“Why are you hiding this? It could help. You could help.”
His words are an echo of what the Lord Under told me. I shake my head quickly as cold prickles over my skin. “No. You don’t want my help.”
“Violeta…” He bends down, until his face is even with mine. He reaches for me, eyes full of concern. This time I let him touch me.
His fingers gently trace my cheek, and for just a breath everything between us feels softer. I realize that Rowan may be the only other person who has seen what I’ve seen. The voice, the shadows, the darkness. The confession is an ache lodged in my chest, sharp against my ribs. I cast around, searching for how to tell him the truth. That the Lord Under offered me power. That I made a bargain with him on a moonlit night in the Vair Woods.
That I might still be in his debt.
“Rowan, what happened when the Lord Under saved you?”
“I told you already. I drowned. I came back. Everything was poisoned.”
“But what did he ask from you in return for his help?”
There’s a flash in his eyes that I can’t read. A mask slip, there and gone. Then the earlier softness evaporates, and he gives me a hard, cold look. “That, Violeta Graceling, is none of your concern.”
But my mind has started to turn, setting together the pieces of everything I’ve seen, and heard, and know. “You told me the Corruption started because of a mistake. It was your family, wasn’t it?”
“No. I am not talking about this—especially not with you.”
“You gave them up in exchange for your life.”
He pushes past me and flings open the door. “I think you should leave.”
The horror of it sinks in. Everyone said that he killed his family, but the truth is far worse. Rowan cheated death, just like I did.
Rowan gave his family to the Lord Under, in exchange for his life.
“I don’t understand. Florence told me your father died after your thirteenth birthday. But if you gave them up when you were a child, then why—？”
His expression darkens, raw and furious. “Enough. I’ll not discuss this.”
Desperation burns hot at the center of my chest. “Did the Lord Under come back to you?”
“He’s the lord of the dead. Only the dead can see him.” He glares at me, then tips his chin to the hallway. “Get out of my room, Violeta.”
When I don’t move, he comes toward me swiftly and grabs my wrist. Magic sparks from my hand as I twist against him.
As he looms over me, his bared teeth look sharp. “I told you to go.”
I try to pull away. His fingers tighten around my arm. We’re so close that when he exhales, I feel his breath, hot, on my skin. I taste ash and salt and blood, as though the poison inside him has spilled loose into the air. I’m not sure if it’s a trick of the light, but the scars at his throat seem to blacken. They look wet, like he’s been cut, like he’s bleeding.
Last night I said I wasn’t afraid of him, but right now I am. All I want to do is run. But instead, I stop struggling and put my hand over his.
“Rowan.” I say his name, say it over and over until it sounds like a litany. “Rowan. Rowan.”
He growls, then shoves me roughly away. I stumble out of the room, turning back to catch a last glimpse of him—poisoned and shadowed and wrong—as he slams the door closed.
* * *
I scour myself in a hot bath until all the mud is gone from my skin. I put on another of the new dresses, this one rose-petal pink with leaves embroidered at the hem, then find a pair of ribboned socks to wear with my now-clean boots. I tuck the key, on its long ribbon, down inside my dress.
The house is quiet as the day stretches toward an indolent summer evening. There are no whispers or shifting shadows. I hold the little icon between my hands and feel the fit of it in my palm as I stare at the walls and floor and hope they won’t change. They don’t. But when I walk past the parlor on my way down to dinner, I pause by the closed door.
I can still feel the power that the Lord Under showed me. The way I was strong and sure, and how I kept everyone safe. A small, reckless part of me wonders what would happen if I went inside the room right now. If I lit a candle and knelt down before that strange, sinister altar.
I go quickly toward the kitchen, trying to push away the want that sings in my fingertips. When I enter the room, Florence greets me with a stack of enamelware plates in her hands. She passes them to me, then balances a pile of folded linen napkins on the top.
“Here. You can set the table.” As I lay out the plates, she looks expectantly into the empty hallway. “Where’s Rowan, anyway? It’s his turn for chores tonight.”