Witch's Pyre

by Josephine Angelini

  “We’d let you claim us,” Riley said.

  “And you speak for everyone?” Lily snapped. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you, Riley. You aren’t in charge down there.”

  “No, but I know how my people feel. I know they want to fight,” he said stubbornly. “And I can bring Mary if you’d rather talk to her.”

  Lily opened her mouth to decline, and Juliet spoke up. “The least you can do is meet with her,” she said.

  “It’s a waste of time,” Lily argued.

  “We need all the help we can get,” Una said, studying Lily carefully. Una switched to mindspeak.

  What’s wrong with you?

  One of Lillian’s memories flew from her mind to Una’s.

  . . . I struggle and kick, but they pin me down with the noose poles. Even from five feet away I can smell the corruption of their innards in the stink of their breath. They leer at me, trying to push the bodice of my torn dress aside to get a glimpse of my bare breasts . . .

  Una recoiled, shaken by the terror and helplessness that Lillian had felt.

  Those are the kind of men out there on the ranches, Una. Murderers and rapists, Lily said in mindspeak. I have no interest in claiming them.

  They can’t all be like that, Una replied, more out of optimism than true belief.

  “And what if they are?” Lily asked aloud.

  Una gave her a calculating look. “What are you willing to do to get rid of the Hive?” she asked flatly. “You better decide now, because I’m pretty sure Grace isn’t squeamish about who she’d claim.”

  Lily glared at Una, and saw tough love glaring back. Una never let her get away with anything.

  “Damn it,” Lily breathed. She turned to Riley. “Arrange a meeting with Mary, but tell her not to come if she’s just going to waste my time. I’m not doing this unless she can bring me an army.”

  “I’ll tell her,” he said with a brisk nod. His horse-trading done, Riley looked down on the remains of her bread. “Are you going to eat that?”

  Lily ended up having to order Gavin to bring more food. Riley ate with the mechanical determination of someone who had spent more days of his young life going hungry than feeling full, and he wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity to gorge until he couldn’t see straight. When his gargantuan appetite was finally appeased, Lily sent him back to the tunnels with a basket of food for Pip and the other children who followed him around like the Pied Piper.

  It was almost evening before Rowan returned with Caleb and Tristan. At some point Tristan had joined Rowan to try to help him persuade Caleb to come back to the coven, and it was obvious by the way the three of them hung together that they had spent quite a long time hashing things out. They already had similar ways of moving and gesturing from having grown up together, but it was more pronounced when they’d spent long stretches in one another’s heads. Physically, they were three very different men—Caleb dark and hulking, Tristan light-eyed and tall, and Rowan slender and as elegantly muscled as a dancer—but when they spent a lot of time together they could easily be mistaken for brothers.

  Lily watched Caleb anxiously. She brushed up against his mind and gently asked for entry. He let her in, but only so far. She felt a pang of rejection and desperately hoped he wouldn’t stay angry with her forever. Caleb had been her shoulder to cry on in some of her darkest times. The thought of losing that closeness was unbearable to her.

  I’m sorry, she said in mindspeak. She didn’t try to excuse her behavior with an explanation. It was up to him to forgive her or not.

  Do better, he replied, holding back a tide of unpleasant memories from his childhood.

  I will, Lily promised. She felt him relax and knew that the danger of losing him had passed. For now, anyway.

  “Let me see how much of my hard work you undid today,” Rowan said, and came forward to check Lily’s injuries.

  Rowan laid two fingers on the pulse point at Lily’s wrist. She saw his willstone flare enchantingly and became aware of the featherlight presence of him inside her skin. He was barely touching her with his fingertips, but the contact was still more intimate than if he’d slipped his hands under her dress.

  “Better,” he said quietly.

  “When will I be ready for the pyre?” she asked, keeping her hand close to his.

  “You need at least another week.”

  “Too long,” she replied with a little shake of her head. “Tomorrow, after I meet with Mary.”

  “Mary?” he asked, surprised. “The leader of the tunnel gang?”

  Lily replayed her meeting with Riley for Rowan, Caleb, and Tristan to bring them up to speed. After she was finished, Rowan picked up his argument with her where he’d left off.

