Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(32)

It’s hot out in the garden, and the heat on my face wakes me a little. The world comes into slightly sharper focus. I can just make out Rowan, far down along the path. I stagger after him in a wavery line, the gravel sharp under my unsteady feet.

I stumble into the overgrown grass and catch myself against the ivy-wreathed wall. I go along, leaning hard against it to keep myself upright. After a few paces, the shape of the wall changes beneath my hand and vines give way to iron. There’s a gate hidden among the ivy. It’s locked.

I peer through the curved rails. I see the dim outline of an orchard, the branches shaded indigo by the night, and a spill of wildflowers that’s come loose from a wooden border.

A garden. There’s another garden there, locked up behind the wall.

Farther ahead, Rowan’s boots crush heavily over the graveled path. I keep following him. Past the gate, past the ivy, until the wall opens out to a familiar space.

The lake.

The water is a lightless whisper. I’ve been back here since the ritual, but never farther than this archway. I take a halting step out onto the blackened ground. I blink, and the earth seems to move. A shiver goes through me when I think of how it tore open. How it fought against Arien and Clover.

Rowan crosses to the place where they carved the sigil for the last ritual. The lake begins to stir, as though the water is trying to draw him closer. His hood falls back as he steps onto the wet, dark mud. He drags a hand through his unbound hair and sighs heavily. Then he reaches into his pocket and takes out a knife.

Under my feet, the ground feels like it’s breathing. It feels hungry.

No no no.

“Wait!” I run toward him. The mud sucks at my feet. Cold and hideous and wrong. “Wait, you can’t!”

He turns, startled. I grab hold of his arm. His face, shrouded by the fall of his hair, is tense and grim. He shakes himself loose from my grasp. “Violeta, get away from me, now!”

Water rushes in around our feet, then recedes with a hollow hiss. “What is this? What are you doing?”

He struggles to speak but manages to choke out a single word. “Tithe.”

It’s almost lost to the sound of the waves. Tithe. I think of Greymere. The tables in the village square. Jars of sour cherries. Syrup and sweetness. I think of Rowan on the night of the ritual, crimson eyed and shadow stained. On his knees with the earth snared around him.

Tithe. It isn’t just the rituals when he gives his blood to the ground and the spell. No wonder he couldn’t tell me how many times he’d come here, to be cut and bled and fed to the Corruption.

Terror floods me, icy as the waves. “No, you can’t do this.”

He kneels down. His hands shake as he roughly unties the laces at his sleeve and bares the scarred stretch of his arm. His pupils are blown wide, irises dark as the night. “Violeta.” He gasps out my name as the darkness spreads across his throat, spiraling out from the scars. “Please, just go.”

He puts the blade to his wrist, and all I can think of is the way he looked at me when he gave me his mother’s dresses. The grief in his eyes after he saw the portrait of his family. Whatever he’s done, whatever he is, I can’t turn away from him. I don’t want to leave him alone.

I fall to my knees in the mud beside him.

He drives the knife into his arm. Wrist to elbow, a deep, vicious cut. Blood streams over his skin, over his gloves. It trails his palm, beads the tips of his fingers.

He shoves his hand against the earth, his fingers digging deep tracks through the ground.

The Corruption reacts instantly. Streaks of mud slice up and wrap around him. They curl hungrily around his wrist, his arm, higher. I snatch back my hand before it can touch me. It goes around his throat, over his jaw. His eyes close tightly. His dark brows knit into a determined, pained expression. His breath comes out in shudders.

Patches of mud flake loose from his mouth with each exhale. It slithers, re-forms, covers him again. It’s inside him, in his mouth, his lungs, beneath his skin.

And then—the Corruption, it changes him. His gaze goes cold and feral; his teeth turn sharp. This isn’t just a bloodletting. He’s lost to it, taken over. The darkness spreads and spreads through him, until he’s barely Rowan at all, but some other creature made of mud and moonlight.

A monster.

I stare at him, feeling so helpless I’m near sobbing. I wish for power, for magic, for some way to fight the cruel hunger of the Corruption. But I have nothing. I can do nothing. Then I remember Arien, caught by the dreams that were never dreams. Lost and afraid as his shadows filled our room. How I’d hold him and think of warmth and try to pull him back from the dark.

I take hold of Rowan’s wrist and push my other hand down against the earth. Usually when I touch the ground like this during observance, I feel the light of the world, feel it glow. But when I touch the Corruption, there’s only cold and dark.

“Let him go.” I work my fingers deeper into the mud. Think of summer nights. Of the banked kitchen stove. Of the locked-up garden, pale and beautiful in the moonlight. Let him go, let him go, let him go.

Heat rushes over my skin. A sharp warmth blooms at the center of my palm. I picture a thread, tied from Rowan to me, wrapped around my hand. I don’t understand what this means. I’m not sure it’s even real. But I can’t bear to leave him like this, alone, devoured by the dark.