The world comes awake, blink by blink, sound by sound. Someone takes my hand. Arien. He’s crying, too. “I thought you were lost. I thought you’d be gone forever.”
“No,” I manage faintly. “Not forever.”
I try to move, try to unfold. It takes a long time. I put a shaking hand against the ground and push myself upright. Nausea surges through me. My lungs go tight. I can’t breathe. I begin coughing, then can’t stop, turning on my side as a wash of bitter, ink-dark water rushes from my mouth.
I can’t—I can’t—
All I can feel are claws, and teeth, and my skin being torn apart.
Rowan gently rubs my back as I struggle to catch my breath. I dig my fingers into the earth and curl forward as I choke and spit out the endless mouthfuls of poison. Finally, it stops. I try to scrub my mouth clean against my wrist, but I’m smeared all over with blood and dirt. I spit again, then slump down weakly, sprawled out with my back to the earth, my face to the sky.
Rowan folds his sleeve over his hand and wipes my face. Then he smooths back my hair and touches my sweat-damp cheek, looking at me as though he isn’t sure I’m real. “Leta. You’re home.”
I try to smile up at him, but instead a sob slips out. My eyes blur, and I press my hands against my face. I feel like something broken that’s been put back together imperfectly, the cracks sealed with gold paint. Mended, but changed. I can still feel the dark all over me. Inside me. The way the creatures tore me apart. The last terrible breath I took before I was devoured.
Florence tucks a blanket around my shoulders, and I curl into it gratefully. Clover kneels down beside me. She takes my hands between her own; her fingers alight with magic. Her power is warm against my skin, but the heat does nothing to cut through the chill that’s overtaken me.
“You’re safe,” she says, her voice heavy with tears. “Oh, Violeta. I’m so glad you came back.”
I slowly sit up. Rowan puts his arms around me and I rest against him, my fingers clutched weakly in a fold of his mud-stained cloak. I look out across the shore. The ground is still dark, the wound that opened and let me into the world Below still cuts through the earth. But everything is still. As though it’s waiting.
I turn to Arien and Clover.
“You can mend it now.” I don’t have words, yet, for what I saw. For what I did. Perhaps I never will. “It’s safe.”
They exchange a look, then rise to their feet. I wait by the trees, just as I did on the night of the first ritual, and watch them walk down to the water. I can’t stop shivering. Rowan holds me and strokes my hair, cards the tangles with his fingers. He murmurs to me as he picks loose leaves and bits of moss, all the pieces of forest and lake that are woven through my curls.
“You were brave.” He whispers it over and over, and I let myself fall into the rhythm of his words. “You were brave, you were brave.”
“I’m so cold.”
He holds me tighter, close against his chest. “I’ll keep you warm.”
“Here.” Florence takes another blanket from her basket and wraps it around both of us. She keeps her hand on my shoulder as we watch Arien and Clover work their magic on the shore.
Arien bends to the ground. Shadows unfurl from his hands, careful, controlled. They weave a delicate latticework across the mud as Clover presses her fingers to the earth. The web of shadows begins to glow as light streams from her palms.
The ground is still. No creatures rise. It won’t fight them.
I think of that night, long ago, when Clover put her hands over my hurt knees. She and Arien touch the ground in the same way. Gentle, gentle. A press. A whisper. And it is mended.
Once again, the shore turns to smooth earth. In the pale forest, more new leaves unfurl from branches.
The blackness, the Corruption—it’s all gone.
A thread of light glimmers over the horizon as the moon dips low in the sky. The clouds thicken, and raindrops start to settle on my skin and hair like a veil. A scatter of sparks drifts from my hands as the power granted to me by the Lord Under gives a final, bright shimmer. Then it goes dim. It’s just my magic again now. Small and soft, the barest traces.
“It’s done.” My throat and chest and mouth feel scorched. “We’ve mended it.”
Rowan takes my hand. “Yes, my love, it’s done. We can go home.”
Home. All I want is to go back to the house, scour myself clean, and sleep for a dozen nights while a fire burns in the hearth. Rowan helps me up. He puts his arm around my waist, holding me as we make our way back through the garden. The others follow; I hear their footsteps and the relieved murmur of their voices.