I nod. My throat feels tight, and I can’t trust myself to speak.
“In the meantime, if you want help with the romance, I do have some contraceptive tea. It’s on the top shelf.” She nods to the stillroom, one brow raised. “Get him to drink it, too—it works better that way.”
My face goes bright with a sudden blush. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The room has begun to feel too small, too close. Everywhere I look is laden with a second meaning. The stillroom with the jar of tea. The door, the feel of the rough wood still tingling on my palms. The book with those words like a spell.
The kettle begins to hum. When Clover goes to take it from the stove, I slip outside quietly.
* * *
My skin burns with a restless heat as I walk along the path to the garden. I’m part magic, part fire, part wretched, wrung-out want.
I want so many things, all of them impossible.
I take a pen and trace the lines of ink on my wrist from long ago, a new sigil overlaid on the spent one. Magic sparks at my fingers. I pass a cluster of brambles and bend to them, wrapping my hands around the thorns. The sigil burns. I reach, roughly, and drag out the weak threads of my power. When I’m done, I redraw the sigil, and reach again.
Again and again, each time I snag and pull at the faint, golden thread that’s knotted through me. There is no easy flow of magic here, no light or wonder. None of the rightness I feel when I press my hands to the earth in observance. This is sheer fight and force. As though the power can feel my resentment. As though it wants to hide from me. I clutch it tight. Wrench it free. I make leaves and fruit and life.
By the end of it I’m breathless. My temples are streaked with sweat, and my hands won’t stop shaking. There’s a new clutch of wildflowers on the lawn, a bower of green overhead, and the brambles are heavy with syrupy fruit. My fingers are stained with blood and blackberry juice, and my bonfire dress has streaks of dirt around the hem.
I slump down at the center of the grass, lean my back against a tree, and put my head into my hands. It’s only just morning, but the day is already hot. The air is like a stove that’s burned and crumbled to heaped coals. Sweat beads up on my cheeks and in the hollow of my throat. I feel it trickle from my neck to my spine. I can still smell the bonfire smoke laced into my skirts and my hair.
I breathe out a slow, hot breath against my stained skin. All my magic, all I have, is faint, ineffectual scraps. And it’s all the more frustrating now that I know how much more it could be. I think of what I could possibly trade to the Lord Under for that power. Weigh and measure, wonder which hurt would be the worst.
Footsteps crunch over the path. I see Rowan standing in the open gateway, at the very edge of the garden. The hood of his cloak is pulled up, and he’s a silhouette against the early sunlight.
“Rowan.” I look at him, shadowed and hidden and still, and touch my fingers to the book, the corner of it just outside my pocket. “We need to talk.”
I wait for him to respond but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. My dress rustles as I get to my feet. I brush my hands over the layers of lace and silk. They shift, cream, silver, gold. “You saw my life, before I came here. There was no place in it for something like this. I never imagined that might change.” I falter. He still hasn’t moved, and his silence is unsettling. “I never thought I’d want to be close to anyone, until I got to know you.”
I take a breath, trying to cool myself. I’m feverish all over. I tip back my head and sigh into the branches above. “I care for you. But we can’t do this. We can’t be together.” I take a hesitant step closer, trying to see his face. “You have to realize it’s impossible.”
My voice cracks on the words. But it’s the truth. There’s no place for this, for us. Not here, not now. When I picture what I want, there are two images overlaid. There’s Rowan and me in the orchard in the moonlight. He reaches to me, his fingers trail over my petaled hair, and I step into his arms.
And then there’s me alone at the shore of the lake, my hands pressed to the earth, the ground mended, the poison gone, everyone safe.
I want them both, each as much as the other. But they don’t fit together. Because in all the visions I have of myself where I’m strong and protective, I am alone.
Finally, Rowan crosses the path toward me, slow, and I brace myself for his response.
“I’m sorry,” he says at last. His voice sounds strange. “It’s too late now.”
Then he pushes back the hood of his cloak. His hair is loosened; the dark waves spill around his shoulders. His face is expressionless. And his eyes—his eyes are bloodshot. Crimson. Beneath his boots, the ground is shadowed. No, not shadowed. Wet. Corrupted.