“He’s the lord of the dead. Only the dead can see him.” He glares at me, then tips his chin to the hallway. “Get out of my room, Violeta.”
When I don’t move, he comes toward me swiftly and grabs my wrist. Magic sparks from my hand as I twist against him.
As he looms over me, his bared teeth look sharp. “I told you to go.”
I try to pull away. His fingers tighten around my arm. We’re so close that when he exhales, I feel his breath, hot, on my skin. I taste ash and salt and blood, as though the poisoninside him has spilled loose into the air. I’m not sure if it’s a trick of the light, but the scars at his throat seem to blacken. They look wet, like he’s been cut, like he’s bleeding.
Last night I said I wasn’t afraid of him, but right now I am. All I want to do is run. But instead, I stop struggling and put my hand over his.
“Rowan.” I say his name, say it over and over until it sounds like a litany. “Rowan.Rowan.”
He growls, then shoves me roughly away. I stumble out of the room, turning back to catch a last glimpse of him—poisoned and shadowed and wrong—as he slams the door closed.
I scour myself in a hot bath until all the mud is gone from my skin. I put on another of the new dresses, this one rose-petal pink with leaves embroidered at the hem, then find a pair of ribboned socks to wear with my now-clean boots. I tuck the key, on its long ribbon, down inside my dress.
The house is quiet as the day stretches toward an indolent summer evening. There are no whispers or shifting shadows. I hold the little icon between my hands and feel the fit of it in my palm as I stare at the walls and floor and hope they won’t change. They don’t. But when I walk past the parlor on my way down to dinner, I pause by the closed door.
I can still feel the power that the Lord Under showed me. The way I was strong and sure, and how I kept everyone safe. A small, reckless part of me wonders what would happen ifI went inside the room right now. If I lit a candle and knelt down before that strange, sinister altar.
I go quickly toward the kitchen, trying to push away thewantthat sings in my fingertips. When I enter the room, Florence greets me with a stack of enamelware plates in her hands. She passes them to me, then balances a pile of folded linen napkins on the top.
“Here. You can set the table.” As I lay out the plates, she looks expectantly into the empty hallway. “Where’s Rowan, anyway? It’s his turn for chores tonight.”
I put down the last plate with a clatter. “I think he’s staying upstairs.”
I circle my hand around my wrist, feeling the place where Rowan’s fingers dug in. He’s losing himself to the Corruption. If the next ritual fails, it might just claim him entirely.
Florence frowns, concerned, but then she’s distracted by Arien and Clover coming inside from the garden. They’re both quiet, with worry lined deep around their eyes.
“I couldn’t do it, Leta.” Arien looks from me to the open doorway, where the sigil is still carved out on the lawn, the center lined with jars. “It worked, before, when you were there. But after you left, when I tried again, I couldn’t—”
He goes to the washstand and scrubs and scrubs at his hands. He wipes them against a cloth, then comes to sit at the table opposite me.
“You still have time,” I tell him.
He sighs crossly. “I don’t.”
“You do.” Clover’s smile doesn’t quite reach her tired eyes.“It’s only just past the dark moon. We have time until the next full moon, the next ritual. From tomorrow, we’ll practice harder.”
Florence puts her hand on Arien’s back. “I’m sure you can do this.”
She sets a platter onto the table and begins to slice a loaf of sourdough bread. The food here is similar to our meals in the cottage. Wilted greens, nettle salad, sugar peas, and summer squash. There’s a clay bowl on the table filled with pink salt, a tin pitcher beside it full of mint tea.
Usually, the evenings together in the kitchen feel like a golden pause. A place where we can sit and talk and forget about the lake. Forget to watch the moon as it moves from dark to half to full in the summer night sky. But tonight feels grim and tense, and we all eat in silence.
Rowan comes into the kitchen just as Florence has started to clear the table. I quickly turn to him, my whole body wound tight with apprehension. But there’s no sign of how he looked before when he was changed.
“There you are,” Florence says. “It’s your turn to wash the dishes tonight. Don’t forget.” She goes over to the shelves to collect cutlery and another plate, which she fills from the covered dishes set aside by the stove.
Clover pours out more of the mint tea and passes it to him. “I was going to steal your share of dessert.”
She gives his arm a playful shove, but he only glares at her. Sighing, she goes back to her chair as Rowan sits down beside me. Our knees touch beneath the table, and he moves quicklyaway. We’re no closer together now than when we stood by the window earlier, but somehow, hefeelscloser.
I lower my voice, aware that everyone else can hear me. “Are you feeling better?”
“I’m fine.” He puts something down on the table. A book. My book.The Violet Woods.“You left this in the pocket of my cloak.”
Clover stares at the two of us curiously. “Youworehis cloak?” she asks in a barely concealed whisper. She tries, and fails, to hide her smile.
