“He’s in his room,” Florence says. “He went upstairs after he helped you back inside.”
I turn away from them and run up the stairs, stumbling slightly. The door to Rowan’s room is half-open. I tiptoe inside. He’s passed out on the bed, the quilts kicked into a pile beneath his muddied boots. I cross the room slowly, sadness rising in my chest. I kneel down on the floor beside the chaise, and put my hand against his cheek. His fawn skin is pale, and his brows knit into a frown when I touch him.
I close my eyes as, in a rush, it all comes back. I’ve done it. I’ve really done it. I bargained. I’m marked. I’m promised.
It’s what I wanted, and I’m not sorry for what I’ve done. But the hollowed place left behind from where I gave up my memories is a constant ache. It feels painful and wrong to have this vacant, blank space where my family once was. To know that I’ll never see them again, that when my soul passes to the world Below, I’ll be alone, without even Arien there beside me.
I know I made the right choice. Still—it hurts.
I take Rowan’s hand. The sigil on his wrist is a cluster of angled lines, like a sunburst. The identical mark on my own wrist pulses, as though there is still magic left inside it. For a breath I see flashes of color and catch a thread of emotions that don’t seem quite mine. The same uneasy mix of relief and despair I felt earlier, interwoven with some darker thing. Anger. Guilt.
I let go of his hand, and the images fade.
Florence comes quietly into the room. She has a tray set with tea, and a vial of sedative. “Oh.” She looks at him, smiling sadly. “He’s gotten mud all over the sheets.”
“Should we take off his boots?”
“No, let’s not wake him.” She sets down the tray and puts her hand against his forehead for a moment. “Come on, we’ll leave him to rest.”
We go back into the kitchen, where Clover sets a cup of tea onto the table for me beside a jar of honey. I sit down heavily. My whole body feels bruised. When I swallow the tea, I can still feel the grittiness in my mouth, like the mud is inside me. I scoop out a spoonful of honey and stir it into my cup. But even with the honey, the bitterness of the herbs stays on my tongue.
I look down at the tabletop strewn with notebooks. Each page filled with scrawled-out, rewritten, and half-drawn sigils. At the center of the mess is a cluster of jars, arranged in a circle. They’re all full of ink-dark water, with a heavy paste of muddy sediment at the bottom.
I turn to Clover. “What is this? What are you doing?”
“We’re—” She pulls at the end of her braid. “It’s for the next ritual.”
Arien folds the notebook closed and holds it to his chest protectively. “Clover and I are still trying to find another spell to use.”
“Arien, you don’t need it.”
His mouth draws into a tight frown before I can finish.
“Arien. You saw me today. You saw what I can do now.”
“Yes. We saw. You really summoned him, didn’t you?” Clover looks toward the parlor with a shiver. “That icon is…” She waves a hand, unable to find words. Her eyes gleam with a mix of fear and fascination. “We were told in the Maylands that most estates have them, but I’ve never seen one before.”
“You promised me, Leta,” Arien says quietly.
“Do you think I wanted to do this?”
“Yes. I think you did.” Beneath the hurt in his eyes is another emotion. Guilt. “We were going to work this through, together.”
“We didn’t exactly have another choice.” I try to take his hand, but he moves back so I can’t reach him. “I’ve made the bargain. I can’t unmake it. It’s done. I’ve saved Rowan, and now I can spare you all from this. You don’t need to do the ritual. You don’t need to face that danger again.”
Arien picks up the jar with the lake water and turns it around between his palms. The sediment stirs up in a curl that makes smokelike patterns through the water. “What did you give him, Leta? What did he ask in exchange for this help?”
My throat tightens, and the words stick. I don’t want to lie. But I know if I speak the truth of what I’ve done, the ache within me will hurt a thousand times worse. How can I tell him I gave up our family, in this world and the world Below?
How can I tell Arien I gave up him?
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He puts down the jar and he looks at me, his anger softening into worry. “What was it, really?”