  “You still need to rest for a few more days at least.”

  “We leave tomorrow. With or without Mary’s people.” “Lily—”

  “Tomorrow,” she said firmly. “You have to get me ready for the pyre.”

  Rowan knew what was happening to Lillian’s army without having to be shown. He knew every day they crept along was costing lives. Finally, he slipped his jacket off his shoulders with a sigh.

  “There is something else I can do now that I have my full kit again. There’s an ink I couldn’t get my hands on once I left Lillian,” he said reluctantly.

  “Ink?” Lily asked.

  “Yes. It’s very rare, very old, and it’s going to hurt.”

  Lily nodded and looked down at her hands. “Of course it will,” she said, trying to laugh her way through the fear.

  “Tristan. I need you,” Rowan called as he headed toward what appeared to be a wall of solid rock beside the headboard of Lillian’s bed.

  He laid his fingers carefully against the masonry, took a deep breath, and his willstone flared. The wall gave way with a grinding sound, pushing inward and sliding to the side to reveal a set of hidden stairs. Tristan looked surprised but followed Rowan up the stairway without a word of protest.

  Lily frittered the next few minutes away while her mechanics prepared. Una and Juliet gave her uneven smiles that didn’t have the conviction to reach their eyes. Lily tried to comfort herself by thinking that whatever Rowan had planned couldn’t be worse than the pyre, although she knew that the pain of the pyre was offset by the rush of pleasure she got from the power it gave her. Something told her that whatever Rowan had planned would have very little upside to it.

  When Rowan returned for her she was trying her best to be brave. He didn’t look at her when he led her up the stone stairway and through a trapdoor that led out onto the roof.

  The stars were out, adorning a sickle moon that glowed gold in the warm summer sky. Beneath the horns of the moon an enormous speaking stone glimmered like an opal pillar that was subtly lit from within. Lily found herself drawn to the speaking stone, and nearly had her hands on it when she heard Rowan call her name.

  “Lily. Over here,” he said.

  She turned and saw a familiar square of black silk spread out and waiting for her. Rowan and Tristan knelt between the runes they had drawn on the silk in salt. They had nothing else with them but a bowl, a long silver needle, and a tiny mallet.

  “We’ll start with you sitting up,” Rowan said.

  Lily sat down in front of Rowan with her legs crossed. He gestured for Tristan to sit behind her, and Lily felt his hands take her head and tilt it to expose the long stretch of skin from her ear to her collarbone.

  “This will leave a mark,” Rowan said.

  Lily took a breath and let it out slowly to steady herself. But she didn’t stop him. A haze of light expanded out from Rowan’s willstone, like a bright fog that spun outward to wrap them up in glinting tendrils. He dipped the tip of the needle in the bowl, picked up the mallet, and began tapping the end in a quick staccato.

  Lily felt the pricking of the tattoo behind her ear. As the ink started to sink into her skin an itch turned into a burn. The burn began to build.

  “Hold her,” Rowan ordered, and Tri
stan’s hands clamped down on Lily’s head.

  Even when Rowan paused momentarily to dip his needle, the burning kept mounting, and soon she couldn’t even feel the prick of the needle over the sting of the ink. A cold sweat broke down her back, and as Rowan tapped the tattoo farther down the side of her neck, she started to shiver. She wasn’t burning. She was freezing.

  Tristan had to take more of her weight as the icy acid in the ink started to leach into her blood and chill her from the inside out. Lily could feel the cold sliding down her insides as if she’d swallowed an ice cube. Her teeth began to chatter.

  “Okay. Lay her back,” Rowan said.

  Lily felt herself being put down and opened her eyes. The stars whirled above. The steady tapping and the cold burn began again along the lower part of her right ribs. Lily tracked the paths of the stars to keep her mind off Rowan’s never-ending tattoo. He worked down from her ribs and curved inside the hip bone, ending just above her bikini line.

  “Last one,” he said, and started on the top of her left thigh.

  She was numb with cold by the time he had spiraled around the inside of her thigh and ended the third tattoo at the back of her left knee. Rowan ended the spell. The light in his willstone heaved and then went out.

