Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge #1)(77)

The altar is all dark. The wooden frame is caked with earth. Swaths of black cover the icon, with only a slice of the Lady’s upturned face visible between the darkness. Her single eye looks up at the skeletal branches above.

I take a halting step forward and go over to the charred remnants of the sigil. This isn’t at all like the ink-dark lake or the blackened shore. This is a whole world made silent. Everything is cold and black and still. There’s no wind. No sound of grass or leaves, no call of birds.

And this wasn’t the only place touched by the Corruption.

I follow the curved path. The ground is still churned, cold and wet under my bare feet. I pick my way carefully across the uneven ground, through tall banks of overgrown grasses, now dead. When I reach my garden, I stop, put one hand on the cold iron of the gate, and look inside. I can’t move any farther.

I made this locked-up place beautiful and alive with my magic. Grew fruit and leaves and flowers. It was never dead, only half-forgotten and half-asleep. But now the brambles are blackened tangles. A tree has fallen across the wildflower lawn, the roots upturned and sharp against the sky. The whole garden is gray and skeletal and empty. The leaves, the fruit, the flowers … they’re all gone.

I sink down in the archway and lean against the ashen remnants of the star jasmine vines. I thought I knew the limits of the Corruption’s horror. But this hits me with a visceral, bone-deep fear.

I put my hand against the ground, and the crescent mark on my palm throbs. I feel the poison that sleeps in the earth. It knows me now. It’s waiting.

Magic stirs beneath my skin. I want to mend this. Make it all awake and alive and safe again. I close my eyes and picture myself on the shore of the lake. The full moon above. My hands in the ground. The whole world dead and silent around me. My power poured into the earth as I slowly bring it back to life.

A sudden rush of wind stirs across the ground. It rattles through the leaf-bare branches, and a sharp pain twinges in my chest. I get to my feet quickly as sparks of magic scatter from my fingers. I swallow, hard, tasting salt and silt and poison.

I will fight this. I will mend this.

I close the gate. I still have the key; I’ve worn it around my neck every day since I found it. I draw it out and slip it into the lock. The rasp turns with a final-sounding scrape. I wrap my hands around the iron rails and lean my face against the bars. I stare for a long time at the destroyed remains of my garden. Watch the shadows lengthen across the jagged ground and fallen trees. The blackened earth turns plum and lilac as the sunset envelops the sky.

When I go back into the house, Florence has set the table for dinner. Fresh bread, olive butter, and a dish of pink salt. Summer squash and sugar peas. And at the center is an enormous layer cake filled with almond cream and glazed with golden syrup.

“Rowan turned into a monster and nearly killed us all,” I say. “The whole estate is Corrupted. I called the Lord Under into our parlor. And you … made a cake?”

“I cook when I’m stressed,” Florence says primly. “It helps.”

I close the door behind me. That, and the still-shuttered windows, gives the space an unfamiliar gloom. We all sit down at one end of the table, gathered close to the stove like we would in winter, though the air in the closed up kitchen is uncomfortably hot.

Arien puts his hand on my arm. “Leta, are you sure about this?”

In the dim light, his face is a pale wisp. His hands are mended now, but marked all over with fine scars that will never fade. In the lamplight, the tracery of slender lines looks like frost laced over a window on an icy morning.

“I’m sure.”

He shifts closer and rests his face against my shoulder. “I don’t want you to go. What if your magic doesn’t work? What if it isn’t enough? Please, let us help you.”

I put my arms around him. He’s grown so much since we came here. I’ve been so caught up in trying to protect him, that I forgot how much it meant to him: to learn how to use his magic, to help Rowan. That night after the first ritual, when he told me determinedly, I want to do this … All of this was a chance to prove himself, and now I’ve taken that away from him.

I imagine myself alone at the lake, with the Lord Under a pallid shadow above the water. My hands in the earth as I fight against the Corruption, the shadows gathered around me. Then I look at Arien and Clover, and remember the feeling of us all fighting together. What we did today—it wasn’t me, alone. It was all of us.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe in this, I don’t need to be on my own.

“All right. On the full moon. All of us will go. We’ll do this together.”

Arien smiles, but his eyes are sad.

“Together,” he says softly.





Chapter Twenty-Three


I go back to Rowan as the house rests in silvered silence. He’s no longer asleep, and inside his room everything has been made tidy, the mud swept away, fresh sheets on the bed. He’s changed his clothes—soft linen trousers and a shirt with the sleeves rolled back and the lacings at the collar loosened.

He sits on the chaise, curled up, his arms on the windowsill and his face turned toward the glass. Night has fallen, and the curtains are drawn back to reveal scattered stars in the sky above the granite-sloped hills.

He turns, startled, when he hears me close the door. I cross the room in a rustle of skirts until I’m before him. He grips the tangled blankets as he gazes up at me. His skin is marked with new, freshly healed scars. All of the cuts on his skin that bled that terrible lake-water blood have closed. There are bruises all over his throat, left from the magic Arien used to hold him still.