Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(116)

I’m supposed to stay over you and protect you, he argued.

Get that pesticide. Kill the swarms. My fire will protect me.

Lily wrapped her hands around her iron chains and held on as the logs beneath her turned to crumbling red coals. She called out to Breakfast for more wood and his team piled her pyre ever higher. She drew the heat into her crucible of a body and changed it faster and faster until all of her claimed were overflowing with power. Lily’s army basked in her mounting strength, throwing themselves at the Warrior Sisters in frenzy, while Lillian’s army began to falter.

Lillian! How can I help you?

I’m dying, Lily, and when I die it won’t be quietly. You must take my claimed from me or they’ll die with me.

I don’t know how.

I’ll give you everything I am. Everything but one part—the worst of me. That I’ll take with me to my grave.

Lily’s vision scoped out from her pyre, pulled up into the air, swirled over the battlefield, and spiraled down into Lillian’s.

Clawing agony assaulted her. A thousand regrets rained down on her head. Every memory Lillian ever had, every mistake she ever made, every willstone she ever claimed, every love, and every hate she harbored in her heart transferred from Lillian to Lily in an instant.

All but one. Lillian kept Carrick for herself.

Watching as if from a great height, Lily saw Lillian lying atop her smoldering pyre, the fire nearly extinguished. Her skin was black with soot and streaked red with blood.

Come, Carrick. Carry me to our grave, Lillian called.

Toshi was lost.

He blundered through row after row of womb combs, his blood chilling at the thought of the horrors they unleashed. Desperate now, Toshi ran toward what he hoped was the back wall. His feet made a squelching sound and seemed to stick. He was standing in wax.

Relief over finding the hive quickly gave way to fear as he hurried down the ever-narrowing passageway. The smell of honey grew so strong it made him dizzy. He saw evidence that others had recently come this way in the wax. He followed the footprints left by Lily’s coven to a bottleneck. He climbed through, his heart in his throat, and saw the Queen. She was writhing on her velvet throne, her body twisted and racked with pain.

Toshi hefted his crossbow, aiming it directly between her bulbous, rainbow eyes, and then lowered it. He forced himself to raise the muzzle of his weapon again. His hands shook as he watched her spasm and clutch at her pillow in mute agony. The healer in him wavered, and the one precious second he’d been granted passed him by.

Rough hands grabbed him and wrestled him to the floor, knocking his crossbow out of reach. Toshi saw male torsos under their insectoid heads. The drones had squat bodies that were thick and square as bricks. Bristling hairs stuck up from their shoulders and backs. As they tried to rip off his arms and legs, Toshi noticed their stunted wings would never fly.

He felt his limbs straining as they were pushed into unnatural positions, but they didn’t break. Still full of Lily’s power, Toshi fought back. He reached past the waving tubes in their mouths, grabbed ahold of their hairy, ovoid heads, and started wrenching them around. He rolled, and they rolled with him, pouncing on top of him in a pack and swarming over him.

The knot of them crashed through a wax wall and Toshi felt warm, sticky honey flowing over him. He jumped up to his feet, only to be knocked back again. More drones joined the fight as the sticky, bloody ball of them pushed through another wall. Toshi scrambled to get his feet under him and noticed that he was being pushed back and uphill, away from the Queen’s chamber.

He threw himself against them, pushing and shoving and trying to make his way back as they formed a blockade to steadily inch him out of the hive. He dug in his feet, only to feel them sliding back in the wax. He killed one after another desperately, trying to get back to the Queen.

He tasted fresh air and felt earth under him as the pile rolled. The drones had evicted him from the hive.

Only two wheels of clouds darkened the sky. Only two beams of light pierced their centers. Tasting victory, the Hive surged forward, throwing themselves against their foes with reckless abandon.

Lily was torn. Half of her hung from her iron-and-diamond shackles. Half of her gasped for breath on a pile of ash.

Hang on, said one half of her to the other. Survive this battle, and we can heal you. Toshi can save you.

The part of her left in ashes spoke for the last time.

I have seen myself as many things. I have been the hero and I have been the villain. I may never be a hero again, but at least I can make my final act a heroic one.

I summon Carrick to me. He doesn’t want to come, so I force him. He fights me, his limbs stiff, but my will is stronger. He picks me up in a gruesome parody of a bride and groom, and carries me into the redwood grove. He can feel how hot my skin is, and he knows what it means. He is not the first mechanic I’ve marched to his own death.

As we near the exit of the hive, we pass by a pile of drones fighting one of Lily’s claimed. The one who can heal me. For a fleeting moment the thought of salvation shines a light in my dark mind. Toshi could cure me. Take all this pain away. I don’t have to die, but the war would go on, and many others would die in my place.

I don’t give Carrick the order to stop. We pass by my last chance at life and I grow hotter until my body bursts into flames. I smile. I choose this for all of them. I choose this for Rowan.

Carrick carries me into the mouth of the hive. Drones step up to stop us, but we have become a blowtorch that scares them away. Carrick would scream in agony if I would let him. But I won’t.