Then slowly, hesitantly, he touches the scars on my knees. He is so gentle. He doesn’t say anything else. He just sits with me and lets me cry until, finally, I shudder into stillness.
The light begins to fade, and the garden turns to velvet in the dusk. Between the branches above there’s a bare space of sky where a few bright stars encircle the new moon. The whole world is quiet.
I wipe my face with my sleeve. “Please don’t tell Arien about what I did. He spent so much time thinking he was dark and ruined and wrong. He’s only just begun to see that it’s not true.”
“I understand. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret. I won’t even demand a book for my silence.”
“You have enough books. But I could probably grow you some more blackberries.”
He laughs, and I lean against his chest. His skin is warm beneath his shirt, and the fabric is stuck to him where he sweat from cutting the wood. And though he held me before, when I cried … this feels different. My magic starts to stir awake; I feel it spun loosely within me. I like the weight of him, close, and how my cheek fits against his shoulder.
“Leta.” He speaks my name in a low, tender breath. “Leta.”
His hands are still on my knees, stroking gently back and forth over my scars. I start to think of him moving higher, how it might feel if his fingers pressed into the backs of my thighs. A throb begins in my throat. It flutters alongside my pulse, then travels lower, through my chest to my stomach. Then lower still. Heat pools within me, aching and tender.
I reach up and trail my fingers along the line of his jaw. He tenses. I can hear the slither and hiss of the Corruption as he breathes. Rivulets of darkness vein the edges of his throat as the shadows uncoil beneath his skin. Magic rises from my hands in a faint, warm glow.
One breath passes, then another. My face is a pale heart reflected in the depths of his gaze. There is only the barest space between us. It would be so easy for me to lean forward, to close that distance.
Scars brush the side of his mouth. How would it feel, that place, if I kissed him?
Rough.
Soft.
Slowly, slowly, I lift my hand and trace across his lips with the edge of my thumb. Sparks light from my fingers, and the lines of poison spread farther, covering his throat and creeping up over his cheeks.
Rowan catches hold of my wrist. “Stop.” His voice sounds like the wash of lake water. “Please, stop.”
“I’m sorry.” I pull away from him, and we both stand up quickly. I brush down my skirts until the gossamer layers of fabric cover my legs again.
“Don’t be sorry.” He’s so quiet. I can barely hear him. “I can’t, Leta. I just can’t.”
I nod, but I’m embarrassed. What right do I have to want this? What right do I have to ask anything from him, when he has already given and lost so much?
I reach for the ribbon around my neck and slip the silken loop over my head. I draw out the key and offer it to him on the flat of my palm. “Thank you for showing me the garden, Rowan.”
He doesn’t move for a long time, only stares down at my outstretched hand. His fingers are pressed against his throat where the darkness is still fading back under his skin.
Then he says a single word. “Anything.”
I look at him, confused, as I realize what he means. “That was your trade? You offered the Lord Under anything in exchange for your life?”
“Yes.”
The enormity of it sends a cold, terrible shiver through me. An offer like that would have meant the Lord Under could set his own terms. He could take whatever he wanted. “Oh, Rowan. I’m—”
“No.” He stops me before I can finish what I meant to say. I’m sorry. Roughly, he folds my fingers closed around the key. “I want to give this to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This.” He gestures to the trees, the brambles, the tangled beds.
“You want to give the whole garden to me?”
I look all around us, at this beautiful, forgotten place. The trees and the brambles, the crooked orchard and the wildflower lawn. The plants are half-dead and gone to seed, but it’s so much grander and larger and more than anything I’ve ever had. Mine.
“Yes. It’s yours.”
It hangs between us, unspoken, that there might be a time beyond the mud and poison and darkness. That on the next full moon the Corruption could be mended. And after that, I’ll have this piece of earth as my own. I’ll plant seeds and pick flowers. Bring this whole locked-up, too-long-asleep place back to life.