He cradles my face between his hands and presses his lips against my temple; a soft, tender motion that makes tears prickle at the corners of my eyes.
“Leta.” His voice is a drift of sparks that rise into the moonlit air. “Leta, I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t.”
I lean my head against his chest. I can feel his heart, beating fast.
Once again I weigh and measure, wonder what I might give up to the Lord Under in exchange for one single night of power. I think of strength and magic and protection, of everything that I’d have if I made a bargain with him.
I can’t do it. I know I can’t accept his help. But oh, I wish I could.
Chapter Twenty
Lakesedge is silent when we return from the bonfire. Arien sleeps beside me the whole ride home. I help him stumble tiredly up to his room, my arm around his waist, his head drowsing against my shoulder. When I reach the top of the stairs, I look back at Rowan, who is still in the entrance hall. “Good night.”
He smiles at me. “Good night, Leta.”
When I’m alone in my room, I lie on top of my quilts, still in my bonfire dress. Petals scatter from my hair, and I breathe in the scent of ash and pine and smoke. It’s late, almost dawn, but I can’t fall asleep. When I close my eyes, all I see is the house. How it looked when we passed beneath the iron arch of the gateway. Wrapped with ivy, tucked between the hills, one window aglow with lamplight, a curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney.
Home. Lakesedge is my home. The thought rose, unbidden. And now it’s taken root in me. Found a place between heart and rib. Home.
I want it safe. This beautiful, vine-wreathed house. My tangled, half-forgotten garden. My family. My friends. I want to protect it all.
I roll over restlessly, stretch out my hands, look down at my palms. One marked, the other plain. I have two choices, but either way I am damned. I’ll be forced to watch the Corruption take everything away unless I make a terrible bargain with the lord of the dead. Maybe the only choice I have left is how I want the hurt to happen. My eyes drift to the corner of my room, to the place where the dark water first poured down.
“What would you ask?” My voice is a whisper, and each hesitant word feels more dangerous than the one before. As though the Lord Under might come to me, right at this moment. “How much would you want?”
A sound rustles inside the walls. I blink. A breeze blows soft through my open window. The corner darkens, for just a breath. I close my eyes. I think of his hand beside my cheek. How the air grew so cold as he moved closer to me. There’s no voice, no darkness. But I already know the answer. He will take as much of me as I am willing to give. He would have me, entire.
But I don’t want to be devoured.
What can I possibly offer him that will be enough, without destroying myself?
There’s a knock on my door. I sit up and uncurl from the bed, but when I open the door and look out, there’s no one there. Arien’s door, opposite mine, is still closed. I take a step forward, and my foot brushes against something. I bend down.
On the floor, at my feet, is a book. There’s a thin length of ribbon tied around the cover, a square of card tucked beneath with only my name on it. I recognize the handwriting; it’s the same as the inscription on The Violet Woods.
“Rowan?” I look down the hallway. Why did he leave this here instead of handing it to me? I take a few steps, then pause, resting my shoulder against the wall as I untie the ribbon. The book is small, with a paper cover, and the pages are soft and well worn. Some are creased; some have the corners folded over. It has clearly been read countless times. I leaf through it gently as my eyes scan the words.
It’s not a story. The lines have a shape familiar to the written verses of litanies. But this—this is different.
Place me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm;
For love is as strong as death.
Fair as the moon,
bright as the sun,
majestic as the stars.
You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
There is no flaw in you.
Heat washes through me. None of the stories I’ve told or read have made me feel like this. These words are a spell. Like I have put my hands into the earth, felt the spark and burn of the magic that’s woven through the world. This is the same thrill I felt at the Lord Under’s words. We are connected. This is another connection, just as magic and powerful and frightening.
This light, this heat, this love—to see it all laid plain like this, in these beautiful words—it levels me. Is this how Rowan feels? When he looks at me, am I some faerie creature, all sun and moon and stars?