters in the woods, in the world. There’s a monster in the shadows, and now it knows my name.

I slump back down on the bed. I can’t stop shivering. Because the real horrors of Lakesedge aren’t in this room. They’re on the blackened shore of an endless lake, where a monster fed the ground with his blood. Where my brother will go, with magic and shadows, to try to mend it all.



* * *



I’m woken by a heavy knock on the door. I sit up to a room flooded bright. Golden daylight streams through the window. I scrub my wrist across my face and look around the room. Everything is as it was before I fell asleep, the room untouched by water, the floor strewn with the cloths I drew back from the furniture.

The knock comes again, rapid and impatient. Disoriented, I clamber out of bed and cross the room.

The monster is outside my door.

When he sees me, he takes a step back. He glances at me, then quickly turns away. “You were asleep.”

I cross my arms over my chest. I’m in my nightdress—faded cotton, a badly stitched mend across one shoulder. My hair is snarled into an enormous tangle. “I was asleep.”

“It’s afternoon.”

“It’s been a tiring few days.”

He raises a brow. Then his mouth lifts into the barest smile. “A slight understatement.”

I search his face for hints of what I saw last night at the ritual. The creature he became when he was cut and snared and consumed by the blackened earth. My eyes go from the scars on his face to the ones on his throat. I know it’s there, the darkness, the wrongness.

But in the daylight, it’s easy to think that Rowan Sylvanan is only a boy with a sharp, handsome face and shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes.

He matches my gaze evenly. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t move away.

“Did you wake me up for a reason, or…?”

“Oh. Yes. I’ve brought something.”

He goes back into the hallway. There’s a sound, the scrape of wood over wood, then he returns with a large trunk. As he carries it into my room, his sleeve rides up. He’s still wearing gloves, the same as always. But between the cuff of his shirt and the edge of his glove, there’s a fresh linen bandage wrapped around his wrist.

I think of the way he shoved the knife into his arm. The coldness in his voice when he spoke my name. Get away from here.

He puts the trunk down at the end of my bed. When he notices my eyes on his bandage, he pulls his sleeve back down.

“Clover told me she uses your blood in the rituals.” Even as I say it, my stomach tightens at the thought. “Do you have to cut yourself like that every time?”

Ignoring my question, he tips his chin toward the trunk. “Go ahead, open it.”

I crouch down and run my fingers over the lid. The polished wood smells like beeswax. The clasp is tarnished, but it opens smoothly when I unfasten it. Inside, carefully folded together, are clothes. Enough for a whole summertime wardrobe, packed with paper like wrapped sweets in a jar. Nightdresses and camisoles and pinafores and ribbon-topped socks. And dresses. So many dresses. I trace my fingers over the folds of paper.