“She doesn’t waste any time,” Tristan grumbled. He shook a handful of nuts into his mouth.
“I didn’t expect her to,” Lily said, looking sternly at her bowl of lentils. She and Lillian sat side by side in Lillian’s big tent. Lily’s coven surrounded them, eating dinner. It had been a tense meal, shared out of necessity so Lily could spend more time training Lillian how to jump, but even still Rowan, Caleb, and Tristan stayed far away from Lillian, hardly looking at her.
“Aaand, he’s out again,” Breakfast said. He rubbed his eyes. “Grace is going to have Toshi work on him some more. Shouldn’t be long before he’s up and about.”
“How long to do you think it will take Grace to figure out how to jump?” Rowan asked.
Lily shrugged. “I thought about it for maybe a week, but I figured it out in a split second.”
“Because you had to,” Lillian said, nodding. “We’ve always worked well under pressure. I’ve been trying for two days now and I haven’t been able to do it.”
“You almost had it the last time,” Lily interjected.
“Still, I haven’t been able to do it,” Lillian repeated.
Because she’s weak, Rowan said to Lily in mindspeak. If she weren’t so distracted by her pain she would have been able to do it by now. She hasn’t eaten a thing tonight.
I noticed, too, Lily replied, trying not to care that Rowan was obviously paying more attention to Lillian than it seemed.
“So that’s good news,” Una said. “It’s not like the Hive is going to just appear and kick the snot out of us.”
Lily saw Caleb shudder at the thought. If the Hive caught them unawares, they were all dead. Pyres take time to get burning. If they were ambushed, their armies could be wiped out by the Hive before Lily and Lillian had a chance to bewitch them and give them enough strength to fight back.
“It might be a good idea to have two stacks of wood ready at all times,” Lily suggested.
“I’ll see to it,” Rowan said.
“That’s not going to help,” Lillian countered, as frustrated with herself as she was with the situation. “We need to strike first or the Workers will kill us all. Surprise is the one advantage we have. We need to move.”
“I promised Toshi the day to get the rebels together. I’ll claim them in the morning. It’s just a few hours away,” Lily said.
“Not that they can do anything,” Breakfast mumbled. Lily frowned at him. “I’m just saying—if the Hive doesn’t allow them to show aggression, how can they help us?”
“It’ll be different once the fight starts. The Hive will have to fight on two fronts. They’ll be thrown off balance,” she replied with more confidence than she felt. “And they’re working on an antidote and a pesticide. If they can neutralize the Workers inside the city, all we have to do is fight the Warrior Sisters.”
“That’s all?” Breakfast asked. Una smacked his arm.
“Better than the alternative,” Una said to him. She looked at Lily. And better than you having to possess us so you can protect us against their stings, she added just between them in mindspeak.
I told you, Una. I’m not going to possess you again unless I have your permission, Lily promised.
Breakfast and Una shared a look. “Are you sure he can’t just—” Breakfast pantomimed sneaking up on Grace and throttling her. “We could coordinate with Red Leaf. He could tell us when she’s out of her body and we could send Toshi in there.”
“The Hive would sniff him out,” Tristan said with certainty. “He’d have to be able to do it without any kind of emotion changing his body chemistry. Maybe he could do it while he was sleepwalking or something.”
“Or possessed,” Lillian said quietly. The word slithered through the tent. She looked up. “I know mechanics hate thinking about possession, but consider the alternative.”
Lily could nearly hear Caleb gritting his teeth and intervened before he had a chance to say anything. “I’ll ask Toshi if he wants to try it.”
“But then he’ll know,” Lillian said, shaking her head. “If he knows, the Hive will be able to smell it on him.”
Lily felt everyone staring at her, waiting for a response. “And what if they smell my fear on him?” she asked quietly. “If I’m in complete control of his body, would my fear make his chemistry respond?”
“Yes,” Rowan answered. Lillian opened her mouth to argue with him, but he turned and looked directly at her for the first time and cut her off. “It’s too risky, Lillian,” he said. The way he said her name carried years of intimacy with it. Lily flushed and tried to wipe the thought of them together out of her mind.
