Page 36 of Lakesedge

“Does she know you’ve been doing this between the rituals?

“She knows there’s a connection between the Corruption and my blood. That it reacts to me. But I haven’t told her or Florence about the tithes.”

A laugh catches in my throat, threatening to become a sob. “Yes, it would be a shame for them to know. They might worry about you.Ash, Rowan. You can’t hide this.”

“Please.” His face, for the first time, is open and sad and terribly earnest. “You can’t tell them what you saw.”

“You’ve let it take so many pieces of you. What happens when there’s nothing left?”

“Eventually it will kill me.” He’s completely without self-pity. “I’m not afraid of that. There are worse things than death.”

I think of shadows and whispers and deep, dark water. What I was searching for, when I reached out and put my hand against the wall in my room, when I listened to that strange voice. “I had a dream about you. No, not a dream. A vision. Isaw you at the lake. I saw you drown when you were a child. I saw you come back.”

“You saw me come back?” He looks at me intently; the expression in his dark eyes makes me shiver. “Why did you follow me tonight? You’ve been haunting my house like a little, prying ghost.”

“I wanted to know the truth about you.”

“What are you trying to ask? Go ahead. Say it.”

“You drowned. You died; then you came back. And that’s why you’re like this.”

“You truly think I faced the Lord Under, then walked away from death? That I came back poisoned? And that’s why this is happening?”

The room tilts unsteadily. The lantern flares and flutters, though the air is still. I think of moonlight and frost and my hands outstretched into the darkness. The voice that called to me in the Vair Woods. “Yes.”

“Do you think I’m a monster?”

“Yes.”

His voice turns low and cold. “Are you afraid of me, Violeta?”

I don’t flinch. I don’t turn away. I see him, with his ruined arm and his beautiful face: the boy whose life was stolen by the lake, the boy who knows desperation and darkness. “No. I’m not afraid of you, Rowan Sylvanan. But you have to tell me the truth. All of it.”

He looks at me solemnly from beneath his lashes, allfierceness gone. “Each time I do this, it changes me. When the Corruption takes the tithe, I lose myself. It’s getting harder and harder to come back from it. Sometimes I’m not even sure how much is me, and how much is the poison.”

I reach out to him, then hesitate. “Will you take off your gloves?”

Warily, he removes the gloves and sets them aside. Even his fingers are scarred, and there’s a mark on his heartline from where he cut his palm to fight the wolf. I take his hand between my own, and he goes very still. I wonder when anyone last touched him like this.

I squeeze his hand gently. “I won’t let you be lost.”

His mouth tilts into a faint smile. “Are you so unafraid of monsters?”

“Truly, the monsters should be afraid of me.”

“Violeta, I’m sorry that I made Arien come here. I wish there was another way.”

“So do I.”

“Please don’t tell anyone about the tithes. After the next ritual it won’t… It won’t matter, once the Corruption has been mended.”

“Fine. I’ll keep your secret until then. But…” I tap my finger against his chest. “It will cost you.”

He laughs, surprised. “And what is the price of your silence?”

“I’d like a book. One of your packed-away books.”

“Done.”