Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(101)

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.