Shadows fill my mouth and lungs, tasting of smoke and ash. I wrap my arms tighter around my brother and cling to him. I shove aside my fear and imagine we are somewhere else, outside in our small garden. I think of sun and flowers. My hands sunk into the earth. The baskets of Summerbloom cherries I’ve harvested all week. I hold the picture vivid in my mind.
There’s a single, insistent pull from deep in my chest. Like there’s a string tied to me, the other end anchored to Arien. Warmth begins to hum beneath my skin. I think of gardens and sunlight. Not darkness, not shadows, not my brother with those blank, inhuman eyes.
Slowly, slowly, the shadows stop coming from his hands. The darkness settles and softens into the corners of the room. I hold my breath until the final traces clear, then sink against Arien with a heavy sigh.
He touches my wrist, quickly pulling back when he feels the raised welts. “Did I hurt you again?”
I close my hand over the marks. “You didn’t. I’m fine.”
Outside the window, the moon is low, pocketed between the thickened clouds. It glows dimly across the collection of stones I keep on the sill. I trail my finger over the one with a ripple that looks like gold, the one so smooth and heavy it fits perfectly into the curve of my palm.
I force myself to breathe steadily, willing my still-racing heartbeat to slow. “You didn’t hurt me,” I say again, trying to reassure Arien, trying to reassure myself. “It’s over, my love. You’re safe now.”
He starts to cry. Loud, angry sobs that echo through the room, through the house. “I’m sorry, Leta.”
I put my arms around him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” Then, knowing I have to say it: “But you have to be quiet.”
He buries his head against me, trying to muffle the sound of his tears. His hair, red like mine, falls across his face. I brush it back from his cheek.
He swallows down a sob as I murmur gently into his ear. “Please, Arien, you have to stop. She’ll hear you. Mother will hear you. Please—”
I cut off sharply as he grabs my hand, his fingers crushing mine. We both fall silent as footsteps echo from the hallway and our door is shoved open, so hard it bangs against the wall. Mother storms into the room.
Lit by the lantern flame, she’s fair and golden, skin dusted with pale freckles, hair that glints as it catches the light. But it’s a cut-glass prettiness, all hard edges. Whatever softness was in her when she first saw us—two lost children in the road—it’s long vanished. Ever since the shadows began.
She snatches Arien’s wrist, wrenches open his fingers. His hands are stained black. The shadows have clung to his skin, the way they always do. The marks are slow to fade, darkening again whenever he dreams. They can’t be scrubbed away, though Mother has made him try countless times.
“Arien.” With her other hand, she catches his chin, holds it tight until he looks into her eyes. There’s a flicker across her face that might be sadness; then the light shifts, and she’s cold. “Not again.”
He twists against her grasp as she drags him forward, out of the room. I rush after them. “Let him go! He can’t help it, you know he can’t!”
“Go back to bed, Violeta,” Mother snaps at me over her shoulder.
She tightens her grip on Arien’s arm, pulling him through the hall as he struggles against her. I’m right behind them. When we reach the kitchen, his eyes dart frantically between the cellar and the outside door. Last time this happened, she forced him down beneath the house. The time before, she locked him out and made him spend the whole night in the orchard.
She thinks if she keeps him in the dark, the shadows will go—as if one darkness will cancel the other. She’s tried so many ways to scour him clean, but none have ever worked. She’s convinced his shadows are evidence of dark alchemy.
But all I know of dark alchemy—that it’s dangerous and poisonous and wrong—doesn’t fit with Arien. He’s not the sinister gloom deep in the forest, or the creeping poison in a blighted field. He’s my brother, and I’ll go with Arien wherever she takes him. I’ll go into the dark with him beneath the house; I’ll go out to the moonlit orchard. I’ll stay with him and keep him safe.
But instead of reaching for the door or the cellar, Mother drags Arien over to the altar of the Lady. She twists his arm until he kneels, then sets a sparklight to the candles on the shelf. They flare bright, one by one.
The Lady made the world. She is the world. In all of Mother’s paintings, she looks the same: golden and brilliant, with bronze skin and long, flowing hair. This icon shows the Lady with her fingers pressed against the earth, dissolving into the light that flows through all existence. The scene is beautiful, but as Arien falls down beneath the icon, a shadow crosses the painting and for a moment, the Lady’s golden fingers seem like claws. The edges of her smile turn sharp.