“It worked.” He touches a shaking hand to the jar, now filled with clear water. He laughs. “I did it, I did it!”
The water is not just clear in the jar he held, but in all of them. And the sigil he carved is charred, as if something burned the ground. Arien stares down at it incredulously.
I get to my feet and start to back away, scattering gravel as I stumble toward the house. Arien calls after me, confused. “Leta, what’s the matter?”
He doesn’t realize. He doesn’t know that I helped him, that it was because of me the spell worked and the Corruption mended.
“I’m sorry, I have to go.” My mouth still tastes of ash. I can still feel it, that sudden heat that tore through me. I look down at the jars of now-cleared water and flex my hands as sparks of power burn under my skin.
I think of my desperate whisper into the shadows when Arien and I were lost in the Vair Woods. Please help us. And how the Lord Under replied from the darkness: What will you give me, if I do?
I have no magic. It can’t be possible. It can’t.
* * *
In the kitchen, Florence is at the table, dusted with flour as she kneads fresh bread dough. She looks at me and smiles, but I rush past and go down the hallway into the cool, dim dark, past the parlor and toward the stairs.
My room is full of afternoon sunlight. I turn a restless circle and scrunch my fingers into the folds of the cloak. The glass vials of sedatives are still on my quilt, scattered across the fabric like a handful of gemstones. I go from the window, to the corner, to the wall. Shakily, I rest my hand flat against the flower-patterned paper and take a deep breath.
“Why have you come back?”
At first there’s only silence. Then a whisper echoes through the wall.
Not a voice. Just a hush, a hiss. A chill skitters across my back, like a finger scraped down my spine.
I follow the sound out of my room until I reach the end of the hall. Closed doors and locked doors and nowhere else to go.
From the corner of my vision, darkness rises. Water spreads slowly across the floor, a blackened pool under my feet. I wrap Rowan’s cloak tighter around myself, but the cold goes right through it, through my nightdress and my underthings until it’s right against my bare skin. The light turns darker. The whisper becomes louder, taking shape now, until it’s a voice.
The Lord Under’s voice.
The Violet Woods. Violet in the woods. Violeta in the Vair Woods.
“We made our bargain.” I breathe out the word as a shiver, remembering the winter night, when I whispered a plea into the silent forest. “What do you want from me?”
What was it that you said to me? The air changes. A sound—my voice—echoes through the shadows. “Please, I’m not afraid, show me, tell me.”
Are you afraid now, Violeta?
Rowan had asked me the same question as we sat in the dark. Are you afraid of me? I answered truthfully when I said I wasn’t.
But there’s more than one kind of monster in the world. There’s the Monster of Lakesedge. A boy with poison in his veins, leashed to the ruined magic in the ground. There’s the Lord Under. Lord of the dead, of shadows and darkness. He’s here. He’s right behind me. He knows my name.
“I’m not afraid.” The lie tastes as bitter as the stolen sedatives. “I’m not afraid of you.”
I turn and I face him.
He is there. Shadows and shadows and dark. But I can’t see him. I can make out his individual features. Sharp eyes, sharp teeth, sharp claws. I can see the shape of him—the same tall, jagged-edged creature who appeared in the Vair Woods. But though I look and look, I can’t turn the pieces of him into a single whole. It’s as if my eyes won’t allow me to comprehend what he is.
Liar. He makes a harsh, hollow sound that might almost be a laugh. You wear it well, the fear. But I won’t hurt you.
I press back against the wall. He moves forward. A shift and flicker, a shape that won’t become quite real. Shadows wreathe me, and the air is cold cold cold. I think of the lake. The blackened water. The poisoned shore. How the wound tore in the ground when the ritual failed. How the earth rose up and snared Rowan when he put his cut wrist to the mud.
I can’t breathe.
You asked for my help. Did you find what you wanted? His voice is a kiss in the shell of my ear. The boy, the monster, the truth.
“I don’t know.” I don’t know anything anymore. Only the bitten-down taste of my fear.
I think you do, Violet in the woods.
I hold out my hands. Upturned and empty. My skin is cold, but I can still feel the bloom of heat that gathered in my palms when Arien cast the spell. “My magic was gone. It’s supposed to be gone.”