Lily couldn’t move.
But it didn’t hurt. There was no feeling of invasion or violation as there had been when Gideon and Carrick had taken her stones. Rowan was too much a part of her for her willstones to revolt against his touch. She simply couldn’t move a muscle, not even to close her eyes. Her will had been separated from her physical body, leaving her as limp as a darted grizzly. She was aware that it was something Rowan was doing to her stones that made her like that. His will was suppressing hers somehow, and he was so powerful she couldn’t even blink.
It was difficult to focus on what was happening around her. People started yelling. Juliet was frantic. The Tristans went for Rowan, calling him a traitor and worse. Rowan pulled out his knife and stood over Lily. Caleb put himself in the middle. He was trying to make sense of it all. Alaric defended Rowan, saying that if Rowan had done this to Lillian to begin with, no one would have died. Alaric’s painted warriors appeared out of nowhere and the Tristans were dragged away. Juliet cried. Lily hated seeing her sister cry.
Lily felt herself being lifted and carried. Rowan had her, but she couldn’t see him because her head had fallen to the side. All she could see was the ground and people’s legs as they went past. He put her in a cage and locked it.
He didn’t look back.
The farther Rowan took her willstones away from her body, the hazier everything became. It was night and then it was day again. Someone tried to pour water between her lips, but Lily’s jaw was clamped shut. Night came, and Lily could have sworn she saw two Breakfasts standing in the group that came to stare at her and argue. One Breakfast had the same short hair she’d always seen him with, and the other had long hair that was braided with beads and feathers like an Outlander’s. The longhaired Breakfast was pleading with the group. He kept saying that the technology for the bombs had been stolen from another world and that they would create a cinder world like the ones he had seen in his spirit walks. Lily wondered when Breakfast had learned to spirit walk. More arguing followed.
Everyone went away.
The stars were so bright they dazzled Lily’s eyes. A shadow suddenly blocked them out. Its hunched shoulders and cocked head reminded her of Carrick. He stood outside her bars, staring at her. He told her not to worry, that he would take care of the bombs. Remove just one part and they couldn’t explode, he said. The shadow crouched down close to her, holding up a little metal piece. He said a man had died over it. There was blood on his hands. He reached through the bars and touched her cheek, telling her that they were on the same side now. He said that everything had turned. He was her true champion and Rowan had become her torturer. He stroked her cheek. He said that she would learn to love him, that he wasn’t so different from his brother after all.
The shadow went away.
Dawn came and turmoil came with it. Arguments thundered over her like a storm cloud. Alaric came to her cage, opened it, and shook her limp body. He was demanding she tell them where the missing thing had gone. He leaned close to her. There was rage in his eyes and he said he wanted her dead before she got to the other bombs. Rowan pulled him away. He said Lily couldn’t be responsible. Look at her, he shouted. Alaric calmed down and said that it didn’t matter anyway. They’d make another copy of the missing piece as soon as they found Hakan. Rowan looked at Lily for a long time after Alaric went away. His face suddenly changed and he rubbed something off her cheek. Blood, he whispered. He looked around, frightened, and then locked her back in her cage.
Lily’s eyes grew dim.
She felt arms lifting her, carrying her away. Everything was dark. Maybe she was dying. She felt a deep, dull pain as if someone were moving the bones around in her body, and then she recognized the warmth of her willstones against her skin. She had her willstones back again. She drew in a gasping breath. She saw Tristan’s face. Her Tristan, and everything came back into focus. Tristan attached her willstones around her neck for her.
“She’s alive,” he said, his hushed voice breaking with relief. She felt water in her mouth and swallowed it, but it wasn’t enough. She gulped the water down frantically, tasting a hint of herbs that eased the pounding in her head. She heard another voice whisper to Tristan, and the canteen was taken away. Her eyes slid shut.
Lily realized Tristan was carrying her. Una’s and Juliet’s faces appeared nearby. They were running through the camp. It was dark out, but Lily could still see some guards watching them pass as they stole away from camp. No one raised the alarm.
