I take hold of him and force him closer. He staggers forward. I kiss him again, swallowing down the taste of poison and blood and lake. And as he kisses me back, I run my handsswiftly over him, searching through his cloak, his pockets, until I find his knife. The silver-sharp blade is tucked neatly into the handle.
His mouth moves from my cheek, to my ear, to my throat. I burn with waiting as I’m held captive by the path he traces, pinpoints on my skin. He pulls at the collar of my dress, baring the curve between my neck and my shoulder. He kisses me there roughly, and desire floods through me in a sudden rush. He’s half-lost to the shadows; he’s ruined and wrong. He’s a monster, yet I want him still.
I have to make him stop.
I have the knife clutched in my hand. My fingers shake as I unfold it. Rowan sees the blade and makes a low, feral sound, too cruel to be a laugh. “Leta. It can’t be stopped.”
“Itcan.” I wrench the laces at his cuff until they’re undone, then push back his sleeve. Try not to think more than one step ahead. His skin. The blade. A cut.
I can’t do this. I have to.
I grab his wrist tightly, but his skin, his arms, hisblood—all of the cuts have reopened. And his blood is dark. Black as ink. Lake water streams from him, from his countless, impossible wounds.
Rowan has no blood left to pay the tithe to the Corruption.
Heisthe Corruption.
The knife slips from my fingers and lands dully on the softened ground. I reach for him, the crescent on my palm throbbing with pain, and put my hand against his cheek. His eyesflutter closed, and he leans into my touch, breathing out a long, pained breath. It sounds full of thorns.
I kiss him. The sigils on my wrist burn. I feel the flare of my faint, weak magic gather in my palms. I picture a thread, knotted around my ribs, tied to his heart. Think of warmth and summer and seeds and flowers. I search desperately for Rowan, for the boy imprisoned in this creature of mud and poison. I know he’s still there beneath the darkness. I reach for him. And for the barest moment, I catch hold. But then I feel him slip and slip and slip.
I try to hold on, but he falls away.
Beneath us, the Corruption spreads. The brambles and flowers and trees are a blackened ruin. The mud slithers around my feet. It all feels sohungry.
“Rowan.” I touch my fingers gently to his cheek. “It will hurt everyone. Florence, Clover, Arien. It will hurt me. You have to make it stop.”
He regards me coldly with his crimson eyes, his skin laced with ever-moving shadows. When he speaks, his voice is the lake. A wash. A hiss. A rush of waves and tide.
“Let them all drown.”
Chapter Twenty-One
My magic wasn’t enough to free him. I raise my hands, but only a few bare sparks rise from my palms. The sigils on my arms are burned clear. I’m a candle, guttered out.
Rowan comes toward me. I go still, but when he reaches me, I shove him as hard as I can. Stunned, he staggers back against the ruined tree. His shoulder hits against the trunk. A scatter of ashen leaves shakes loose around us. I turn and Irun.
“Leta.” He calls after me with the voice that is no longer his voice. It’s a floodwater sound. Swift and brutal. “Leta, Leta, Leta.”
I hear the crush of his feet behind me. He doesn’t run but takes even, measured steps. He knows, and I know, there’s no way to stop this. Fast or slow, I’ll still be overtaken.
I race across the lawn, trip my way up the kitchen steps,and go back into the house. Clover is at the table, drinking her tea as she pages through her notebook, when I burst into the room, panting.
Her eyes widen. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I—Rowan, he—” I fling my arm toward the still-open door. “He’schanged.”
Clover shoves back her chair and jumps to her feet. Her cup tips over, spilling chamomile tea across the floor. She looks past me, out into the garden, and sees the ground, the spread of darkness. She sees Rowan approaching, the Corruption spilled beneath him.
“No.” Her face pales in horrified realization. “Oh no.”
“Go and wake Arien,” I tell her. “There must be some way to stop Rowan, or at least hold him back.”
She nods, her mouth drawn into a resolute line. As she races past me, she gestures to my wrist. “The sigil, the one we used at the ritual.”
I snatch up her pen from the tabletop, push back my sleeve, and hurriedly trace over the lines for the spell I used to help focus Arien’s shadows. I blow a quick breath over the ink to help it dry. Outside, Rowan has reached the edge of the lawn, near the altar.
I hear the heavy thud of Clover’s hurried footsteps in the hallway above. Her voice, raised, as she calls out for Arien to wake up. They come back down the stairs together, Arien barefoot with tangled hair, hurriedly tucking his shirt into his trousers.
