I stagger back and cling to the tree behind me, trying to steady myself.
“Rowan?” Our eyes meet, but he is not there. “Rowan, you have to make it stop.”
He comes toward me, black water pooling beneath him, strands of darkness spilling across the lawn and through the brambles. Piece by piece the garden turns ruined. Leaves dissolve into dust; fruit withers. The air smells of ash and sour-sweet decay.
The ground begins to unpeel. A wound splits the center of the lawn. Beneath my palm, the bark turns rough. Charred.
All around, I hear the groan and sigh of the trees and plants being poisoned and destroyed. There’s a heavy crash as a branch tumbles to the ground. Rowan watches it, blank and still and not him; it’s not him anymore. I take a breath. I force myself to go forward. My boots sink into the mud, and it’s so cold.
I close the distance between us and put my hands around his face so he is forced to look at me. I bite out each word, hard and clear. “Make. It. Stop.”
He smiles at me, and his teeth are sharp. “No.”
Threads of poison twine across his skin. The scars at his throat are raised and raw and dark. I think of what he told me—how he made the Corruption, how the darkness went inside him and poisoned him. All this time, I thought it would kill him. That the end point of this would be his death, and the volatile danger of this magic would spread unchecked.
But now as we stand on the blackened ground, his face in my hands, his eyes bright with blood, I realize the truth.
It’s not going to kill him.
It’s going to ruin him.
The Corruption wants to devour and devour and devour. It will take him over until all that I know and love of him is destroyed. He won’t be dead, but he’ll be consumed, entire. Unless I can draw him back.
I take hold of his shoulders and shake him, hard. He barely flinches.
“Fight it.” I tell him. “You have to—”
I let out a cry as Rowan grabs a handful of my hair, winds it around his wrist, and pulls. The pain is sharp, awful; it steals my breath. I knot my hands into his cloak. At first I think I’ll push him back, away from me. Instead, I drag him closer until his face is only a breath from mine.
I kiss him.
He tastes of the lake: silt and salt and the copper of old, dark blood. Of water and leaves and stolen things. He kisses me as if he wants to devour me. I kiss him back. Fiercely, desperately, as if this could solve everything.
He makes a sharp, wretched sound against my mouth. The monster, the boy, the monster. My skin burns with magic and heat and longing. He drags his hand down my body, rib by rib, until he reaches my waist. Then his fingers dig hard against me, tight enough to bruise.
All around us the ground churns and splits as the poison spreads farther through the garden. I wrench myself free. Rowan’s teeth cut against my lip as I pull back. I lick away the blood and we stare at each other, inches apart, our breaths stuttering. The taste of the lake is on my tongue, and my hair is still knotted around his clenched fist. Lines of poison wreathe his throat, there, gone, there again.
Rowan looks at me, and for a moment he’s returned to himself. His gold-flecked eyes are full of tender heat. Wary and confused and afraid and human.
“Leta.” Even now, tinged with ruin, my name from him is still like magic. “Leta, I—”
He blinks. Blackened water trails, like tears, from his eyes.
“Rowan.” My heart beats out a sharp, frantic rhythm against my ribs. “Please.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t.”
This has to stop. He has to stop.
I take hold of him and force him closer. He staggers forward. I kiss him again, swallowing down the taste of poison and blood and lake. And as he kisses me back, I run my hands swiftly over him, searching through his cloak, his pockets, until I find his knife. The silver-sharp blade is tucked neatly into the handle.
His mouth moves from my cheek, to my ear, to my throat. I burn with waiting as I’m held captive by the path he traces, pinpoints on my skin. He pulls at the collar of my dress, baring the curve between my neck and my shoulder. He kisses me there roughly, and desire floods through me in a sudden rush. He’s half-lost to the shadows; he’s ruined and wrong. He’s a monster, yet I want him still.
I have to make him stop.
I have the knife clutched in my hand. My fingers shake as I unfold it. Rowan sees the blade and makes a low, feral sound, too cruel to be a laugh. “Leta. It can’t be stopped.”
“It can.” I wrench the laces at his cuff until they’re undone, then push back his sleeve. Try not to think more than one step ahead. His skin. The blade. A cut.