Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(100)

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.”