“Why?” Lillian replied, pressing her point. “If it fails, all she has to do is jump him out of there. Even if she were too late and he were to die he would simply be the first of many in this war.”
Caleb stood up. “I wonder if Grace knew the moment she became evil,” he said. He looked at Lillian. “Did you know?” She didn’t respond. Caleb looked at Lily. “Will you?” He smiled to himself, figuring it out. “But none of you think you’re evil, do you? Not even Grace, I bet. Not even when she made the Hive. Didn’t she tell us that they protect the city so humans didn’t have to fight and die?” He paused, staring at Lily. “I bet she’s got it all worked out in her head so that she’s the hero.”
When he left the tent, no one tried to go after him. Breakfast was the first to speak.
“Just to be clear, you’re not going to possess Toshi, are you?” Breakfast asked.
“There are other options I want to try first,” Lily replied.
“Like what?” Tristan asked, raising a doubtful eyebrow.
Lily didn’t answer. Una eventually announced that she was tired and she and Breakfast retired, followed shortly by Tristan. Lily stood to leave when they did, but Rowan didn’t move from his spot on the floor of the tent.
“Are you going to bed?” Lily asked, standing uncertainly at the exit.
Rowan didn’t look at Lily. He was staring at Lillian. “Not yet,” he replied quietly. “Lillian and I have some things to discuss.”
Lillian had her eyes trained on her lap. Lily looked back and forth between the ex-lovers anxiously. After a few short moments her lingering presence grew painfully awkward.
“Alone, Lily,” Rowan added.
Lily left them, her head strangely light and her feet heavy. She took three slow steps before she heard Rowan say, “I’m not leaving until you tell me about my father, Lillian,” and she rushed back and hid by the entrance.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Lillian said.
“Stop it. Just stop,” Rowan said tiredly.
“It’s for your own good,” Lillian pleaded.
Rowan laughed bitterly. “My own good, huh? You still think you have the right to decide what’s good for me?”
“No,” Lillian whispered.
What the hell are you doing?
Lily spun around to find Una giving her a scathing look. Lily tried to think of a lie, but there was no explanation for why she would be lurking outside Lillian’s tent.
I’m eavesdropping on Rowan and Lillian, she admitted sheepishly. I think she’s going to tell him about that thing. An image of River Fall in the barn sailed from Lily’s mind to Una’s. Una stifled a gasp.
Move over, she said, as she crouched down next to Lily.
“I didn’t want you to change,” Lillian said, stammering. “That’s why I never told you.”
“Lillian, I’m changed, and not for the better. If you think you were protecting me, you failed.” His voice was bitter. Lily had never heard him speak with such rancor to anyone. “I’ve imagined it all, you know. Every possible evil one person can commit against another, and I’ve pictured my father doing it to you. Whatever you think you’re protecting me from, it’s already happened in my head. You’re not saving anyone.”
There was a long pause. And then, surprisingly, Lillian spoke. She told Rowan everything about the cinder world and how it poisoned her body. She told
him about the men who had hunted her, caught her, and put her in the barn. She described the people in the barn, calling them lambs. And then she told him about his father and what he did to them.
Lillian spoke quickly, letting it all pour out. Rowan let her talk, never once interrupting. She ended by telling him how she’d drained the lambs of their life force to fuel her worldwalk back home.
“I swore I would never let it happen to this world,” Lillian said, her pace finally slowing. “When I drained the lambs, I promised them that if there were versions of them in my world, they wouldn’t end up in the barn. I’d make sure there’d never be a barn, or a River Fall to mutilate them, no matter what I had to do. I owed them that much.”
Rowan was silent for a long time.
“Say something,” Lillian begged.
“I wish you’d just told me. Right from the start,” he said.
“It wasn’t you I was trying to protect, you know,” she said in a wavering voice. “I was trying to protect your memory of him. I thought, even if I took him away from you, I could at least leave his memory alone.”
