Once we’re inside, he moves through the kitchen. I go along, pulled by his momentum. He opens a door to reveal a darkened space that might have been a parlor, once. It’s less closed up than the rest of the rooms in the house. Sheets drape most of the furniture, but there’s an uncovered sofa against one wall with a small table beside it. A window looks out over the front garden. The curtains are open, and an unlit lantern rests on the sill.
Rowan collapses onto the sofa with his knees drawn up and his hands shoved against his face.
“You can go now.” He gestures roughly toward the doorway. Blood drips down his fingers onto the floor. “I’ll be fine.”
I grab hold of his arm and turn it upward, revealing a deep, rough-edged wound. “You are not fine. This is not fine.”
He slumps forward, coughing wetly, then makes a choked sound. I dart into the kitchen and snatch up the tin bucket that Florence uses when she cleans out the stove ash. I run back to the parlor and shove it into his hands. He clutches it, white knuckled, and folds over farther. I hesitate, then put my hand on his back.
“Don’t.” Rowan’s protest cuts to more rasped coughs. He begins to retch up mouthfuls of filthy, ink-dark water. My stomach twists. Revolted, I stare out of the window, so I don’t have to watch him.
“The Corruption, it’s inside you, isn’t it?” I start to shiver uncontrollably. “It’s poisoning you.”
“Yes.”
“You knew. All along, you knew, but you kept it from us. Was your family poisoned, too? Is that what killed them?” I turn on him. “If Arien gets hurt because of your secrets, I’ll—”
“He won’t.” He coughs, choking out more black water. He spits, wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “It won’t hurt him like it hurts me.”
I take the bucket, go outside, and tip it out into the garden. Another wave of dizzy nausea washes over me. I swallow hard. Take a slow, deep breath of hot night air that smells of pollen and leaves.
When I go back into the parlor, Rowan has lit the lantern. The top drawer of the table beside the sofa is open. Inside are bandages, cloths, and a jar of the honey-sweet salve that Clover used on my knees. He’s cleaned the cut and wrapped a neat length of linen around his arm. It’s tidy and careful and practiced, just like when he tended his wounds at the wayside.
I sit down beside him. “Promise me—on your life—that Arien isn’t going to end up like you.”
“My life isn’t worth that much.” He sighs, adjusting the knot that holds the linen in place. “He won’t be harmed. The Corruption only wants me.”
“Let me see that.” I look at his wrist. Blood has started to seep through the bandage. I take a cloth from the drawer and hold it against his arm. He tries to pull away, but I put my other hand on him until he stays.
“I’ll get Clover. She can mend you.”
“No. It doesn’t work on this.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t work?” I peel back the cloth. The bandage is stained. Not crimson, but black. And it’s not like blood. It’s darker. Thicker.
“Clover’s magic doesn’t work on me for the same reason it doesn’t work on the Corruption.”
I’m so horrified I can barely speak. I remember the water in his mouth, the hiss of his voice. “You don’t just want to mend the lake—you want to mend yourself.”
“They’re one and the same. Clover believes that if they cast the spell at the place the blight began, on the shore, then it should mend the blight everywhere.”
“Does she know you’ve been doing this between the rituals?
“She knows there’s a connection between the Corruption and my blood. That it reacts to me. But I haven’t told her or Florence about the tithes.”
A laugh catches in my throat, threatening to become a sob. “Yes, it would be a shame for them to know. They might worry about you. Ash, Rowan. You can’t hide this.”
“Please.” His face, for the first time, is open and sad and terribly earnest. “You can’t tell them what you saw.”
“You’ve let it take so many pieces of you. What happens when there’s nothing left?”
“Eventually it will kill me.” He’s completely without self-pity. “I’m not afraid of that. There are worse things than death.”
I think of shadows and whispers and deep, dark water. What I was searching for, when I reached out and put my hand against the wall in my room, when I listened to that strange voice. “I had a dream about you. No, not a dream. A vision. I saw you at the lake. I saw you drown when you were a child. I saw you come back.”