  In the absence of his magelight, the soft scintillation of the speaking stone caught Lily’s eye again. Half in and half out of her body to hide from the pain, Lily let her other eye swim in the light of the speaking stone. She idly wondered whether she could reach Pale One and called softly to her claimed Woven.

  Lily’s mind seemed to jump into a fast-moving river, and the impressions of places whizzed past her. She saw hills and valleys and then mountains and vast plains. Her other eye skipped from speaking stone to speaking stone, each stone tinting the world a slightly different color, until finally her mind settled inside the claimed she’d named Pale One. Lily waded through a tangle of scents so strong and clear they glowed like colors that painted the whole world, and high-contrast images seen through eyes that were not built like her own. The mind she touched pieced information together differently than Lily’s did, but after a few tries, she deciphered this . . .

  Inside, follow. Unseen, but here with me, she calls. Bite itch and lick. Need to howl, but stop. Biggers are close. Smell sweet stink of Biggers’ honey.

  Lily asked Pale One if she could join her, and then her vision exploded with color and light. After a dizzying moment, Lily realized she was looking at a fern. She concentrated and panned out with Pale One’s achingly sharp eyes to see a glade, deep in the redwood forest. The colors she saw were richer, and she could see the edges of things more distinctly.

  Lily felt the earth under Pale One. She felt the old minds of the trees, their roots running deep and holding the ground to their hearts like million-fingered hands. She read the vibration of the land. It was the low, thunderous rumble of a giant lung, the trees breathing for the whole world. Lily stored the vibration in her willstone and released Pale One.

  Run to the rising sun, Lily commanded. Go east until you are safely out of Hive territory.

  She calls. I run to where the wolves tend their meat, Pale One responded.

  She saw Rowan’s face hovering over hers. His worried frown broke with relief. “Where did you go?” he asked softly.

  Lily was about to tell him, but she thought of the expression of barely controlled disgust on his face when she told the coven about Pale One and stopped herself. Instead she just smiled and struggled to sit up.

  She looked down at the two tattoos she could see, and was relieved to find out that although they were long, they were as thin as ribbons, and the ink Rowan had used was a very pale pink. She ran her finger over the tattoo on her leg and felt it more than she saw it. It looked like lace had been inserted under her skin.

  “Is it going to stay raised like that?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Rowan replied. “The compound I tattooed under your skin will help you heal faster each time you go to the pyre. It’s permanent, though.”

  Lily studied the delicate filigree of the design. “Does Lillian have one?”

  “She has two. One running down her back, and another down the inside of her right leg. I gave you three.”

  Rowan’s face was impassive, but Lily noticed he didn’t meet her eyes. She wondered when he had given them to Lillian, and if they had been in love at the time.

  “They’re quite pretty,” Tristan said appreciatively.

  Lily smiled but didn’t say anything. She touched the one behind her ear that ran in a thin line down the side of her neck. It hurt, but the pain was going away quickly, as was the lingering pain from her burns. She felt stronger, and for the first time in her memory, she actually felt cool.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Rowan nodded. “It’s my job,” he said, and then frowned uncertainly.

  “It is your job, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Lily said. “You’re my head mechanic. If you want to be.”

  Tristan helped Lily stand, but she found that as soon as she was upright, she didn’t need help anymore. She went to the speaking stone and stared at its milky white beauty.

  “My army,” she whispered, and her mind whipped through the darkness, into the forest, past hordes of swarming Woven, and into another speaking stone that tinted the world blue. There, it swung over rolling hills until, finally, it settled with the thousands of her claimed still under Alaric’s rule.

  Many slept, but those who were awake felt the light touch of her mind—not so much that they would be aware of it, but enough so that a brief thought of her would flutter through their minds like wind across a pond.

  “He’s gathered them together to march west,” Lily murmured, her mind half here and half there.

  “Do you know where they are?” Rowan asked. “I haven’t been able to reach Alaric. He’s too far.”

  “Outside of Richmond.” She snapped out of it and gathered her robe around her against the chill. “That’s our first stop.”