Far off, on the other side of the camp, Lily could hear the sounds of a skirmish. Terrified, she listened for the howls and screeches of Woven, but all she heard were human voices fighting with one another. She could feel some of her claimed dying, and clutched at her chest with each heartbreaking loss.
When they got to the edge of camp, Lily saw Caleb, Breakfast, and the other Tristan already mounted and holding the reins of five fresh horses. A handful of braves were with them, speaking in hushed tones. They left as soon as Lily arrived, each of the braves pausing a moment to touch a hand to their chest in a gesture of respect as they passed her.
Her Tristan passed Lily up into Caleb’s arms. Caleb’s face was bruised and swollen. So was the other Tristan’s. They’d both been in a terrible fight. She tried to ask what had happened.
“Later,” Caleb whispered, holding her in front of him on his horse. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
Her mouth was so dry. She looked around. “Where are we going?” she croaked.
Everyone exchanged frightened looks. Lily noticed Juliet’s eyes were red and swollen with crying. “West, like you wanted,” Juliet replied.
CHAPTER
13
They rode all night. No one spoke for fear of the Woven. Lily clung to Caleb, wishing she were back in the cage without her willstones. At least then she wouldn’t have to feel anything. Now that she was no longer numb she had to face what had happened.
When she’d made her choice and told everyone that she had been in contact with Lillian, she’d known it might mean she would lose Rowan. Deep inside, Lily had always wondered how he could look at her and not think of Lillian anyway, and when she’d openly admitted that she agreed with Lillian, Lily knew she would be giving him up. She might even have to fight him.
But what he did was worse than fight her. At least in a fight, you have to hear each other’s argument. Rowan took away her willstones. He took away her voice.
Lily wasn’t sad yet. She felt embarrassed and off balance, like someone who’d put her foot down hard, expecting there to be one more step on the stairway, only to stumble in front of everyone. She couldn’t stop thinking of the night they’d spent together, and what a fool she’d been to give herself to him. It hit her in waves, alternating between the heat of shame and the chill of disbelief. He knew what had happened to her in the oubliette, and he still did the same thing to her that Gideon and Carrick had done. He’d robbed her of her will.
In the early morning hours, Caleb decided that they’d gone far enough and called a halt to rest the horses and eat. Everyone chewed mechanically, like they had no appetite. It wasn’t just fear of what they faced in the west that stole everyone’s spirit. They had all lost someone they’d loved. Lily wasn’t the only one Rowan and Alaric had turned against.
And poor Juliet—Lily stared at her sister’s swollen face and shaking hands. Juliet looked as wrecked as Lily felt, but Lily couldn’t cry like her sister. Not yet. Maybe not ever. It had been Lily’s decision to listen to Lillian in the first place, and then her decision to take Lillian’s side. She had walked into this with open eyes, and she had to keep them open or they could all die out here in the Woven Woods. Crying was a luxury, a release she couldn’t afford.
After they’d eaten, Lily felt strong enough to talk. “What happened?” she asked.
“I’ll tell her,” Breakfast said with a tired sigh. “Well, for starters, I finally found out why everyone kept mistaking me for an Outlander. It’s because
there’s another me here.”
“He’s the young shaman in training that we were trying to locate for you when you were first here,” Tristan said.
“He was on a vision quest on the Ocean of Grass,” Lily recalled.
“He came back. And I met myself.” Breakfast’s tone was even, but his expression was still one of shock. “And myself said that he had spirit walked into these places called cinder worlds.” Breakfast shook his head to clear it. “Anyway, so Red Leaf—that’s his name—came out against the bombs. He said that he’d seen this mistake made on other worlds, and that Alaric would wipe out the Outlanders along with the cities.”
“How did the tribe take it?” Lily asked.
“A lot of braves were angry that Alaric hadn’t told them about the bombs and that he’d planned on using them without consulting the rest of us,” Caleb said. He threw something into the fire in agitation, showing that he was one of the angry ones.
“So that did happen,” Lily said.
