Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(34)



We have to sneak out—Caleb, Tristan, and me, Rowan said, correcting her. You’re staying behind with Una, Breakfast, and Juliet to defend you.

Like fun I am. Lily—

“So, tell me the truth,” Toshi said. “We’re not really alone, are we? Your coven has been hearing everything I’ve been saying all morning.”

Lily had the decency to be embarrassed. “They’re very protective of me.”

“I understand,” he said. “I would be, too.”

Lily smiled. “If you were mine.”

He made a strangled sound. “Can I have half an hour alone with you?” he pleaded. “Really alone?”

Absolutely not, Rowan said.

Hey, this was your idea. He’s not going to let me claim him if he can’t trust me, and if he doesn’t trust me I don’t want him. I tried it with you, and look what happened.

Lily blocked her coven out. “Done,” she said to Toshi. “You have my full attention.”

“This way,” he said. A mischievous mood overtook him. He grabbed her hand and pulled her into a run alongside a passing trolley. Toshi boosted Lily aboard and then swung up beside her with a wide grin on his face.

“Where are we going?” Lily asked, pink cheeked and breathless from the quick dash.

Toshi kept his eyes trained out the window, one hand on the rail and the other on the small of Lily’s back as they swayed back and forth with the rocking car. “Home.”

They traveled south along the water to where the trolley line ended at the far side of the wharf. The wall loomed close. The trolley came to a full stop inside a station and they had to go through a turnstile that was watched by hovering Warrior Sisters. There were no charming little restaurants by the sea here.

“What is this place?” Lily asked.

“It’s a checkpoint. Technically, we’re leaving the city although we’re still inside the wall, and entering the restricted zone,” Toshi answered. “Whatever happens, just hold still.”

A Warrior Sister flew in close to Lily, her head twitching. She got near enough so that Lily could see the pincers in her mouth dart out and swipe over her face to clean it. The Sister’s human hands played with the barbs at the end of her whip while her eyes seemed to zero in on Lily’s willstone. The Sister’s head suddenly jerked down to where Lily had her other two willstones stashed inside the bodice of her kimono. She landed on the ground almost close enough to touch. Several Workers flew from the Warrior Sister’s shoulders and landed on Lily. They started to crawl over her, trying to get inside her clothes.

“Toshi,” Lily said tremulously.

“Hold still,” he repeated, his tone both understanding and urgent.

Lily could feel them tasting her with their tiny tongues as if they were sipping nectar off her skin. She prickled with goose bumps and forced herself not to slap at them. The Warrior Sister seemed to get what she wanted, reared back, and flew away, taking all but one of the Workers with her. The final Worker stayed on Lily’s throat.

“That one will remain with you the entire time you’re outside the city,” Toshi told her. She noticed that he had a Worker on his neck as well.

“And it stays right here?” she said, gesturing to its perch just over her jugular.

“Yes,” Toshi answered. “Don’t do anything to disturb it.”

Lily looked at the other people in the checkpoint. No one but her and Toshi had willstones, but they all had Workers attached to their throats, the poisonous barbs of their stingers poised right about the jugular.

“It’s like walking around with a knife at your throat,” Lily said. She felt the Worker’s prickling feet and shivered with the knowledge that a bug was crawling on her. “Worse.”

Toshi looked at her. “It’s what you have to do so your children or grandchildren can have any chance of being chosen by the Hive one day. If any of them are lucky enough to be born with magical talent, that is.”

“And if they aren’t?”

“They wait.”

Toshi and Lily emerged from the relatively empty station to join the throngs of people jostling up and down the streets of the restricted zone. The buildings were giant concrete blocks, bare and unadorned. The streets were scrubbed, but there was a gray oppressiveness to the place, and the lingering scent of harsh cleaning chemicals was almost as disheartening as filth. Every block a sentry tower rose up from the pavement, and the platforms on top buzzed with Warrior Sisters. The Workers did not fly around pollinating flowers in their cheerful, bumbling way. There were no flowers. Here, the Workers stayed anchored to an individual, constantly threatening to take the life that hosted them.

Toshi took her hand so they weren’t separated in the crowd, and Lily soon found herself overwhelmed by the teeming throngs and pressed close to him. The sun was still shining, but there was a chill in the air. Even the people dressed in drab colors, wore no makeup, jewelry, or perfume, and they never seemed to look up. The solid mass of the perimeter wall, and the Warrior Sisters on top of it, seemed to hang over them.

“Families can wait generations in the restricted zone,” he shouted over the din. “They work whatever jobs they can in the city or outlying farms and hope that they have a child or a grandchild or a great-grandchild with talent. Only the magically talented get chosen by the Hive.”

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