He looks up at me, and it’s as though he’s seen me anew. Like I’m a seed he planted here in this once-ruined earth, and now I’ve grown into an unexpected flower. He smiles at me, pleased.
He takes off my boots and sets them aside with the toes lined up. He takes off my ribbon-topped socks and tucks them into my boots. Then he looks down at my knees, and pauses when he sees my scars. He slowly lifts his hand, his claws hovering over the marks.
I start to think of Rowan, and even filled with poison—my heart aches. I remember how I felt when the two of us were in my garden on the night I told him about my magic. When he first touched my scars, his hands roughened and warm and gentle, that was the first time it woke up in me—my want for him, my unexpected longing.
“No.” I grab the Lord Under’s wrist. “Don’t touch me.”
Neither of us moves for a long time. I can hear his breath, feel the cold of him against my bare skin. I slowly release his wrist and unfold my mud-streaked skirts, smoothing them back down over my legs.
He gets to his feet and holds out his hand to me. His claws are blackened with dirt from my boots. “Come with me, then.”
I look up, startled, then slowly stand and walk unsteadily toward him, hardly daring to believe I’ve convinced him. The ground is damp and very cold beneath my bare feet. I’m still shivering, and I can’t stop. We stand, facing each other, the hem of his cloak brushing against my toes. He takes my hand, and his thumb strokes a crescent over my palm.
He leans down, until his mouth hovers just above mine. I feel his breath on my lips as he whispers to me. “It will take time, and it won’t be pleasant. You may come to wish you’d asked for the poison, Violeta.”
Then he lifts me into his arms. I let him, though there’s a part of me that feels I shouldn’t. But I’m so hurt and sad and tired that I don’t care.
He’s too close, too real. Pale and cold and cruel. When I lean against his chest, there’s no heartbeat. There’s a wrongness to this. It’s the same way I felt when I first listened to the voices of the souls. A sense that I have witnessed something incomprehensible. I shouldn’t be able to see him or touch him or be here. And yet, now we’re bound more inextricably than ever before.
He carries me through the forest, through the crimson heartwoods of the world Below. The path is bordered with luminous mushrooms that shimmer, ghostly, in the gloom. The branches overhead are strung with fluttering mothlights. They flicker, accompanied by a muted plink plink, the sound of wings against glass.
I reach to my wrist and touch the sigil, feel it pulse gently against my palm. I picture myself back at Lakesedge, in the kitchen, warm beside the stove. Florence with flour on her hands as she bakes a layer cake. Clover with her notebooks and bitter tea. And Arien. My brother, whose magic was strong enough to hold back the Corruption, to keep everyone safe while I went Below.
If I go back—when I go back—I’ll tell him, We did this together.
There’s a pull at the center of my chest, and I think of Rowan, the bright thread of magic knotted between our hearts. I imagine him touching the sigil on his arm, and the ache at my wrist responds with an answering heat. I’ll come back to you. I promise.
Then I let my hand drop away. I curl up in the Lord Under’s arms and put my head against his shoulder. Shadows and mist close in around us, turning the air to the color of storm-hued dusk. We go farther and farther, past groves filled with saplings, past dim hollows carpeted with ferns. Until, eventually, we reach a new part of the forest.
Everything looks different here. As we pass the trees, their bloodred bark starts to change. It’s as though there are two forests, interlaid with each other. One is just trees and moss and mist, and the quiet murmur of souls. The other is … different.
The more I look, the farther we go, the more this second, hidden forest comes into clearer focus. It’s like seeing ghosts of strange, half-faded human things that have found their way down from the world Above. On one tree there’s an icon. Ancient, the paint weathered away to a blurred outline, the frame covered with lichen. A little farther along, there’s a tumble of stones beyond the trees. Four walls, a space that might have been a window, once, and the tall shape of a chimney.
I don’t know why, but I feel like the forest is changing for me. Making itself into a world that is more … familiar.
Finally, we reach a grove, where there’s another path, lined by altar candles that flare alight as we pass, a haze of smoke and honey. The ground slopes upward. As we climb, a strange darkness starts to gather at the edges of the forest. There are shapes—tall and slender and almost human. I turn to get a closer look, but they fade, they slip, and no matter how hard I try to see them, they’re always just outside my vision.