Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(35)

Chapter Eleven


Rowan leaves in the faded dawnlight, when I’m still half-asleep. I stir enough to sit up, but he shakes his head before he gently lays me down. He takes off his cloak and drapes it over me. My last memory of the long, strange night is the brief touch of his hand on my shoulder, then his footsteps going quietly away, back up the stairs.

When I next open my eyes, afternoon light shines gold across the window. I’m curled on the sofa, alone. All that happened feels like a peculiar dream, except that I have the cloak, mud stained and still damp. It was real. The strange vision of Rowan’s death. The voice that urged me to follow. The tithe.

And the truth that if Arien can’t help mend the Corruption, Rowan will die.

I sit up and pull the cloak tightly around me, slip the hood over my hair, and fasten the clasp at my throat. It smells of burnt sugar, of boy, of silt and salt and sweat. I bury my nose against the collar and take a deep breath, then look around the room, blushing at my foolishness even though there’s no one here to see me.

And then I notice that, tucked under the cloak, tucked close beside me, is a book.

I pick it up carefully and take it closer to the window. The cover is patterned with golden flowers, carefully stamped. The title is woven among them, as though each letter were a leaf or petal. The Violet Woods.

It’s close enough to my name that it feels even more transient and magical. As though some strange alchemy took a part of me and transmuted it here. I am a girl. I am ink and paper.

I run my hands over the pages. There are pictures, too, each protected behind a transparent leaf. A princess, sleeping in a tower surrounded by blackberry thorns. A servant girl, wearing a magical dress of moonlight. A faerie queen with wings like mist, floating across a starry sky.

Inside the cover is a small square of card. Two lines, inscribed in neat ink.

You should be out by the orchard,

where violets secretly darken the earth.



The words—violet, orchard, earth—I like how they sound, all strung together. Some leaf-hued, secret place. Only flowers and sunlight. I hold the book close against my chest. My price, for a secret kept.

Now that it’s day, I’m able to see the parlor more clearly. The wallpaper is patterned with curved vines. The sofa is embroidered with roses and bellflowers. And against the opposite wall, still half-hidden in shadows, is an altar.

I step across the room to look at it more closely. The altar is old, much older than the altar in Greymere. Framed in wood, with carved edges that have been weathered smooth. A bank of candles lines the shelf. They’ve been recently burned and are surrounded by rivulets of wax. And the icon itself … I’ve never seen anything like it.

There are two figures.

There’s the Lady with her face upturned. Eyes closed, her hair encircled with rays of sunlight. Her gold-tipped fingers in the earth. And beneath her, painted in reverse …

The Lord Under.

He’s little more than a silhouette. A featureless face, head crowned by a wreath of branches. His hands are raised, and his shadowed arms reach upward. His claw-sharp fingers join the Lady’s hands at the center of the icon. And there are shadows—shadows—threaded around his palms.

Everything I’ve tried so hard to forget comes back, sweeping over me in a sudden, hideous rush. The Vair Woods. The frost on the ground and the ice in the air. The shadows that stretched toward me.

The voice.

The voice that spoke to me in the midwinter forest.

The voice that whispered through the walls in my room, that asked my name, that told me to follow and led me toward the truth.

It was him.

I stumble back from the altar, tripping over my own feet as I rush from the room. The kitchen is dim, stovelight and kettle steam and the sweet smell of almas cake in the oven. My chest feels tight, my throat closed up, my lungs full of a trapped, tangled scream. I can still see the shape of the Lord Under from the icon, see the shape of him as he appeared before me in the Vair Woods. The air is full of whispers and the too-loud echo of my heartbeat.

Violeta, Violeta, Violeta …

He came to me then, and he’s come to me now.

This is impossible. He’s the lord of the dead, and only those near to death can see him. When I met him on that long-ago night, death was close, circling me with want and hunger. But now …

What does he want from me this time?

The walls of the house seem to move closer and closer toward me. I cross the kitchen, throw open the back door, and rush into the garden.

I blink and blink, washed by sunlight, and draw in a deep, greedy breath. The air smells of pollen from the jacaranda tree. The altar beneath—where we will go, tonight, for midsummer observance—is dusted with lilac petals and fallen leaves. This icon is singular. Just the Lady, wreathed in flowers. But then the wind changes and a dark splotch of leaf shadow covers the bottom of the painting, a reminder of what I saw inside.

The Lord Under. I met him in the darkness. I sought him out. I spoke to him.

As my eyes adjust, I realize I’m not alone. Arien is on the lawn beside the tree. He’s carved a sigil into the ground—a dark, muddy track that cuts between purple blossoms and dandelion leaves. At the center of the circle is a line of jars, each full of ink-dark water.

I draw up, startled by the sight of him. He’s on his knees, hands grasped tight around the centermost jar. Shadows spill through his hands. From inside the glass, the water starts to churn. I hear the splash splash splash of it against the jar. It sounds like the water that dripped over my bedroom walls.