She shivered, realizing that if she hadn’t hallucinated seeing two Breakfasts, she hadn’t hallucinated seeing Carrick. She rubbed her cheek repeatedly, trying to scrape away any trace of the blood he’d marked her with—as if they’d both been responsible for shedding it.
“Were you conscious while you were in the cage?” Una asked. “Your eyes were open, but Rowan said—” She suddenly broke off, stumbling painfully over Rowan’s name. She’d trusted him, too. Una had learned to love Rowan like a brother. It was an honor she’d never given anyone before, and the loss of him had hurt her deeply.
“I wouldn’t say I was conscious, but a few things managed to sink in,” Lily said quietly. “Keep going.”
“So the tribe started to divide,” Breakfast said. “One side agreed with the sachem and the other with the shaman. But that’s not all.”
“Let me guess. Someone disarmed the bomb that Alaric had been concealing at camp and no one knows who did it, right?” Lily said. She nodded, already knowing she was right. “It was Carrick. He came to my cage.” Everyone stiffened and Lily raised a hand. “He didn’t hurt me, and I’m sure he’s long gone. He’s Lillian’s henchman now, and her main objective for everything—the trials, the hangings, all of it—has been to get rid of the bombs and the people who know how to make them. She’ll send Carrick after the other twelve bombs before Alaric has a chance to use them.”
“Thank God,” Una said. It earned her a few sharp looks. “Look, Carrick is a psycho, but he’s doing this world a huge service. You three didn’t grow up seeing movies about nuclear war like we did,” Una continued defensively, aiming her comments at Juliet, Caleb, and the other Tristan. “You have no idea what nuclear fallout is. It’ll kill all of you, slowly and painfully. Lily, show them what happened to the tunnel women just for carrying the bomb parts.”
Lily did as Una asked, and then waited for Una, Breakfast, and her Tristan to finish answering all of the disbelieving questions before bringing the conversation back to what she needed to know. “You said the tribe started to divide,” she said, prompting the other Tristan.
“Caleb and I didn’t think it was right to kill everyone in the cities without at least trying to fight the Woven now that we have a witch who’s with us,” he answered. “Plenty of braves sided with you and your idea to go west and fight the Woven, Lily.”
She vaguely recalled Rowan standing up for her against Alaric at one point during the foggy time she spent in the cage. “Did Rowan?” she asked. Her voice was small and pathetically hopeful.
Juliet’s forehead pinched with sadness. “No,” she answered. “He and Alaric said that the only braves who wanted to go west were the ones who’d never seen the Hive.”
Lily sat back, deflated. This wasn’t about her broken heart, she reminded herself. She had to focus and think like a leader. Like Alaric would. “How many braves are with me, Caleb?”
Caleb and his Tristan shared a look. “About thirty from Alaric’s group. They’ll follow us when they can,” Caleb replied. “More may come from the other twelve factions once they hear you’re back. A lot of them are your claimed, and they all hate the Woven. They may want to join us in fighting them.” Caleb’s words were optimistic but his tone wasn’t.
“What happened while we were leaving camp?” Lily asked. “There was something going on. People were dying.”
“Caleb, your Tristan, and I took on Rowan to get your willstones back,” the other Tristan said quietly. “We had to fight our way out.”
Lily studied their faces. Even under their warpaint, she could see that the other Tristan and Caleb had gotten the worst of it, and her Tristan didn’t have a mark on him. She wondered what had happened, but she didn’t want to bring it up in case she said something to embarrass her Tristan.
“A lot of Outlanders were angry that Alaric was letting you starve in that cage,” Juliet added. “They feel like they owe you their lives so they helped us get away. Even most of the braves that sided with Alaric thought he should let you live.”
Lily gave a mirthless laugh, smiling so she didn’t start crying. “But not Alaric or Rowan.”
“No. Not them,” Juliet replied.
Tristan looked up at Lily, like he wanted to say something, but after a moment he looked away.
