Tithe. It isn’t just the rituals when he gives his blood to the ground and the spell. No wonder he couldn’t tell me how many times he’d come here, to be cut and bled and fed to the Corruption.
Terror floods me, icy as the waves. “No, you can’t do this.”
He kneels down. His hands shake as he roughly unties the laces at his sleeve and bares the scarred stretch of his arm. His pupils are blown wide, irises dark as the night. “Violeta.” He gasps out my name as the darkness spreads across his throat, spiraling out from the scars. “Please, just go.”
He puts the blade to his wrist, and all I can think of is the way he looked at me when he gave me his mother’s dresses. The grief in his eyes after he saw the portrait of his family. Whatever he’s done, whatever he is, I can’t turn away from him. I don’t want to leave him alone.
I fall to my knees in the mud beside him.
He drives the knife into his arm. Wrist to elbow, a deep, vicious cut. Blood streams over his skin, over his gloves. It trails his palm, beads the tips of his fingers.
He shoves his hand against the earth, his fingers digging deep tracks through the ground.
The Corruption reacts instantly. Streaks of mud slice up and wrap around him. They curl hungrily around his wrist, his arm, higher. I snatch back my hand before it can touch me. It goes around his throat, over his jaw. His eyes close tightly. His dark brows knit into a determined, pained expression. His breath comes out in shudders.
Patches of mud flake loose from his mouth with each exhale. It slithers, re-forms, covers him again. It’s inside him, in his mouth, his lungs, beneath his skin.
And then—the Corruption, it changes him. His gaze goes cold and feral; his teeth turn sharp. This isn’t just a bloodletting. He’s lost to it, taken over. The darkness spreads and spreads through him, until he’s barely Rowan at all, but some other creature made of mud and moonlight.
A monster.
I stare at him, feeling so helpless I’m near sobbing. I wish for power, for magic, for some way to fight the cruel hunger of the Corruption. But I have nothing. I can do nothing. Then I remember Arien, caught by the dreams that were never dreams. Lost and afraid as his shadows filled our room. How I’d hold him and think of warmth and try to pull him back from the dark.
I take hold of Rowan’s wrist and push my other hand down against the earth. Usually when I touch the ground like this during observance, I feel the light of the world, feel it glow. But when I touch the Corruption, there’s only cold and dark.
“Let him go.” I work my fingers deeper into the mud. Think of summer nights. Of the banked kitchen stove. Of the locked-up garden, pale and beautiful in the moonlight. Let him go, let him go, let him go.
Heat rushes over my skin. A sharp warmth blooms at the center of my palm. I picture a thread, tied from Rowan to me, wrapped around my hand. I don’t understand what this means. I’m not sure it’s even real. But I can’t bear to leave him like this, alone, devoured by the dark.
I close my fingers around the thread and pull.
The tendrils uncoil. The mud separates and falls away. A final tremor goes through the ground; then Rowan slumps back. With shaking hands he scrapes the mud away from where it covers his mouth.
He stares at me, shocked. “Violeta … what did you just do?”
I look down at my hands. I can still feel the residual heat pulsing through my fingers like an aftershock. Shakily, I put my hands back against the ground. I close my eyes and try to reach for that warmth, the thread, the feeling that the darkness heard me when I called out. But nothing happens. There’s only cold mud and an empty quiet.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I did. You looked so alone, and I…” Embarrassment prickles over my skin. “I just wanted to help you.”
“I don’t need your help. You shouldn’t have stayed.”
“Do you want me to leave now?”
His eyes shutter, and he turns away, his gaze fixed on the lake. Then softly, roughly, he whispers, “No.”
We both get to our feet. Rowan wavers for a moment before falling against me. His skin is fever hot. I put my arm around his waist and he makes a sound, protesting, when I touch him, but then he leans against me with a sigh. Slowly, we start to walk back toward the house.
We stagger along the path, his boots dragging through the gravel. I hold him up best I can, but he’s so heavy. My head barely reaches his shoulder, and I’m still numb and blurred from the sedatives. I stumble over my own feet and veer off the path onto the tangled lawn. Finally, we reach the house.