I get to my feet, my heart pounding.
“Wait!” Clover cries. “Where are you going?”
“Just hold him.” I call, already running toward the house.
* * *
I run through the kitchen. Snatch a pomegranate from my basket, still on the benchtop. Go to the pantry for the knife. Then I run to the parlor. It’s dim, the curtains drawn, the scent of candle smoke still in the air. I kneel down at the altar, where the dual icon looms over me. I give one hard slice of the blade; it cuts through the fruit and into my flesh. Blood wells up, mingles with ruby nectar, and I smear my palm across the floor in a determined swipe.
I find a sparklight and click it against the candles. They flare, turning the room to honey. I press my hand against the floor, fresh blood over old blood.
I close my eyes and I call.
I could pretend I’m desperate and afraid, but I’m not. I feel the hollowed-out space where my small remnants of magic sleep. Picture it alight and brilliant. I’m not afraid at all.
If I think it hard enough—that I’ve been forced, that I had no choice—then I can push aside the terrible part of me that is glad to be here: my blood at the altar, a promise ready on my tongue. The part of me that has longed and hungered for this.
Please. Please. Please.
The air stays bright and silent. No shadows wash the room. No voice whispers my name.
I call, but the Lord Under doesn’t answer me.
I bow forward until my forehead touches the floor and sigh out a hard breath. There’s a faint tremble through the room. It rattles the window glass and resounds through the walls. Distantly, I can hear the groaning of the ground as the Corruption spreads.
“I have to make it stop,” I whisper to the altar. “I need your help.”
I look down at my hands. Mud smeared and bloodstained and empty. Beneath the icon, the cut pomegranate is a torn-open heart. The seeds gleam wetly in the candlelight. I remember the Lord Under’s words to me when I last summoned him. It will take more than blood and fruit. I want him. I want his help. But he won’t come unless I have something to offer him first.
All the bravery I felt a moment before melts away. I’m five years old again. Lost in the shadow-limned forest. And just like then, right now I want someone bigger than me, crueler and stronger. Someone to hold my hand and lead me through the dark. I think of how alone I felt. Those last desperate, impossible thoughts I had before the Lord Under appeared.
I want my quilt and honey tea and firelight. I want my mother.
The thought catches. Like a snagged thread that slowly begins to unravel. My mother my mother my mother. When I first told Arien my stories, it was her voice that I heard. When I first used my magic in the garden, it was my father’s hands I felt. My mother, my father. All this time I’ve clung to my memories of them, comforted myself with the knowledge that while they were gone, they weren’t lost. They’ve always been with me, within me.
I look up at the altar. The silhouette of the Lord Under is blurred by my tears.
“I know what I can give you.” A sob thickens my voice, but I don’t waver. I have no doubt in this. “I’m ready to make our exchange.”
The air turns to mist. Droplets fall from the ceiling; then water streams down the walls and over the floor as the light starts to dim. There’s a sound like a sigh, like the rise of a tide, and all other noise is closed out. I’m here, underwater, as the Lord Under comes through the dark.
I look up from where I’m kneeling on the floor. He stands over me, tall. The shrouded hem of his cloak spills into the darkness like a pool of ink. I know him now. His face, his voice, his pale hair, his pale eyes. His sharp teeth bared in an even sharper smile. It’s still such a shock that I can see him in this way, that I can draw him out of the darkness to look on his face and know him. Lord of souls. Lord of the dead.
“Violeta.” My name in his mouth is part threat, part caress. “What do you have for me?”
Once done, this can’t be undone. Once I speak, there will be no way to turn back. I take a breath. Let the words fall before I can change my mind.
“My family.” I close my eyes as the memories come. My mother. My father. Stories and firelight and our cottage surrounded by flowers. I’ve held them and held them. Given them strength each time I told Arien a story. Each time I felt the ghost of my mother’s touch on my shoulder. Each time I cast a spell and saw my father with his hands in the earth. I kept them alight, kept them alive, all I have of the family who died and were burned to ash after the winter fever.