The conversation was over and everyone went back to finishing supper. Lily crossed her arms over her chest, holding everything inside as best as she could. It was worse than she thought. Rowan would have let her die. A bitter voice in her head said he was just being smart. It was probably easier for him to let her die than to smash his willstone again.
“You should eat,” her Tristan said softly.
Lily looked up at him and realized that everyone else was asleep around the fire. She’d lost track of how long she’d been sitting there.
“Really. Finish your food,” Tristan urged. He sat down next to her.
She picked up her bowl and swallowed what was in front of her without bothering to taste it.
“I’ll keep watch,” Lily told him when she had finished.
“You need to sleep,” he replied.
She tilted her lips into a bitter smile. “I won’t be sleeping for a long time so I may as well make myself useful. I’ll wake you if something comes.”
Tristan lay down next to her. He stared up at her, worried. “I’m sorry about Rowan,” he said. He reached out and laid a hand on her wrist, trying to comfort her. “I’m so sorry he hurt you.”
“Go to sleep,” Lily replied, her eyes scanning the trees.
Eventually, Tristan fell asleep and Lily was finally alone. She needed answers, and there was only one person who could give them to her.
You used me, Lillian. You had Carrick follow us from my world. Was it because you knew Rowan would take me right to Alaric?
I wanted a man Alaric never lets out of his sight. Hakan, the builder. He knows how to disarm the bombs, and he knows where most of them are. Carrick gave me Hakan, and now I know what Hakan knows.
I can’t believe it. I didn’t have to say anything to Rowan. I lost him for nothing.
I didn’t tell you to tell him, Lily. In fact, I was very careful to never disturb you with my memories when Rowan was near. I didn’t want him to accidentally pick up on my presence. I didn’t want you to lose him.
Then why have me come back here at all, Lillian, if not to argue your side? You said that was the whole point of showing me your memories!
Yes, I need you on my side, and that’s why I showed you my memories. But I never wanted you to tell anyone. In fact, I told you not to.
If you don’t want me to argue for you, then why do you need me, Lillian? Why did you kill my father to get me to come back here?
Have you been paying attention to anything I showed you? The shaman told me that no one knows where all the bombs are—I don’t even think Alaric knows. But you claimed an army of Outlanders, Lily. Some combination of all those minds must know something. I forced you to come back to this world first to
lead me to Hakan, who is one of the three people who know how to disarm them, and now I need you in this world so you can go into the minds of your claimed and find the bombs that Hakan can’t locate.
Alaric said that he was careful about who he allowed me to claim. He said none of my braves even know about the bombs.
It doesn’t matter what they think they know. Use your claimed to make a mind mosaic. Someone has seen something, even if they don’t know what that something is. Find all the suspicious carriages and tell me where they are. Your claimed don’t even have to know you’re in their minds.
I just have to violate the privacy of thousands of people who trust me. That’s despicable, Lillian.
But it will end the war. Do you want to be the good guy, or do you want to save lives?
I think I hate you more now than ever.
Think of how much you’ll hate yourself if even one of those bombs goes off. Think of all the people who are going to die because you’re too squeamish to do something you find despicable. Haven’t you learned yet? Someone has to be the villain so everyone else can stay alive. Think of the one thing you would never do—that’s what you’ll have to do in order to end this war. It’s what I had to do.
Lily cut off contact with Lillian and stared at the fire, bitterness gnawing at her. Lillian’s version of the future was a dictatorship, while Alaric’s version was a smoking wasteland. Neither of those worlds were acceptable to Lily.
She saw something dart through the underbrush and instantly stiffened, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Lily opened her mouth to cry out and wake the others, but stopped. The thing in the underbrush was running away. She saw only a long, pale tail as it retreated.
Lily sat back, not completely sure why she had let the pale coyote Woven go, and saw Juliet’s big eyes staring up at her from where she lay. Her sister knew her better than anyone. She also knew Lillian better than anyone.
“How do I do this, Juliet? How do I stop this war?” Lily whispered. “Lillian’s still using me. I’m her pawn. She’s always two steps ahead.”
Firewalker Page 27
