Shadows fill my mouth and lungs, tasting of smoke and ash. Arien’s voice, the way he fights me … it’s not him. I want to flinch away, but I force myself to be still. No matter how much it frightens me, I have to protect him. Now all I know is that I can’t let my brother be overtaken by this terrible darkness. But we have spent our entire lives here, almost. The Lady sent you to me, Mother told us once. She picked up Arien and took my hand and brought us back to her cottage. The way the winter sun gleamed over her corn-silk hair as she bent toward me. I still remember the way Mother’s hand cupped my cheek for the first time, her fingers streaked with paint from the icons she made. Whatever happened to send us into the forest at midwinter … I don’t let those thoughts in too closely.įire to burn out the infection. Arien was a baby, and I was old enough to tell her our names-Arien and Violeta Graceling-and that our parents were dead, but little else. Mother found us on the road beside the Vair Woods. This is my seventeenth summer, Arien’s thirteenth. “Arien, my love, you’re safe, you’re safe.” The same words I’ve spoken over countless nights. I take a deep breath and try to speak calmly. Panic knots my stomach and there’s a scream caught in my throat. I feel the darkness all over me, feel it slip and slither inside my skin. More shadows come, faster now, violent, and I hold Arien close against me as they wreathe us, winding tighter and tighter. I push the thought away, swallow it down until my mouth tastes of copper and salt. I bite back a cry at the pain, grabbing his other hand before he makes the scratches worse. I cling tight to Arien, whispering to him, “I’m here, I’m here,” not letting go even when he growls viciously and starts to claw me.

The shadows are like midwinter frost against my skin, a cold that burns. Darkness pours through our clasped fingers, blotting out the moonlight. I take his hand, starting to tremble, hating myself for it but unable to stop. Then his voice changes to a drawn-out snarl. “Leta?” He calls for me again, sounding frightened. Then they build and build, until all the light is gone, and there’s only me and Arien and the gathering dark. At first they’re smoke, a haze that thickens. I move toward him as the shadows cloud over us, filling the room. He looks at me with eyes gone solid black they change when he dreams, and those blank eyes in his frightened face are so wrong. Shadows spill from his hands like unfurled ribbons, shrouding the floor with an inky mist. He calls my name and reaches out as the darkness rises through him. A hot night, airless, even with our window wide open. Curled up on my narrow bed in the small, plain room we share. I can feel them coming even before he does. All day it’s followed me, that familiar heaviness in the air. It’s been weeks, longer, since Arien’s last nightmare, but I knew they would come tonight. They find their way into my brother’s dreams.

Lakesedge by lyndall clipstone