“I want the power you showed me.” Each word to him feels like a risk. The truth is a weight in my chest, heavy as stone. “I want enough power to keep everyone safe.”
“You have a soft heart, my Violet in the woods.”
“Better a soft heart than no heart at all.”
He smiles unkindly, not at all wounded by my words. “You want power. So do I. And there has been so much power in the fear and hurt and blood that Rowan Sylvanan has given me.”
I stare at him, numbed by horror. He’s a thing cleaved into halves. The relentless, cold creature who delights in cruelty and pain, who feeds on it. And the creature who held my hand, who cradled Arien tenderly in his arms as he showed us the way out of the dark.
“So if you want to hurt Rowan, then why did you offer to help me mend the Corruption?”
“Because,” he says simply, “I want it gone.”
“But youmadeit. Why can’t you just unmake it?”
“Imade it?” He gives me a hard, searching look. “Has Rowan not told you the truth yet?”
“He told me everything, including what you did to him. But it’syourmagic.Yourdarkness. You could call it back.”
“It was my magic, once. The Corruption began as a mark—the blackened lake—left from when I saved Rowan from the world Below. Buthewas the one who fed it blood and desperation. It’s changed, gone beyond my control. And his tithes of blood and hurt and fear are the only thing holding it back. For now.”
“You mean if he dies—”
“As things stand, it’s not a case ofif,Violeta, butwhen.”
“When—” My voice catches. I can hardly say these terrible words. “When Rowan dies, the Corruption won’t be gone?”
“No. It will continue to spread, and it will consume your world.”
I put my hand against my mouth. A whole world like the blighted orchard near Greymere, or the grove in the wayside forest. Trees burned, the fields turned to ash, the air laced with wrongness. It’s too immense for me to even comprehend, because at the center of it all lies the horrible fact that Rowan will be gone. That his ruin will only lead to more destruction.
“It will consume your world. And it will—” He hesitates, then goes on. “It will destroymyworld, too.”
A startled sound comes from me, not quite a laugh. “The Corruption is in the world Below?”
“Yes. So you see, I want it mended as much as you.”
“In that case, maybe you shouldn’t have murdered a family because a child broke a promise.” I know I shouldn’t fight him like this, but I can’t hold back my anger. “You’re the one who took it too far. So you should be the one to stop it.”
When I’m met with silence, I realize I’ve grown used to my arguments with Rowan, that I’ve almost come to enjoy the swift exchange of words, our matched tempers. In contrast, the Lord Under is immovable. I wonder, for a breath, what I’d have to do to stir him to anger. If it would even be possible. I shake my head.Why would I want to?
“If I could stop it on my own, I would. I need your help, Violeta. You have magic, and you can see me as no other can, outside the borders of death. I can’t ask this of any other alchemist. Not your friend, not your brother.”
“No, you can’t.” I’d never let him go to Clover or Arien, draw them into the dark with his whispers and promises. “If you want help, then I will be the one to give it to you.”
“Yes.” He lifts his hand, and I go still, but his fingers pause over my cheek. The air stirs, cold, on my skin. “It has to be you. I needyou.”
“You need me,” I repeat. In the shadows, with the candlelit altar and the smell of ash in the air, my words sound like a litany. “You need me.”
It terrifies me, this truth, but buried beneath my fear is the glimmer of another, more hideous emotion.We are connected.There’s power in this. A wilder, more dangerous power than any magic.
“I do.” The water rises and ripples, a blackened wave rushing across the floor. The room seems to fade as the Lord Under glows brighter. White as the moon. White as bones. “And you need me. You want power.”
“I just want to keep everyone safe.”
“And what do you think power is?” With a smile, the Lord Under holds out his hand, palm upturned. Magic sparks in my chest. It sings through me. The full force of what I could have. What Iwillhave. My whole body hums and burns. “You feel it, Violeta.”
I nod, overcome, and watch the light dance across my palms. The airglows. It reminds me—unsettlingly—of how my magic stirred that day when Rowan touched my hand.
