Rowan flinches back, shocked. “You have magic.” He’s guarded, but there’s a surety in his words. “That’s what you did last night. You used your magic against the Corruption.”
By rights that power belongs to me.I shiver, remembering the Lord Under’s words. “I don’t—”
Rowan lifts my hand and turns it palm up, then drags hisfingers roughly across my heartline. We both take a breath, and I watch as the darkness uncurls at his throat, along the scars. As the threads of poison lace over him, I feel an echoing pull far down within me.
And the power, the magic, my magic, sparks and burns andburns. Brightness fills the room like a scatter of coals fallen loose inside a stove. For a brief, brilliant moment before the power fades, my hands, my palms, my fingers… they glow.
Rowan clenches his teeth as the darkness spreads across his neck and over his jaw. He closes his eyes, and slowly the lines start to fade.
“Why didn’t you tell Clover you had magic, when she asked you?” He stares down at my hands. “That day in your cottage, if I’d known about this, I would have—”
“You’d have known I was useful to you, just like Arien?”
“That isn’t true. I don’t want touseyou, Violeta. I—” He lifts his hand, but I step back.
“Can we please just forget this?”
“I can understand you not confiding in me. But what about Arien? Why have you kept this from him?”
Because it never happened until now.My magic is a distant throb at the palms of my hands, but I can still feel the way it unspooled when Rowan touched me. The sparks that bloomed from my fingers. When I think of it, I want to shove him away—I want to pull him closer. Why has being at Lakesedge—being with him—made this strange, lost power stir within me?
“You can’t tell anyone about my magic. Not Arien, not Clover. I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Why are you hiding this? It could help.Youcould help.”
His words are an echo of what the Lord Under told me. I shake my head quickly as cold prickles over my skin. “No. You don’t want my help.”
“Violeta…” He bends down, until his face is even with mine. He reaches for me, eyes full of concern. This time I let him touch me.
His fingers gently trace my cheek, and for just a breath everything between us feels softer. I realize that Rowan may be the only other person who has seen what I’ve seen. The voice, the shadows, the darkness. The confession is an ache lodged in my chest, sharp against my ribs. I cast around, searching for how to tell him the truth. That the Lord Under offered me power. That I made a bargain with him on a moonlit night in the Vair Woods.
That I might still be in his debt.
“Rowan, what happened when the Lord Under saved you?”
“I told you already. I drowned. I came back. Everything was poisoned.”
“But what did he ask from you in return for his help?”
There’s a flash in his eyes that I can’t read. A mask slip, there and gone. Then the earlier softness evaporates, and he gives me a hard, cold look. “That, Violeta Graceling, is none of your concern.”
But my mind has started to turn, setting together the pieces of everything I’ve seen, and heard, and know. “You told me theCorruption started because of a mistake. It was your family, wasn’t it?”
“No. I am not talking about this—especially not with you.”
“You gave them up in exchange for your life.”
He pushes past me and flings open the door. “I think you should leave.”
The horror of it sinks in. Everyone said that he killed his family, but the truth is far worse. Rowan cheated death, just like I did.
Rowan gave his family to the Lord Under, in exchange for his life.
“I don’t understand. Florence told me your father died after your thirteenth birthday. But if you gave them up when you were a child, then why—?”
His expression darkens, raw and furious. “Enough.I’ll not discuss this.”
Desperation burns hot at the center of my chest. “Did the Lord Under come back to you?”
