It has to be enough. It has to be worth the risk. It has to.
“I don’t know that I’ll be invited to the Maylands to show off my skills anytime soon. But there you are.” I want to laugh, but tears sting my eyes and ache in my chest.
I clutch the pen tight in my hands for a moment, then throw it down against the leaves. My fingers are smeared with blood from the thorns. I close my eyes. I won’t cry over this.
“Violeta.” Rowan touches the newly leafed bramble again. He picks up the pen and tries to place it back in my hands. When I don’t move, he clumsily folds my fingers around it. “It’s beautiful. Your magic … it’s beautiful.”
“No. No, it’s not. I shouldn’t even—” All I can think of is that long-ago winter. Arien’s heavy weight in my arms. How the wind changed inside the woods and the air turned crystalline with ice and frost.
And then it tumbles out. “There’s more to it, to the story I told the others. When the Lord Under came to us, it was Arien that he wanted.”
Rowan’s expression darkens. “It was his life you gave your magic for?”
I nod. I’ve kept this terrible secret for so long. It’s almost a relief to have it finally revealed like this. “We were lost. It was so cold, and he was so heavy. He cried and cried, and it was awful. Then he stopped crying, and that was worse. That was when the Lord Under came for him.”
Rowan looks down at his hands. At the scars that mark his palms and his fingers. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. He was kind. He told me Arien wasn’t quite gone, but if we stayed in the cold for much longer, he would be. So I asked him to show us the way out of the forest. He picked up Arien and carried him, and he held my hand. He was … gentle. We walked for the whole night through the Vair Woods. Then, in the morning, we came to the road. He laid Arien down. He took my magic. And then—”
I blink hard against the burn and blur of tears as they rise. Rowan reaches out, his fingers brush over my wrist, and the sigil gives a single, muted throb. “You can tell me, Violeta.”
“After the woods, my magic was gone, but that wasn’t all. What I did that night, the bargain I made, it changed something in Arien. His magic. The darkness he has. What he is, and everything that happened to him afterward because of it—it’s all my fault.”
“You were a child.” He hesitates, then goes on. “There’s no fault in what you did when you were afraid.”
A laugh catches in my throat. “If I’d not done it, then we’d never have been able to help you. But what if using my power now will bring the Lord Under back to take Arien away?”
“You made your bargain; you freely gave up your magic to him. I don’t think that can be unmade. As for your help, do you really think that’s all I care about?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” Rowan wipes his thumb across my cheek. “It isn’t.”
I shake myself free of his touch. “I wish Arien hadn’t been the one to wear the wounds made by my choices.”
“You were hurt by it, too.”
He looks toward my arms, his eyes filled with emotion. I think of that day in the cottage when he saw my bruises. How his hands trembled above my wrists. The bruises are long healed now. But all I can think is that it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t keep Arien safe then, or now.
“It was my fault. All of it. Mother, however much she hurt me, I deserved it. It was my fault she was afraid of Arien.”
“You did nothing wrong,” Rowan says fiercely. He’s angry—but not at me.
“I was afraid of him, too. Of the darkness and his shadows.” Roughly, I grab the hem of my dress and pull it up. Between my crumpled skirts and my ribboned socks, my knees are bare. The scars where Clover healed me are snagged across my skin in fierce, deep lines. Rowan breathes in sharply when he sees them. “I deserved it.”
I didn’t cry then, even as the glass cut deep. How could I cry when all of it—Mother’s fear, Arien’s dark-tinged power—was because of me? But now I let the tears come.
I curl forward, folding in on myself. Rowan puts his arms around me. “Violeta. You made a terrible, desperate choice. And you never deserved to be hurt like this.”
I bury my face against his shoulder. Now that I’ve started to cry, I’m not sure I can ever stop. Sobs catch in my throat, and hot tears spill down my cheeks. He runs his hand over my hair, murmuring against my ear. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t, it wasn’t.”