Lakesedge （World at the Lake's Edge #1）
Lyndall Clipstone
To SKC
I promise all the plants at Lakesedge are endemic species
You should be out by the orchard, where violets secretly darken the earth, Or there in the woods of the twilight, with northern wind-flowers shaken astir.
Think of me here in the library, trying and trying a song that is worth Tears and swords to my heart, arrows no armour will turn or deter.
—D. H. Lawrence, Letter from Town: On a Grey Morning in March
Chapter One
There are monsters in the world.
There are monsters in the woods.
They slip inside at night. Crawl through the walls of our cottage. They find their way into my brother’s dreams.
It’s been weeks, longer, since Arien’s last nightmare, but I knew they would come tonight. All day it’s followed me, that familiar heaviness in the air. I can feel them coming even before he does.
I’m still awake. Curled up on my narrow bed in the small, plain room we share. Watching him. Waiting. It’s past midnight. A hot night, airless, even with our window wide open.
“Violeta?”
He calls my name and reaches out as the darkness rises through him. Shadows spill from his hands like unfurled ribbons, shrouding the floor with an inky mist. He looks at me with eyes gone solid black; they change when he dreams, and those blank eyes in his frightened face are so wrong. Arien is gentle and sweet. This darkness shouldn’t be in him. It shouldn’t be him, and yet—
I move toward him as the shadows cloud over us, filling the room. At first they’re smoke, a haze that thickens. Then they build and build, until all the light is gone, and there’s only me and Arien and the gathering dark.
“Leta?” He calls for me again, sounding frightened. Then his voice changes to a drawn-out snarl. “Leta, Leta.”
I take his hand, starting to tremble, hating myself for it but unable to stop. Darkness pours through our clasped fingers, blotting out the moonlight. The shadows are like midwinter frost against my skin, a cold that burns.
I cling tight to Arien, whispering to him, “I’m here, I’m here,” not letting go even when he growls viciously and starts to claw me. He scrapes my face, my throat, my arms. I bite back a cry at the pain, grabbing his other hand before he makes the scratches worse.
He’ll hurt me more than this. I push the thought away, swallow it down until my mouth tastes of copper and salt. He’s my brother. He would never, he won’t—
More shadows come, faster now, violent, and I hold Arien close against me as they wreathe us, winding tighter and tighter. They’re like vines, like thorns. I feel the darkness all over me, feel it slip and slither inside my skin. Panic knots my stomach and there’s a scream caught in my throat. I take a deep breath and try to speak calmly.
“Arien, my love, you’re safe, you’re safe.” The same words I’ve spoken over countless nights. Ever since the dreams began. Ever since we came to live here.
This is my seventeenth summer, Arien’s thirteenth. Mother found us on the road beside the Vair Woods. Arien was a baby, and I was old enough to tell her our names—Arien and Violeta Graceling—and that our parents were dead, but little else. Whatever happened to send us into the forest at midwinter … I don’t let those thoughts in too closely.
Fire to burn out the infection. Sparks that cut through the night sky. The scent of ash. Trees outlined against the moonlight. A whisper through the branches.
I still remember the way Mother’s hand cupped my cheek for the first time, her fingers streaked with paint from the icons she made. The way the winter sun gleamed over her corn-silk hair as she bent toward me. The smell of linseed oil.
She picked up Arien and took my hand and brought us back to her cottage.
The Lady sent you to me, Mother told us once. At first it didn’t sound like a threat. But we have spent our entire lives here, almost. Things are different now.
Now all I know is that I can’t let my brother be overtaken by this terrible darkness. No matter how much it frightens me, I have to protect him. “It’s a dream, Arien.”
“You can’t make it stop, Leta. You can’t—”
He spits the words between bared teeth. I want to flinch away, but I force myself to be still. Arien’s voice, the way he fights me … it’s not him. It can’t be him. I have to help him through this. He has to come back. I won’t let him stay lost in the dark.
“It’s a dream, Arien. This isn’t real.”
“You can’t make it stop.”