Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(4)

“Please, Leta.”

I put my arms around him. “I’ll try.”

He rests his cheek against my shoulder and sighs, despondent. Until tonight, I knew how to protect him from Mother’s anger. Now the nights ahead are full of dreams and shadows and flames. I try to think of a way out, somewhere we could go to escape this. But there’s our cottage and Mother, and there’s the world—vast and unknown, and no safer than here. Here, at least, I can learn the new shape of our lives.

I close my eyes and try to map how things will be from this point onward, picturing a hallway full of locked doors, the walls lined with endless altars where candles burn and burn and burn. Me at the center, my arms outspread, as Arien stands behind me.

I will take everything—Mother’s fear, her anger, the fire, and the blood. Let it all come down on me. No matter what I have to do, I’ll never let Arien be hurt like this again.

“I’m going to keep you safe,” I tell him. “I promise.”





Chapter Two


Greymere on tithe day hums like a hive. The air is pollen bright. The townspeople’s voices are as loud as a chanted litany. Arien and I walk through the crowd toward the village square. Everyone waits, their arms laden heavily with sacks of grain, baskets of fruit, bolts of neat-hemmed linen cloth.

We take our place at the end of the line, and I bend to set our basket onto the ground beside my feet. When I straighten, my knees give a sharp, fierce ache. I hiss between my teeth, and Arien looks at me, concerned.

“It’s fine.” I stare down into the basket at the jars of preserves. “I’m fine.”

The cuts still seeped fresh blood this morning. There were so many pieces of glass, and they went so deep that I don’t know if I’ve picked out all the splinters. I rewrapped my knees, then put on my thickest wool stockings to hide the bandages.

I notice Mother on the opposite side of the square. She and the village keeper are beside the altar. A canvas cloth is spread on the ground with all her paints and brushes set out neatly. She runs her hands over the icon, her touch reverent, as she checks for wear. She’ll work the whole day to repair it, a chore she does every season. Add more color, then smooth and varnish the wooden frame.

Later, when the sun is lower, we’ll all gather in a circle at the altar with our hands pressed to the earth to make observance to the Lady.

Arien touches my arm, drawing my attention back to him. “Leta? I—I’ve been thinking.” He leans in and softens his voice. “What if, after the tithe, we didn’t go home? What if we didn’t go back, ever? You know Mother wouldn’t stop us.”

He rubs at his blistered fingers, then his gaze drops to my covered knees. I force a smile. “Should we build a house in the tallest tree of the forest? I’ll make us a quilt from dandelions and cook toadstool stew for our dinner. The birds can comb our hair.”

Arien scrunches his nose, the way he always does when I tease him. “I’m serious.”

“Where would we go, if we did leave?” The word feels strange in my mouth. It’s the first time either of us has spoken it aloud.

“We could stay here. We could stay in the village.”

The thought is vivid, threaded with gold. I look at the buildings surrounding the square. The healer’s thatch-roofed cottage with flower beds beneath the front windows. The store with barrels of flour and bolts of cloth. We could work in the store. I’d weigh sugar while Arien measured lengths of cloth. Or help in the healer’s garden. Tend her flowers, gather the petals and leaves she turns to medicine.

When I think of how I felt last night as I watched Arien’s hands in the flames, I want to stay in the village. I do. But everyone here already treats us suspiciously. They know how Mother took us in, how our lives have been brushed by death. Once marked, the Lord Under knows your name. That’s what people believe. And if they found out about Arien, about the shadows …

Arien’s dreams aren’t like the magic worked by alchemists, who draw on the golden power the Lady has threaded through the world. Their magic is light. His nightmares, full of shadows that come alive, are more like the power that comes from the Lord Under. Arien is not like that, not dark and wrong and terrible … But as soon as someone heard his cries, or saw his eyes turn black, they’d think he was. They’d call him corrupted. They’d fear him.

“I promised to keep you safe.” I stare down at my boots, scuffed by dust. I can’t look at Arien, at the tentative hope in his eyes. “I don’t know if you’d be safe in the village.”

“Then we’ll go somewhere else, somewhere far away.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Arien sighs, frustrated. The line starts to move, and I bend down to pick up the basket as we shift forward.

Across the square, a woman steps out of her cottage. Her eyes flicker over the crowd—and us—before narrowing at the ground. She takes something from a jar. A handful of salt. She throws it heavily into the street, then draws her salt-crumbed fingers across her chest. Two fingers, left to right, a line across her heart. The symbol of the Lady: a protection against darkness.

“Why did she do that?” Arien asks warily.

I look more closely at the crowd. But they aren’t focused on us, or anything that I can see. There’s just a vague, nervous crackle of restlessness, like the air before a storm.