The knock comes again, rapid and impatient. Disoriented, I clamber out of bed and cross the room.
The monster is outside my door.
When he sees me, he takes a step back. He glances at me, then quickly turns away. “You were asleep.”
I cross my arms over my chest. I’m in my nightdress—faded cotton, a badly stitched mend across one shoulder. My hair is snarled into an enormous tangle. “I was asleep.”
“It’s afternoon.”
“It’s been a tiring few days.”
He raises a brow. Then his mouth lifts into the barest smile. “A slight understatement.”
I search his face for hints of what I saw last night at the ritual. The creature he became when he was cut and snared and consumed by the blackened earth. My eyes go from the scars on his face to the ones on his throat. I know it’s there, the darkness, the wrongness.
But in the daylight, it’s easy to think that Rowan Sylvanan is only a boy with a sharp, handsome face and shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes.
He matches my gaze evenly. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t move away.
“Did you wake me up for a reason, or…？”
“Oh. Yes. I’ve brought something.”
He goes back into the hallway. There’s a sound, the scrape of wood over wood, then he returns with a large trunk. As he carries it into my room, his sleeve rides up. He’s still wearing gloves, the same as always. But between the cuff of his shirt and the edge of his glove, there’s a fresh linen bandage wrapped around his wrist.
I think of the way he shoved the knife into his arm. The coldness in his voice when he spoke my name. Get away from here.
He puts the trunk down at the end of my bed. When he notices my eyes on his bandage, he pulls his sleeve back down.
“Clover told me she uses your blood in the rituals.” Even as I say it, my stomach tightens at the thought. “Do you have to cut yourself like that every time?”
Ignoring my question, he tips his chin toward the trunk. “Go ahead, open it.”
I crouch down and run my fingers over the lid. The polished wood smells like beeswax. The clasp is tarnished, but it opens smoothly when I unfasten it. Inside, carefully folded together, are clothes. Enough for a whole summertime wardrobe, packed with paper like wrapped sweets in a jar. Nightdresses and camisoles and pinafores and ribbon-topped socks. And dresses. So many dresses. I trace my fingers over the folds of paper.
“Whose are these?”
Rowan gives me the same look he did when I asked his name, as if the answer should be obvious. “Yours.”
“But I have clothes.”
He looks at the fireplace, where my stained dress is still in the hearth. “I never said you didn’t.”
I close the lid of the trunk and go over to the hearth to pick up my dress. I run my fingers over the torn hem, then trace over the embroidery I stitched around the neckline and cuffs. I was so proud when I made it. The dark green linen sash, the embroidered details. But now all I can see is the uneven hem, the snags and frays where the thread tangled.
“I don’t want anything from you. Except for you to promise that Arien will be safe, and I know you won’t do that.”
Rowan rakes a hand through his hair and sighs. “I meant what I said when I came to your cottage. I’m going to help him. He and Clover have already begun their lessons in the library.”
I think of Arien, how his face lit with longing, with hope, when Rowan made his offer. Then the fear that crowded in when he told Arien what he’d do, if he didn’t go to Lakesedge. “That was a cruel trick, you know. How you threatened him so he’d be forced to come with you.”
“I needed him here before the full moon. There wasn’t enough time to explain the truth of it.”
“And you think that excuses what you did?”
He steps closer and softens his voice. “He doesn’t have to hide who he is now.”
I press my nails so hard against my palms that they dig crescents into my skin. “Don’t act like this is some benevolent gift you’re giving him. If you truly cared about Arien, you’d fight your own Corruption.”
Slowly, Rowan reaches for his sleeve. He pushes it back until it’s past his elbow, and shows me his bared arm. The skin around the pale linen bandage is scarred, old wounds that are torn and ruined and badly healed.
“I have fought it, Violeta.” He says my name quietly, like a word from a spell. “I am still fighting it. And if I had any other choice, a way to do this without your brother, I would take it.”