There was another long pause.
“Now that I can understand,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry, Lillian.”
Lily and Una heard weeping. Una squeezed Lily’s arm and they left Lillian to take the comfort Rowan was offering her.
It was after midnight when Lily crept out of her tent.
It had taken her that long to decide. After hours of staring at the note from Carrick, trying to tell herself that she’d done the right thing, she finally accepted that she had doomed both hers and Lillian’s army if she didn’t act. Losing the trust of her coven didn’t matter anymore.
Hours of sitting still and then, once decided, she couldn’t dress fast enough. She pulled on black wearhyde pants, boots, and a jacket, threw the bloodstained note she’d found waiting on her bedroll into the fire, and stole through the thick fir trees.
She went through the kennel where the guardians were tied up. Their bear-like bodies were only hulking shapes in the dark, but she could tell they were awake. She passed the corral of runners, and even though they didn’t nicker or prance, the raised hairs on Lily’s arms told her that they were watching her. All of the tame Woven were uncannily still in their pens. They never wasted their energy on superfluous movement. Lily supposed that was probably part of the reason they required less food and water. Efficient as it was, the result was quite disturbing. They regarded Lily with empty statue eyes, like snakes waiting to strike.
She went to the clearing where the greater drakes were tethered to fat spikes that were hammered into the ground. The drakes turned their wedge-shaped heads toward her as she approached, their chains clinking.
Lily smiled wryly at the sound, thinking of her diamond-and-iron cuffs, and searched for the drake she’d ridden that afternoon. She hoped it would remember her, and that it might even know the way back to the speaking stone in the dark. She’d forgotten to take the vibration of the speaking stone mountaintop, and she was kicking herself for that oversight now. Lily hadn’t gotten used to taking the vibration of every new patch of land she encountered, but she knew she wouldn’t make that mistake again.
When Lily found the drake it gave her no sign of recognition. She approached it slowly, dreading the moment when she had to bend her neck in front of it in order to unchain it from the stake.
“Do you know what I don’t understand?” Rowan asked. Lily spun around, her hand clutching at her thumping heart, and saw him emerge from the shadows. “I don’t understand why someone as intelligent as you can’t seem to grasp that I always know when you’re going to sneak out.”
“What are you—?”
“What am I doing?” he interrupted indignantly. “What are you doing?”
“This is not what it looks like.”
“So you’re not going to the speaking stone?”
“I am, but . . .” Lily paused momentarily to gather her thoughts and Rowan spun away from her, growling with frustration.
“Why do we keep having this fight?” he asked the stars. He spun back around and faced her. “I know you think you’re saving a lot of lives by doing this. I know that it seems like the fastest, most painless way to end this conflict—you possess Toshi, murder Grace in her sleep, and the war never even needs to happen. Hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved. I know how tempted you must be. Hell, I’m tempted to counsel you to go through with it. But just think about what you’d have to become in order to do that. Ask yourself if someone who could do that is someone you would want in power.” Rowan paused, and a pained look crossed his face. “You’re trying to protect people. So was Lillian when she hid what she saw in the cinder world about my father from me. I’m pretty sure Grace was trying to protect people, too, when she developed the Woven. But look how Lillian and Grace ended up. They’re soulless.”
He drew in a deep breath as if he had set down a heavy weight. “I know you believe murdering Grace will save us, but you’d have to give up too much of yourself to do it. I don’t want you to end up empty like Grace and Lillian. I’d fight a hundred battles to stop that.”
Lily looked at Rowan with a funny smile on her face. The smile turned into a quiet laugh. “I’m not going to end up like Lillian. And I’m not going to the speaking stone to murder Grace,” she said.
“You’re not?” he said uncertainly. “Then why are you sneaking around?”
“Because I know you’re not going to like why I am going.” She sighed, accepting that she got caught. “I’m going to claim the Woven.”
Rowan stiffened, completely taken off guard. “The Woven?” he repeated with a blank look on his face.
