Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(45)

When I’m finished, I look down at the new mark. Once I’ve done this, I can’t go back. The sigil will be marked on me forever. If this works, then I’ll have committed Arien—and myself—to facing the Corruption at the next ritual. But if I refuse to help and the ritual fails, then Rowan will pay. First with his blood, and then with his life.

There is no other choice.

Arien reaches for the jar, and we take hold of it together. “First, close your eyes. Then you just … listen.” He glances shyly at Clover. “Is that right?”

She smiles and places her hands over mine. “Yes. That’s perfect.”

“It’s always there for me,” Arien goes on. “But you might need to reach further. Feel it inside your chest, then picture it at your hands, and on your skin, making the shape of the spell.”

An ache fills me as he proudly explains how to call on the power. It’s such a reversal of those nights in the cottage when he was so uncertain and afraid. He’s had to hide it for so long, but this magic has always been part of him.

“Okay.” I close my eyes. “Teach me how to cast the spell.”





Chapter Fourteen


I sit alone by the altar after everyone goes back to the house. I blow out the candles and watch as wax pools around the soot-smeared wicks. Smoke covers the icon like a veil.

The spell to focus my power worked. When Arien and Clover cast the spell they’re going to use to mend the Corruption, the sigil burned on my wrist and power unthreaded from me. Still faint, still weak, but it was enough. With my help, Arien kept hold of his magic. His shadows wove neatly around the glass as light spilled from Clover’s hands, and the water turned clear.

Afterward, Clover gave me the pen to keep. It’s in my pocket, and the small weight of it feels like another marker of how irrevocably everything has changed.

Rowan has stood far back in the garden, beneath an arbor of white-flowered elder trees, watching our practice without comment. Now he comes over to sit down beside me at the altar. Gently, he reaches for my arm. “Can I see?”

I nod, and push back my sleeve to show him the spell inscribed on my wrist. “What do you think? Have I done well, or will I need another writing lesson?”

He frowns at my teasing. Then he tentatively touches the mark. A few tiny sparks of magic scatter into the air between us. He watches them fade. “You’re far beyond anything I could teach you, Violeta.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You might give me some advice on how to split kindling. You missed observance while you were cutting all that firewood.”

Scowling, he turns to the altar. He touches the earth for the barest moment before he sits back, rubbing the dirt from his hands.

I laugh. “You know, you’re supposed to chant.”

“I don’t like to sing when people can hear me.” He picks up some fallen petals from the ground and drops them beneath the icon. His eyes are distant. “Anyway, my observance is different.”

An image flashes through my mind. The altar in the parlor. Rowan kneeling with his palms to the bare floor as the dual icon looms over him. “You really worship the Lord Under?”

He arches a brow. “That icon has two figures. All the noble houses have one similar. My father, and every lord before him, they’ve all worshipped there.” He picks up another handful of flowers. “That altar, it’s a reminder for me: I’m bound to this land and all within it, their lives and their deaths. I’m still their lord, even if they all think I’m a monster.”

I have a sudden, destructive urge to tell him what the Lord Under has offered me. Because Rowan and I have looked into the same shadowed dark and made the same desperate choices. But I can’t. No matter what I did in my past, no one can know about this.

All I can say is, “I think I understand. I wish the others did, too. Everyone is so busy fearing you that they don’t see it—how much you care for them.”

Slowly, Rowan reaches toward me. His fingers are smeared with pollen from the flowers. I hold my breath as he traces the line of my throat, a dozen images flickering through my mind of what he might do next—of what I might want him to do.

But then he hooks his fingers beneath the ribbon around my neck. He draws out the key and curls his fingers over it. I try to move back, but he tightens his grip and the ribbon snags. Laughing, he gives it a little pull, tugging me forward. “I knew you’d taken this. Violeta, you’re such a thief.”

I reach to my neck, trying to unfasten the knot. “Do you want it back?”

“No.” He pulls on the ribbon again, then the key slips from his hand and thumps against my chest. The scrolled iron is warm from being against my skin. I can feel the thrum of my pulse in my throat, in the place where he touched me.

Rowan gets to his feet. He looks toward the path that curves away from the house. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

I stand up unsteadily and take his offered hand. He leads me farther into the garden. We push through a bank of grass, the seed-filled ends almost as tall as my head. Everything is dried out by the midsummer sun and heated air. We follow the path for a long time, and then we reach the wall. The gate, covered in vines.

When I was here last, when I followed him through the dark, the garden was all silver and shadow. Now it’s lit faintly by the twilight, the air faded and otherworldly, like an illustration from the book he gave me.