Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(71)

I race across the lawn, trip my way up the kitchen steps, and go back into the house. Clover is at the table, drinking her tea as she pages through her notebook, when I burst into the room, panting.

Her eyes widen. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I—Rowan, he—” I fling my arm toward the still-open door. “He’s changed.”

Clover shoves back her chair and jumps to her feet. Her cup tips over, spilling chamomile tea across the floor. She looks past me, out into the garden, and sees the ground, the spread of darkness. She sees Rowan approaching, the Corruption spilled beneath him.

“No.” Her face pales in horrified realization. “Oh no.”

“Go and wake Arien,” I tell her. “There must be some way to stop Rowan, or at least hold him back.”

She nods, her mouth drawn into a resolute line. As she races past me, she gestures to my wrist. “The sigil, the one we used at the ritual.”

I snatch up her pen from the tabletop, push back my sleeve, and hurriedly trace over the lines for the spell I used to help focus Arien’s shadows. I blow a quick breath over the ink to help it dry. Outside, Rowan has reached the edge of the lawn, near the altar.

I hear the heavy thud of Clover’s hurried footsteps in the hallway above. Her voice, raised, as she calls out for Arien to wake up. They come back down the stairs together, Arien barefoot with tangled hair, hurriedly tucking his shirt into his trousers.

“The Corruption—It wasn’t supposed to do this,” Arien says. He scrubs his face, then quickly rolls up his sleeves to inscribe his arms. He passes the pen to Clover so she can sketch a hasty sigil on her wrist.

Only a moment has passed, but I feel as though I’ve stood here forever with the taste of poison in my mouth and the throb of bruised, desperate kisses on my skin.

We rush outside. Rowan comes toward me—faster now, eager—his eyes intent. He raises a hand, and strands of oil-slick liquid drip from his palms. Not blood. Lake water pours from his opened scars. He’s at the center of the lawn, at the center of the sigil we carved for practice. He crouches down and drags his fingers across the earth. It begins to split. The charred marks fill with mud. The ground slithers and writhes.

I see the next moments unfold before me, like a series of blinks. He’ll close the distance between us. Wrap his hand over my mouth. He’ll smear the poison across my skin. I’ll swallow it down, and then he’ll do the same to Arien and Clover. He’ll take us all to the lake. And meanwhile the wound will open beneath us, spreading to the garden, the house, the village, beyond.

I run forward and throw myself against him with the full force of my desperate strength. He falls; we crash together onto the mud, he on his back and me sprawled over his chest. I hold him down, putting all of my weight onto him: my knees on his shoulders, my hands at his throat. His fingers grip into my thighs, sharp and relentless. He glares up at me. Dark and cold and not him, not him at all anymore.

“Keep him still!” Clover shouts. She and Arien kneel down swiftly beside us. Shadows fill the air, illuminated by bursts of golden light. Arien tries to steady his magic, but it spills loose, uncontrolled, stinging against my skin. But we’ve done this; we’ve done this before. We’ve faced the Corruption. Never mind that we haven’t stopped it. Never mind that this is no poisoned ground but Rowan. This has to work, it has to—because if it doesn’t, there’s only one other choice.

I slip my hand free and wrap it around Arien’s wrist. My power is faint and small and hard to grasp. It’s not enough. It’s never been enough. I bite my lip and suck in a pained breath. Finally, I manage to catch hold of my magic. It sparks, and Arien pulls the shadows taut. The cloud narrows into thread-fine strands lit by Clover’s power. Together, we weave the spell into a latticework that unfolds around us.

Rowan snarls as the magic binds him. He fights me. I feel the grind of bone and muscle and tendon in his shoulders as I struggle to keep him still.

“Violeta.” He hisses through clenched teeth. His mouth is black. Ink stained. “The lake will claim you. It will claim everyone.”

“No,” Arien snaps. He curls his fingers, and more strands of shadows draw across Rowan’s throat. “It won’t.”

We fight him. Arien and Clover and me. Their power. My power. Light and dark and the scraps of my magic. Rowan is snared. The threads of shadow tighten and cut into his skin. He cries out, hurt and furious. And I realize, horrified, that maybe he’s so far gone that destroying the Corruption will destroy him, too.

“You can’t stop this,” he snarls, as if he senses my thoughts. “It’s too late.”

Clover shoves her palms flat against his chest and unleashes a flare of light against him. He jolts, then his grip on my thighs slackens. He sinks back against the ground. His eyes close. Everything goes hauntingly still.

I shout in panic. “Is he—?”

“Of course not.” Clover puts her fingers against his throat and checks his pulse. “He’s not dead. Just unconscious.”

I take hold of his hand, trembling. His fingers are blackened, the skin slick. At his wrist, the scars still bleed dark. I lower his arm against the ground, so the wound is on the earth. I wait for the Corruption to take its tithe from him, the same way it has, all the times before.

But it doesn’t.