“We can’t win without them. I’ve known for a while now that it was our only option, but you and Caleb and Tristan and pretty much everyone from this world wouldn’t even consider it, so I kept my mouth shut.”
“But Grace controls them,” he argued, still not accepting it.
“Not all of them. She doesn’t control the Pride or the Pack—their will is too strong for her to claim them remotely without their consent. She admitted as much to me in the redwood grove,” Lily said, shaking her head. “The Hive is hers—I know I’ll never be able to take them over because she controls the Queen—but I think I have a shot of pushing her out of some of the insect Woven’s willstones, at the very least. If we can get even half of the insect Woven on our side, we might win.”
“The insect Woven,” Rowan repeated. His face was still a blank mask.
“See? This is why I didn’t tell you,” Lily said accusingly. “You think I like keeping secrets from you? I hate it. But what choice do I have when you’re so prejudiced you can’t see the Woven for what they are?”
“And what are they?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Victims.” Rowan let out a surprised laugh, but Lily pressed on. “They are Grace’s slaves. They’re cannon fodder and they die by the thousands. Maybe I can’t save them. Maybe I can’t save anyone, not the Outlanders, not the kids in the subways tunnels, not even my own coven. Maybe it’s some giant cosmic joke that I’m even here, and I should go home and go back to not being able to save my own world.” She bent down and started tugging on the lock that chained the drake to the ground. “But I’m going to try first. I’m going to go to the Woven and I’m going to ask them if they want to fight with me, because if anything on this blasted continent should want to get out from under Grace’s boot, it’s them.” She gave up on the lock and started tugging at the spike. “And if you’re too pigheaded to see that they’ve been abused as horribly the Outlanders have, than you can just stay here.”
Rowan watched her heaving ineffectually on the spike. “What are you doing?” he asked, suppressing a laugh.
“I’m trying to get this dang thing off!” Lily shouted, at her wit’s end.
“Use your willstones,” he said. He moved her back. “Look. It’s a lattice. You just touch it and think open.” He
did it and the lock clicked.
“Oh,” Lily said.
“That was one of the first things I taught you about magic. In the cabin. Remember?” he asked.
“Now I do.” She looked at him and shifted from foot to foot uncertainly, remembering the cabin. Remembering claiming him. Every speck of her wanted to kiss him. “So . . . are you coming with me?” she asked, just short of pleading.
“Of course I am,” he replied. “I may not like the thought of running into battle alongside the Woven, but it’s certainly better than watching you sell your soul.”
“And easier than fighting a hundred battles,” Lily added cheekily.
Rowan laughed and looked down as a dark thought crossed his mind. “Yes.” His voice dropped. “I think this one battle is going to be quite enough.”
CHAPTER
14
Lily saw the milky-jade glimmer of the speaking stone and eased back in the stirrups to let her drake know she wanted it to slow down. It cupped its wings forward, essentially stopping in midair before the sheer cliff on the eastern side of the mountain.
Lily didn’t have all the proper signals learned after her single flight with Leto, but she had noticed that drakes were much more sensitive to commands than any horse she’d ever ridden and as such only required a minimum of direction—the rest, the drake figured out on its own by reading its rider’s body language. Lily touched the side of its neck with her heel and gently indicated by shifting her weight that she wanted it to land. She felt Rowan’s hands on her waist tighten as the drake flew them into the treetops, but to his credit, he didn’t panic when the drake clamped on to a violently swaying tree and scrambled down the trunk in a barrage of cracking timber and whipping branches.
As they dismounted, Lily realized she didn’t know how to make the drake fly back to camp. She tried pointing in the direction they’d come and saying go home to it several times, but either it didn’t understand or it didn’t want to. After a few failed attempts, Lily gave up and allowed the drake to follow her and Rowan through the trees to the speaking stone. It tucked its wings back and waddled alongside her like a very large dog. Rowan eyed it skeptically a few times, uncomfortable with being accompanied by a Woven in the dark, but again he showed a commendable amount of restraint and held his tongue.
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