“I’m not trying to hurt him. He’s mending it.” Rowan makes a derisive sound. “Haven’t you ever seen anyone use alchemy before?”
“Alchemy? But Arien, he isn’t…”
I watch Arien as he goes very still and the air around him begins to darken. Shadows—his shadows—spill out from his hands like water poured from a rapid stream.
Clover rolls her sleeves back. The symbols on her arms are glowing, and light gleams from her palms. She touches the sigil, and magic illuminates the carved lines in a wash of gold. Then she puts her hands over Arien’s and pushes down, until the earth begins to close over their fingers.
“Now!” Her teeth are set into a determined grimace. She shoves his hands farther into the mud. “Now, Arien!”
“This is what you wanted?” My eyes start to blur, and I blink, hard. I refuse to cry. Not here, not in front of Rowan. I owe so many tears that if I start now, I won’t be able to stop. “You wanted to use him against this—against this—”
“Corruption.”
“Corruption?” The weight of the word stays in my mouth. He has a name for the darkness. When I swallow, I can taste it, heavy as the thickened air in the forest clearing, where the trees dripped shadows.
I shake my head, a disbelieving cry caught in my throat. “Arien isn’t—he’s not the same as this terrible darkness!”
Arien turns, and we look at each other across the shore. His face is filled with the same wide-eyed hurt as when Mother put his hands above the candles. His mouth opens, but he doesn’t speak.
“Is that really what you think of him?” Rowan asks. His grip on my arms loosens, and he fixes me with a scathing look. “No wonder he’s so afraid of his power, the way you made him lie and hide. How long were you going to pretend his magic was just bad dreams?”
I wrench free from Rowan’s grasp and slap him, hard, across his face. He stumbles back, his hand to the brightening mark on his cheek. Before he can react, I shove past him and run toward the water. Clover and Arien are hidden now, circled by shadows. I take a breath and plunge into the darkness.
I fall to my knees, into the cold, black mud. Distantly I hear Rowan’s angry voice as he calls for me. “Get back, damn you—get out of their way!”
I reach out and find Arien’s hand.
“No, Leta!” He tries to shake himself loose. “You’re going to mess everything up!”
A jolt slams through me, and heat sears across my skin. I feel as if all my bones are lit up. At the center of my chest, there’s a swift, taut pull, and my fingers grip tight. The space between our hands hums and hums and burns. And the shadows—they calm. They soften.
The unruly cloud folds back on itself. The billows of dark narrow to focused strands that unfurl through our clasped fingers.
And Arien’s darkness—his shadows—the strands curl and thread together with Clover’s magic, neat as a row of stitches. Never before have they been like this. Within his control.
For a moment everything holds. A latticework of magic across the earth, perfectly controlled.
“It worked,” Clover breathes. Then there’s a tremor. The ground lurches beneath us. I lean against Arien, my shoulder on his shoulder, as I try to keep my balance. Clover looks over at Rowan searchingly, her forehead lined with worry. Another tremor rolls across the ground in an elongated shiver.
“Quick.” She jumps to her feet, pulling at Arien’s arm and reaching out for me. “Both of you, get up. We have to—”
The ground splits apart with an enormous heave that sends us all stumbling. The circle Clover carved in the mud is now an open wound.
Rowan strides toward us. He grabs my arm and starts to pull me back. I struggle against him. “You can’t do this; you can’t make him do this!”
He doesn’t respond. His eyes are fixed on Clover, on Arien, on the shifting ground.
Threads of magic trail from their fingers. Clover pulls Arien closer to the newly torn wound. Her magic sparks around them as she tries to help him guide the shadows back into the earth.
“Arien!” I cry. “You have to stop!”
The lake churns, and a torrent of water spills over the tear in the ground. It cascades down through the darkness. Arien leans against Clover. Her hands cover his as they both press against the mud. And beneath them, the ground wrenches farther open, widening, widening.
I can’t let them do this. It’s like the—what did Rowan call it? The Corruption?—like it’s fighting back. Like it wants to protect itself from whatever Clover and Arien are trying to do.