Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(54)

“He spoke to her.” I recall the whispers I heard in the dark. How the Lord Under drew me out through the halls. Follow.

“She thought it was a nightmare. She’d had so many of those since my father died. But the next day, I found her at the lake. Drowned. And the darkness that had been in the water had spread onto the shore beneath her. In the village, everyone said I had killed her. That I had killed them both.”

“If he had the power to take their lives, then why didn’t he just claim you, instead?” My stomach sinks as I understand the reason. “He took them to punish you.”

Rowan nods. Even after what happened with Arien today, it still shocks me to realize the depths of the Lord Under’s ruthlessness.

“And then Elan began to hear the same voice. The Lord Under meant to take him, too. I’d promised him anything, after all. Once I knew what was happening, I was desperate. I had to find a way to protect Elan, to keep him safe. I’d heard stories of people who used an offering of blood to call on the Lord Under. So I tried to summon him.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to our altar in the parlor. I lit the candles. I cut my hands and let my blood fall on the floor. But he never came. I stayed with Elan in his room every night, and tried to hear the voice, but only Elan could hear it. He told me it wanted him to go to the lake. So I went there. I went to the place where my parents had been found, the same place they had found me, all that time ago. I cut my arms this time and bled into the ground. When that didn’t work, I…”

He raises his hand to his throat and traces his fingers across the scars.

“You cut—You tried to—” I fall silent, struck cold by the horror of what he did.

“Yes, I meant to end my life.” He looks at me, his face shocked, as though he didn’t mean to speak so plainly. “I didn’t want to die and leave Elan alone. But I knew if the Lord Under didn’t take me, then Elan would be lost.” He shakes his head. “But when my blood touched the Corruption, it changed. It was like it woke up. It started to spread. It was hungry. I could feel it, what it wanted, and I knew it would spread to the house, to claim Elan. I had to stop it. I put my hands into the earth, like I was at observance, and the darkness went inside me instead. Afterward, I was like this.” He motions to the darkness around his scars, the poison beneath his skin. “And when Elan told me the voice had gone quiet, I thought I’d saved him.”

“But if it worked”—I feel terrible even asking, but I have to know—“what happened to Elan? How did he die?”

“To keep him safe, I had to keep going back to the lake. The Corruption would stir, and the poison inside me would call, and I knew if I didn’t let the Corruption claim more from me, it would spread, and it would hurt Elan. But each time I gave my tithe, I took on more of the darkness. I wrote to the Maylands for an alchemist, to see if there was anything else that could be done. They sent Clover, but before she arrived…” Rowan closes his eyes as tears trail a slow path down his cheeks. “One night when I went to the lake, Elan followed me. He saw what I was doing and tried to stop me. And when he stepped onto the shore, it was like he was entranced. He started to walk into the water, and I tried to pull him back. Then the darkness changed me. I was still there, but alongside me was this other thing. I couldn’t do anything to stop him. I didn’t want to stop him. I watched him drown, and that terrible, poisoned part of me was pleased.”

He’s crying in earnest now, though he fights to hold it back. I reach out to him, feeling sick, thinking of the cold, lightless silence at the bottom of the lake.

“Rowan.” I wrap my arms around him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He struggles for a moment, trying to move away, then he relents and leans against me. “I was ready to die for Elan,” he says, the words ragged between sobs. “But in the end I just let him go.”

His hand goes to my waist and he pulls me closer, his fingers clutched into the fabric of my nightdress. He presses his face into my shoulder, and I rest my cheek against his hair. I’m almost certain he’s never let anyone comfort him like this before. His shame, his grief, is like an open wound, and I know there’s nothing I can say that will take away the hurt. So I just hold him. I hold him, and I let him cry, like he did with me in the garden.

We stay like that a long time, then he takes a deep breath and roughly wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “It wasn’t a lie when I said everything you’ve heard about me is true. My family, they’re all dead because of me. Even if it wasn’t by my hand, I still killed them.”

“No. You made a mistake, a terrible mistake.”

“How can you be so kind after what I’ve done, Violeta? When I’m to blame for the Corruption?”

“That night in the garden, when I told you how I’d traded my magic for Arien, you understood me immediately.” I remember his words. There’s no fault in what you did. “You were afraid. You wanted to protect your brother. I would have done exactly the same.”

Rowan is a monster. He’s put all of us, especially Arien, in terrible danger. But I can’t hate him for it. Because when I look at him, all I can see are my own choices. I have been in those same shadows. I have faced that same darkness.

And I would go there again if it meant everyone I care about would be safe.