Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(70)

It’s not going to kill him.

It’s going to ruin him.

The Corruption wants to devour and devour and devour. It will take him over until all that I know and love of him is destroyed. He won’t be dead, but he’ll be consumed, entire. Unless I can draw him back.

I take hold of his shoulders and shake him, hard. He barely flinches.

“Fight it.” I tell him. “You have to—”

I let out a cry as Rowan grabs a handful of my hair, winds it around his wrist, and pulls. The pain is sharp, awful; it steals my breath. I knot my hands into his cloak. At first I think I’ll push him back, away from me. Instead, I drag him closer until his face is only a breath from mine.

I kiss him.

He tastes of the lake: silt and salt and the copper of old, dark blood. Of water and leaves and stolen things. He kisses me as if he wants to devour me. I kiss him back. Fiercely, desperately, as if this could solve everything.

He makes a sharp, wretched sound against my mouth. The monster, the boy, the monster. My skin burns with magic and heat and longing. He drags his hand down my body, rib by rib, until he reaches my waist. Then his fingers dig hard against me, tight enough to bruise.

All around us the ground churns and splits as the poison spreads farther through the garden. I wrench myself free. Rowan’s teeth cut against my lip as I pull back. I lick away the blood and we stare at each other, inches apart, our breaths stuttering. The taste of the lake is on my tongue, and my hair is still knotted around his clenched fist. Lines of poison wreathe his throat, there, gone, there again.

Rowan looks at me, and for a moment he’s returned to himself. His gold-flecked eyes are full of tender heat. Wary and confused and afraid and human.

“Leta.” Even now, tinged with ruin, my name from him is still like magic. “Leta, I—”

He blinks. Blackened water trails, like tears, from his eyes.

“Rowan.” My heart beats out a sharp, frantic rhythm against my ribs. “Please.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t.”

This has to stop. He has to stop.

I take hold of him and force him closer. He staggers forward. I kiss him again, swallowing down the taste of poison and blood and lake. And as he kisses me back, I run my hands swiftly over him, searching through his cloak, his pockets, until I find his knife. The silver-sharp blade is tucked neatly into the handle.

His mouth moves from my cheek, to my ear, to my throat. I burn with waiting as I’m held captive by the path he traces, pinpoints on my skin. He pulls at the collar of my dress, baring the curve between my neck and my shoulder. He kisses me there roughly, and desire floods through me in a sudden rush. He’s half-lost to the shadows; he’s ruined and wrong. He’s a monster, yet I want him still.

I have to make him stop.

I have the knife clutched in my hand. My fingers shake as I unfold it. Rowan sees the blade and makes a low, feral sound, too cruel to be a laugh. “Leta. It can’t be stopped.”

“It can.” I wrench the laces at his cuff until they’re undone, then push back his sleeve. Try not to think more than one step ahead. His skin. The blade. A cut.

I can’t do this. I have to.

I grab his wrist tightly, but his skin, his arms, his blood—all of the cuts have reopened. And his blood is dark. Black as ink. Lake water streams from him, from his countless, impossible wounds.

Rowan has no blood left to pay the tithe to the Corruption.

He is the Corruption.

The knife slips from my fingers and lands dully on the softened ground. I reach for him, the crescent on my palm throbbing with pain, and put my hand against his cheek. His eyes flutter closed, and he leans into my touch, breathing out a long, pained breath. It sounds full of thorns.

I kiss him. The sigils on my wrist burn. I feel the flare of my faint, weak magic gather in my palms. I picture a thread, knotted around my ribs, tied to his heart. Think of warmth and summer and seeds and flowers. I search desperately for Rowan, for the boy imprisoned in this creature of mud and poison. I know he’s still there beneath the darkness. I reach for him. And for the barest moment, I catch hold. But then I feel him slip and slip and slip.

I try to hold on, but he falls away.

Beneath us, the Corruption spreads. The brambles and flowers and trees are a blackened ruin. The mud slithers around my feet. It all feels so hungry.

“Rowan.” I touch my fingers gently to his cheek. “It will hurt everyone. Florence, Clover, Arien. It will hurt me. You have to make it stop.”

He regards me coldly with his crimson eyes, his skin laced with ever-moving shadows. When he speaks, his voice is the lake. A wash. A hiss. A rush of waves and tide.

“Let them all drown.”





Chapter Twenty-One


My magic wasn’t enough to free him. I raise my hands, but only a few bare sparks rise from my palms. The sigils on my arms are burned clear. I’m a candle, guttered out.

Rowan comes toward me. I go still, but when he reaches me, I shove him as hard as I can. Stunned, he staggers back against the ruined tree. His shoulder hits against the trunk. A scatter of ashen leaves shakes loose around us. I turn and I run.

“Leta.” He calls after me with the voice that is no longer his voice. It’s a floodwater sound. Swift and brutal. “Leta, Leta, Leta.”

I hear the crush of his feet behind me. He doesn’t run but takes even, measured steps. He knows, and I know, there’s no way to stop this. Fast or slow, I’ll still be overtaken.