Darkness clouds my vision, and the evening light is swept away. Water rushes over me, followed by a sound. A breath, a hiss, a sigh.
I search again for Arien, but my hands find nothing in the dark. My voice is an incoherent sob that echoes through the shadows. “Help me, help me, help me.”
With a flare of silvered brightness, the Lord Under appears. Tall and sharp and jagged, like the upturned roots of a fallen tree. Streaks of wet, dark shadows trail around him, and there’s a spill of black water as he moves forward. I can’t see his face, but I know—somehow I know—that his eyes are fixed on me. He watches me silently for a very long time as the dark closes down around us. When he finally speaks, his voice is as cold as a midwinter night.
I offered my help already, Violeta. And you refused it.
He’s going to let Arien die. He’ll die, and it will be my fault. No. Indignant anger burns through me. I’ll not beg for his help. I’ll not cower here, small and afraid. I am light and heat and fire.
“You’ll save him.” I grit my teeth and glare at him as power sparks, blistering, from my fingers. “You will.”
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. Then he laughs, softly, softly.
You’re so brave. Be a little afraid—it will hurt.
I reach out, and the darkness wavers. My fingers touch cloth and skin. Arien—his sleeve, his wrist. He takes a sharp breath. I pull him close. I wrap my arms around him. I don’t let go. As the shadows thin, as the light brightens, I brace myself for the promised pain, but it doesn’t come.
Then Arien screams. He screams and screams. We’re back on the shore, released by the Corruption. I hold him in my arms. He screams. Clover and I drag him back from the lake, across the shore and toward the pale trees, where we fall to the ground. He’s crying, his screams changed to ragged sobs.
“Arien?” His hands are stained dark all the way to his elbows, the skin ravaged and raw. They’re charred, like something held too long in the fire, but when I touch his fingers, his skin is cold.
Clover lets out a hopeless, wounded sound. “Oh, Arien. Oh, what have you done?”
Her magic flickers as she runs her hands over him.
“I—I can’t feel—” Tears streak across his face. He drags in a tattered breath. “They’re all numb.”
Arien cradles his ruined hands against his chest. I hold him tightly as he starts to cry again. He shivers and shivers. I want to make him warm, but I’m just as cold. “We need to get back to the house.”
“We can’t.” Arien tries to push me away. “Those things—they’re still there.”
I look back toward the lake, horrified, to see that the creatures have begun to rise up again. And Rowan—he’s there. He’s taken off his cloak, and his knife gleams in his hand.
“We need to help him,” Clover sobs, starting to get up from the ground.
The creatures close in around Rowan as he stands with his arms outspread.
“We are not going to do anything.” I move Arien gently into Clover’s arms. “Stay here.”
I run back toward the heart of the Corruption. It will hurt. The sun has set behind the hills now, and everything is streaked in darkness. I stare out into the night sky above the lake. Black water, black sky, twin moons. I reach desperately for the burned-down scraps of power I have left, feel it heat my palms.
I run across the shore until I’m beside Rowan. He’s cut his arms—both of them. Blood streams from his wrists. He turns to me, and his eyes are crimson, his throat snared with dark. “Get away from me.”
His voice is wrong: low and terrible, like a clotted-over wound.
I kneel on the ground beside him. “No.”
He holds out his hands, bloodied and trembling, as tendrils of earth rise up and tangle around him, gripping his throat until the darkness seems to sink into his flesh. He hisses through clenched teeth.
The creatures come toward him in a rush. One after another, they fall onto him. He chokes out a desperate, hurt cry, but he doesn’t fight, doesn’t move. He lets them come. Their rounded, hungry mouths fasten at the wounds on his wrists. They tear into his skin. They bite at his arms, his chest, his throat. It will hurt; it will hurt.
Rowan sits with his arms flung wide, eyes closed, as the creatures writhe and feast. Cut and bled and devoured. I swallow down my cries, remembering how it was last time. When I put my hand to the earth and thought of warmth and made the Corruption leave him alone. I stretch my fingers toward the ground.