We sit together, his hand in mine. This new closenessbetween us feels strange; an easily broken thing that I’ll have to treat with care. Lamplight dances over him: his fawn-gold skin, the silver rings in his ears, the waves of his dark hair. He looks so tired, with deep shadows cut beneath his eyes.
With a sigh, Rowan lets his head rest back against the wall. His eyes dip closed. His lashes are two dark crescents over his cheeks. His features relax for the barest moment, then he sits up with a start. It reminds me of Arien. How he’d fight against sleep when he was afraid of his dreams.
“I could—If you want to sleep, I’ll wake you if you start to have a nightmare.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to stay.” My voice turns quiet; I feel shy, speaking it so plainly.
He frowns, but beneath his uncertainty, there’s a flicker of longing. Slowly, he settles against me. I stroke my hand over his hair, thinking of the stories my mother told Arien and me, about how faeries would tie knots in our curls while we slept. After a long time, Rowan’s breath goes heavy. He sinks closer. His forehead presses into the curve of my neck. When I next look at him, he’s asleep. His hands, tensed, slowly loosen. He makes a sound. A murmur that might be a name.
“Elan.” His fingers clench around mine. “Elan…”
I know I should be angry for how he’s brought Arien into all of this. And my anger is still there, but I can’t resent him for what he’s done. Not right now, when he’s here with poison in his veins and his dead brother’s name on his lips.
I put out a tentative hand and brush my fingers gently over his cheek. He says more words that are lost in somnolent incoherence. Then he sleeps on. He doesn’t dream. I feel the feverish heat of his skin against my neck, but I don’t push him away.
Chapter Eleven
Rowan leaves in the faded dawnlight, when I’m still half-asleep. I stir enough to sit up, but he shakes his head before he gently lays me down. He takes off his cloak and drapes it over me. My last memory of the long, strange night is the brief touch of his hand on my shoulder, then his footsteps going quietly away, back up the stairs.
When I next open my eyes, afternoon light shines gold across the window. I’m curled on the sofa, alone. All that happened feels like a peculiar dream, except that I have the cloak, mud stained and still damp. It was real. The strange vision of Rowan’s death. The voice that urged me to follow. The tithe.
And the truth that if Arien can’t help mend the Corruption, Rowan will die.
I sit up and pull the cloak tightly around me, slip the hood over my hair, and fasten the clasp at my throat. It smells ofburnt sugar, of boy, of silt and salt and sweat. I bury my nose against the collar and take a deep breath, then look around the room, blushing at my foolishness even though there’s no one here to see me.
And then I notice that, tucked under the cloak, tucked close beside me, is a book.
I pick it up carefully and take it closer to the window. The cover is patterned with golden flowers, carefully stamped. The title is woven among them, as though each letter were a leaf or petal.The Violet Woods.
It’s close enough to my name that it feels even more transient and magical. As though some strange alchemy took a part of me and transmuted it here. I am a girl. I am ink and paper.
I run my hands over the pages. There are pictures, too, each protected behind a transparent leaf. A princess, sleeping in a tower surrounded by blackberry thorns. A servant girl, wearing a magical dress of moonlight. A faerie queen with wings like mist, floating across a starry sky.
Inside the cover is a small square of card. Two lines, inscribed in neat ink.
You should be out by the orchard,
where violets secretly darken the earth.
The words—violet, orchard, earth—I like how they sound, all strung together. Some leaf-hued, secret place. Only flowersand sunlight. I hold the book close against my chest. My price, for a secret kept.
Now that it’s day, I’m able to see the parlor more clearly. The wallpaper is patterned with curved vines. The sofa is embroidered with roses and bellflowers. And against the opposite wall, still half-hidden in shadows, is an altar.
I step across the room to look at it more closely. The altar is old, much older than the altar in Greymere. Framed in wood, with carved edges that have been weathered smooth. A bank of candles lines the shelf. They’ve been recently burned and are surrounded by rivulets of wax. And the icon itself… I’ve never seen anything like it.
There aretwofigures.
There’s the Lady with her face upturned. Eyes closed, her hair encircled with rays of sunlight. Her gold-tipped fingers in the earth. And beneath her, painted in reverse…
The Lord Under.
He’s little more than a silhouette. A featureless face, head crowned by a wreath of branches. His hands are raised, and his shadowed arms reach upward. His claw-sharp fingers join the Lady’s hands at the center of the icon. And there are shadows—shadows—threaded around his palms.
Everything I’ve tried so hard to forget comes back, sweeping over me in a sudden, hideous rush. The Vair Woods. The frost on the ground and the ice in the air. The shadows that stretched toward me.
The voice.
