Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(31)

But no matter how hard they try, Arien can’t control his magic enough to cast the spell.

“Again,” she says when he slips, and the shadows dissipate into mist. “Again.”

His hands shake. He scrunches them into fists, then grasps the jar. “I can do this. I know I can do this.”

As much as Clover pushes him, Arien pushes himself harder. His arms are covered in sigils. His hands are smeared dark to the wrist with mud and magic and ink. The blackness never clears from his eyes. Again again again.

I’ve sat in the library and watched them and wished I could help. Watched the moon wane, a smaller crescent each night, and wished I could take Arien’s place.

But I have no magic. All I can do is chase the shadows.

I need to dream again. I need to see the visions and hear the voice that knows my name. I’ve tried and tried. Sat awake, my eyes fixed on the corner of my room. Walked the halls and tried to open each locked door. Followed the path through the starlit garden, past overgrown weeds and flowers. I’ve even gone to the lake, watched the water lie inky and still beneath the slender moon.

But no matter how much I’ve watched or waited … nothing.

I open the second vial. Tip it into my mouth. The taste burns all the way down. Nausea rushes through me in a brutal, sudden wave. I curl forward as the world tilts unsteadily. My whole body goes leaden and sluggish, like my skin is full of stones.

All the remaining vials fall from my hands, the glass clinking as they spill onto the quilt. I stare out into the room, watching as the walls start to shiver and shift, as blotches of darkness bloom and fade over the floor.

Water begins to pool in the corners. I get to my feet; the bare boards are cold, like I’ve stepped into a forest of midwinter ice. The candle flame flutters like a frantic, luminescent moth.

The water deepens, rising over my feet. The walls are washed dark. I stretch out my hand. A cold, sharp hush of air kisses my fingertips, as though there’s breath trapped beneath stone and plaster.

I put my palm against the wall. Taste bitter herbs. Taste ash and salt and blood. “I’m not afraid. Please. Tell me. Show me.”

I can hear it—a sound, a whisper. I close my eyes and try, desperately, to listen. Then it comes. The voice. It speaks to me in a stir of night air. In a rustle of dry leaves.

Follow.

My eyes snap open. The room has gone. The house has gone. I’m outside beneath a lavender, dawn-lit sky. There’s a forest behind me; susurrations of wind stir through the pale trees. There’s a stretch of earth. Strands of tall, reedy sedge grass. And water. Endless water. Flat and smooth as mirror glass, it reflects the pastel clouds.

The lake.

I’m alone. I’m not alone. There’s a presence—I’m sure there is—but when I turn, it slips away. I can’t see it clearly no matter how hard I look. Only glimpses. Only pieces. Shadows and the steady drip drip of water. Always just to the side of me, here and not here. I can’t see it, but I can feel it. It’s watching me. It’s … waiting.

Laid out along the shore are shapes. Shrouded in white like the dust cloths that covered the furniture in my new room. I take a halting step toward them. They’re people. They lie still beneath the pale covers, without even a faint movement of breath. All four of them.

The wind rises, tangling my hair. It snatches at the cloth that covers the endmost shape. The hem peels back. I can’t look. I can’t not look. I kneel down slowly. The pebbles are sharp against my knees. Damp seeps up from the ground and over my skin. Waves lap lap lap against the shore.

I take hold of the cloth. Pull and pull until it’s bundled up in my hands.

The boy lies beneath. His skin is pallid, his dark hair plastered in stripes across his face. He’s smaller, younger, perhaps the same age I was when I wandered lost on the road at midwinter. Five-year-old Rowan Sylvanan—still and cold and dead.

He sits up. He looks at me. Streams of water pour from his mouth, his nose. His eyes roll back, pale and limpid. He coughs and chokes. The water starts to turn black. Oily strands drip over his skin. The lake begins to seethe and churn. Waves rush over the shore. Wash past him, past me.

The darkness—the same darkness that oozes from him—spreads across the lake.

The three bodies that remain on the shore are caught by the waves. One by one, they’re pulled out, pulled down, deeper and deeper. His father, his mother, his brother all sink and vanish beneath the water.

The darkness rises like a mist. It closes in across the shore, the lake, the trees. I shut my eyes, frozen, despairing, trapped in the final moment before the darkness claims me.

Then I’m back in the house, on the landing beneath the arched windows. The glass is still warm with residual heat from the midsummer day. The sky beyond is lightless. A new moon, a dark moon, halfway to the next ritual.

I scrub my eyes. I’m awake—I’m awake—but I feel as though I’m still caught by the dream. Footsteps echo, and I look down over the carved balustrade to see Rowan in the entrance hall below. He’s wrapped in his cloak, the hood pulled low over his hair. He has a candle in a jar. The shielded flame is as tiny as a faerie light as he moves through the house.

A few beats later, I hear the scrape of the kitchen door.

I go down the stairs. My nightdress trails around me, a mothlike wisp in the dark. The kitchen is lit by stove coals and a dwindling altar candle. The door is still open.