“Alone,” he confirms. Then he looks to my hands. “Shall I heal your cuts?”
I scramble to my feet and scrub my bloodied palms againstmy skirts. “No. Rowan needs me. And I can’t afford any more of your help.”
He smiles coldly. “Best of luck with your monster and your ritual, my Violet in the woods.”
The shadows thin, and the light comes back into the room. This is the last time I’ll see him. I’ll have no need to summon him again. The realization comes with a tiny pang of sadness that I try very hard to ignore.
As soon as he fades, I run through the kitchen into the stillroom. On a shelf beneath the jars of tea and garlands of dried flowers is a stack of notebooks. I grab the one I’ve used in lessons and flip through quickly, searching for the right symbols. But as I rifle through the pages, I realize I have no idea how to combine the symbols into a spell.
I hurriedly shove the notebook into my pocket and rush back outside to Arien and Clover. After the darkened house, the sunlight is disorienting. I blink and blink until my vision comes clear. Rowan is still trapped beneath the shadows. He’s awake again, now, fighting against the magic as it cuts into his skin. The ground has torn open all around them.
Arien holds the shadows taut, his teeth set, his eyes closed in a grimace. When he hears me coming, he looks up. At first, the magic holds, and holds, but then it snaps. Rowan tears loose, reaching his hand out swiftly to grab Arien’s throat. They fall down together into a tangle of magic and shadows.
“No!” I rush across the ruined lawn. “Rowan, don’t hurt him!”
My boots sink into the churned mud. The blackened earth seethes and boils around us. It’s angry. It’shungry. Clover casts a burst of light as Arien struggles against Rowan. Darkness spills from his palms, and they’re lost in a cloud of uncontrolled magic.
I fall to my knees and grab for Arien’s wrist. Send my power into him. The strands weave tight, and Rowan is caught again, writhing furiously beneath the snare of shadows. Roughly, I reach into my pocket, then shove the crumpled notebook into Clover’s hands.
“Blood. Salt. Iron. Silt. Mud,” I tell her. She looks at me, confused, but I keep repeating over and over the spell the Lord Under gave me, until the words lose meaning. “Show me how to mark it.”
I bare my arm, but she shakes her head. “This isn’t even a spell. These symbols don’t mean anything. It makes no sense.”
“You have no idea how little sense this makes. Please. It will work, I promise. Do it, Clover, or he’ll be lost.”
She sets her pen to the page and quickly sketches the spell. I copy it onto my wrist, the lines hurried and unsteady, then grasp Rowan’s arm. He’s caught so tightly in the magic that he can’t move, but he glares at me, feral and vicious, when I shove back his sleeve. Tendrils of Corruption drip between his clenched fingers.
“Why are you marking him?” Clover looks at me, her face pale. “Where exactly did you get this spell?”
“Leta,” Arien breathes, horrified. “You didn’t.”
“We can argue about this after—” I gesture to Rowan and the Corrupted ground. “After we’re done withthis.”
Rowan snarls as I hastily write the spell on his wrist between the reopened scars. Then I take hold of his hand and press my palm to his palm, our skin slick with mud and blood. I weave my fingers through his. I close my eyes. I reach.
My power is a low simmer with the feel of a larger flame far beneath it, the strength that waits for the full moon. But when I call my magic, there’s no light, or flowers, or warmth. There’s an awful, hollow emptiness, a terrible feeling of absence. I’m all alone, on an ashen field. The thread of my power winds around me, and it’s red, red as blood. I choke back a sob as the overwhelming loneliness rises up, aching, a wound.
My skin burns, and the sigil on my wrist ignites. The magic comes to me, swift and fast and strong. Sparks scatter through the air, the world turns to fire, but I am cold, so cold. It hurts so much, knowing what I’ve given up to do this, the price I’ve paid for this power.
I grip Rowan’s hand. Put my other hand to the earth, the way I would for observance. But as my fingers sink into the softened mud, there’s no light or glow, none of the warm current of magic that flows through the world. I feel the Corruption. The poison. The endless hunger. The wound, the imbalance that Clover spoke of all those nights ago. And I know I can’t mend it—not here, not now.
But with this spell, I can make it quiet.
Magic fills me—my heart, my lungs, my skin. It hurts. I feelit blister at my palms, spark from my fingertips. I see myself, alone, only ash and decay and darkness all around me.
“Lie still,” I tell it. “Be quiet.”
The ground gives a final shudder. Arien and Clover watch, wide eyed, as the tremors stop.
“Itheardyou.” Arien’s whisper hangs between terror and awe.
I pull my hand from the mud and put it against Rowan’s chest. He looks at me—crimson eyed and poisoned and gone—and draws in a sharp breath. I feel the tremor of his heartbeat. I lean close and bury my face into the curve of his neck. I’m shivering, feverish; my bones arefire. Light flares and everything glows. I try to push away the ache and emptiness, remember a time when my magic was gold and sun and wonder. Slowly, the thread unspools between us. I can do this. I can save him.
“Lie still,” I breathe across his skin; the same words I used on the Corruption. “Be quiet.”
Rowan flinches as the sigil flares like a sparklight set to lamp oil. The thread of my power is knotted around my ribs, my heart; the other end is tied to him. I take a breath. He takes a breath. He sighs it out. My own breath slows, matching his, as though the sigh has passed between us. He looks at me, and his eyes blink clear. Under my palm, I feel the air move through his lungs. There’s no hiss or rush of lake water.
My temples thud with a headache, and my hands begin to tremble uncontrollably. A hot stripe of blood drips from my nose and across my mouth. I wipe it away quickly, but more comes.
