Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(30)

Elan. I’ve heard his name before.

The cries in the dark, on my first night here. It was Rowan. Clover told me he drinks the sedative-dosed tea to help him sleep. The sounds I heard that night, echoing through the halls, tangled and tortured … It was him, calling out for his brother.

“I know Rowan,” Florence goes on. “And I know he isn’t capable of such a terrible thing. Whatever happened, it was an accident.”

“Three members of his family all drowned in the exact same place.”

“Four,” Clover murmurs.

Florence turns to her abruptly. “He told you about that?”

“Not exactly. But … people sometimes get conversational once you’ve given them a sedative.”

“What do you mean, four?” My pulse starts to beat a hard, panicked rhythm.

“When Rowan was five years old, he vanished for an entire day. At sunset we found him in the water. And at first we thought he was dead, but then he opened his eyes.” Florence pauses as she gathers herself, her face toward the window. The afternoon light streaks gold through her pale hair. “And when he did, the lake turned black. That was the start of the Corruption.”

I sit down heavily, landing in a chair before my knees give out.

When we were small—when Arien’s dreams brought their first wisps of shadows—Mother warned us about the Lord Under. If you step too close to the darkness, then he can touch you. Touch you, and send you back into the world, corrupted. I didn’t want to believe it. But it made sense, in a terrible way.

He’s the lord of the dead. He comes at the end of our lives and guides us into the world Below. And if he came to you, if he left you alive … then all the years you lived, marked by his touch, would bring him so much more power than a simple death.

“He—he was dead,” I stammer out. “Rowan was dead, and the Lord Under—”

Arien takes my hand, his brow notched with concern.

“Leta, he didn’t die. I mean, obviously. He’s still here.” He gives my shoulder a little shake, trying to tease me. “Or maybe you’ve spent all this time arguing with a ghost.”

“The Lord Under tends the souls in the world Below,” Florence says. “He doesn’t bring them back. I’d have thought you’d know not to believe that superstition.”

But in spite of her words, she draws her fingers across her chest.

Clover pours out the tea and passes me a cup. I slump back in my chair and clasp my teacup tightly. Let my face be washed by the rise of bergamot-scented steam. All I can think of are the shadows in my room. The water that poured down and the whispers that spoke my name. Then a deeper memory pulls at me.

The Vair Woods in winter. The voice I heard as the darkness gathered between the trees.

What I saw, it wasn’t real; but when my eyes shutter closed, I see Rowan, five years old and pale and still. Black water streaming from his mouth, his eyes, as the earth turned dark beneath him.

Could it have only been a dream, those things I saw in my room? The water on the walls, the whispers in the dark. Maybe my thoughts just tangled themselves into those hideous visions of voices and shadows. Only dreams.

It’s like there are two stories about Rowan, about Lakesedge, written side by side in a single volume. The ink from one bleeding through to mar the words on the opposite page. A boy who almost died. A boy who did die. A boy who drowned in a lake and came back as a monster.

But which story is real, and which is just a ghostly specter of rumor and fear?

We finish our tea in silence. I help pack away the notebooks and the inkpots and pens. The sunlight fades, and we trail down the stairs to dinner. Outside the kitchen window the waning moon hangs luminous in the twilight sky.

It’s an unavoidable reminder that soon Arien will have to go back to the lake and to the dark, hungry ground that tried to consume him. It’s only a few weeks until the month of Midsummer and the next full moon, when they’ll perform the ritual again.

But before then, I’m going to find out the truth about Rowan Sylvanan.





Chapter Ten


It’s late. In the starless dark, my eyes are heavy with fatigue. Everyone else is asleep, and the house is silent around me, where I sit in my room. The only light is from the candle beside my bed. In my hands are five vials of the sedative draft Clover puts in our tea. I stole them from her stillroom. The glass clinks together in my cupped palms.

I need sleep. Sleep that feels like being buried alive, that I can’t escape. I need to sink so deep that when the dreams come, I won’t be able to turn away.

I open the first vial. The glass is hot against my lips, heated by the warmth of my nervous hands. It’s horribly bitter as it fills my mouth, so sharp and acrid that when I swallow, the whole world turns virulent green. The little wooden icon that Arien painted for me—set on my bedside table—wavers before my blurred vision.

For the past two weeks, I’ve watched Arien and Clover prepare relentlessly for the next ritual. We’ve spent each day in the library, hemmed in by shelves filled with the jars of inky water and blackened mud they’ve dredged up from the lake. They work until sunset each day. Arien calls the shadows and weaves the magic around the jars of Corruption. Clover stands beside him and calls out instructions, trying not to be frustrated with him when he falters.