  Rowan nodded. “But first, you need to rest for one more night.”

  Gavin awoke Lily at dawn more anxious than usual, which pushed him well into frantic territory. She heard him pounding on the door and she stirred in Rowan’s arms, not clear on how she’d gotten there. All she remembered after getting the tattoo was having something to eat with her coven, and then she went right to bed.

  Rowan took a sleepy breath and threw the covers over Lily’s bare shoulders. “Come,” he called to Gavin, allowing entry.

  “The Citadel is surrounded!” Gavin shouted as he tumbled into Lily’s room. “They came out of nowhere—just popped up from underground—the streets are full of them!”

  Rowan was out of bed and sprinting up the hidden staircase with Tristan and Caleb close behind before Lily had even sat up. When she, Una, and Breakfast finally made it up there, Lily could see the tops of the Citadel bristling with the skeleton guard that Lillian had left behind to defend the city. Down below, outside the Citadel gates, the streets of Salem swarmed with people. The ragtag multitude packed every inch of street for at least a dozen blocks back, and possibly farther.

  “Oh. Hi, Riley,” Breakfast called down to the young man standing at the entrance to the Citadel gates. Riley saw Breakfast and waved back.

  Mary stood next to Riley. When she saw Lily come forward between Rowan and Tristan, she crossed her arms.

  “Is this a big enough army for you?” Mary yelled up.

  Lily looked at the masses filling the streets, reckoning their numbers in the thousands, and tried to pull her flimsy nightgown more tightly over her. She felt Rowan’s arm wrap around her as he tilted his bare shoulders to cover her from one too many covetous stares. The crowd below was not the most respectable-looking bunch, but there were scores of them, and they looked like they were spoiling for a fight, which was exactly what Lily needed.

  “It’s a good start,” she yelled back. Mary actually laughed at that.

  “Gavin.
Arrange to have the Witch’s guests meet her in the main hall,” Rowan instructed.

  After Gavin rushed off, Rowan led the coven back downstairs. He started throwing open the doors to closets and pulling out clothes. He rifled through Lillian’s dresses until he found the one he was looking for and passed it to Lily.

  “Here, put this on,” he said absently before crossing to a closet on the other side of the room. This closet was filled with his wardrobe, which he started passing out to the guys. “Una, you might like Juliet’s clothes better,” he suggested while he dug through his things.

  “Yeah, these aren’t exactly my style,” Una said, laughing at Lillian’s collection of tiny scraps of gauze that were barely held together by jewels.

  Lily looked at what Rowan had chosen for her and decided not to argue. She understood why he wanted her to wear a proper witch’s gown. If she was going to drag these people into a war, they had to see her as a leader. She had to become the Salem Witch in their eyes.

  “I guess someone should explain to the new recruits where we’re going and how Lily’s getting us there. Make sure they’re all signed on for this,” Breakfast said.

  “I nominate you,” Una said, dropping a peck on his cheek as she passed him on her way to Juliet’s room.

  “Any objections?” he asked hopefully, but everyone begged off. “I’ll find Riley,” he said with a sigh, and went off to spread the word.

  Lily freshened up in the bathroom before she slid into the black silk dress inlaid with rubies. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw her red hair, which seemed to have grown three more inches overnight, billowing down her shoulders, and her pale skin glowing even whiter against the black silk.

  She came out of the bathroom and saw Rowan waiting for her, dressed all in black and looking brutally beautiful. The collar of his shirt was open to show off his huge willstone, which danced with light and power. He held something sparkly in his hand.

  “Turn around,” he said, his voice catching as he stared at her.

  Lily felt him place something on her head. He angled her toward a mirror and she saw that it was a spiked crown of iron and diamonds. The Salem Witch’s crown. Lily remembered it from Lillian’s memory. It was a cruel-looking thing, twisted and sharp. The metal was burnt black where it wasn’t shining with white diamonds. Rowan opened a case and showed her what was nestled in the velvet inside. Matching shackles. Lily smiled wryly at them, remembering Lillian and how she had balked, refusing to wear them. She wouldn’t even look at them.