Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(72)
Una gave her a calculating look. “What are you willing to do to get rid of the Hive?” she asked flatly. “You better decide now, because I’m pretty sure Grace isn’t squeamish about who she’d claim.”
Lily glared at Una, and saw tough love glaring back. Una never let her get away with anything.
“Damn it,” Lily breathed. She turned to Riley. “Arrange a meeting with Mary, but tell her not to come if she’s just going to waste my time. I’m not doing this unless she can bring me an army.”
“I’ll tell her,” he said with a brisk nod. His horse-trading done, Riley looked down on the remains of her bread. “Are you going to eat that?”
Lily ended up having to order Gavin to bring more food. Riley ate with the mechanical determination of someone who had spent more days of his young life going hungry than feeling full, and he wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity to gorge until he couldn’t see straight. When his gargantuan appetite was finally appeased, Lily sent him back to the tunnels with a basket of food for Pip and the other children who followed him around like the Pied Piper.
It was almost evening before Rowan returned with Caleb and Tristan. At some point Tristan had joined Rowan to try to help him persuade Caleb to come back to the coven, and it was obvious by the way the three of them hung together that they had spent quite a long time hashing things out. They already had similar ways of moving and gesturing from having grown up together, but it was more pronounced when they’d spent long stretches in one another’s heads. Physically, they were three very different men—Caleb dark and hulking, Tristan light-eyed and tall, and Rowan slender and as elegantly muscled as a dancer—but when they spent a lot of time together they could easily be mistaken for brothers.
Lily watched Caleb anxiously. She brushed up against his mind and gently asked for entry. He let her in, but only so far. She felt a pang of rejection and desperately hoped he wouldn’t stay angry with her forever. Caleb had been her shoulder to cry on in some of her darkest times. The thought of losing that closeness was unbearable to her.
I’m sorry, she said in mindspeak. She didn’t try to excuse her behavior with an explanation. It was up to him to forgive her or not.
Do better, he replied, holding back a tide of unpleasant memories from his childhood.
I will, Lily promised. She felt him relax and knew that the danger of losing him had passed. For now, anyway.
“Let me see how much of my hard work you undid today,” Rowan said, and came forward to check Lily’s injuries.
Rowan laid two fingers on the pulse point at Lily’s wrist. She saw his willstone flare enchantingly and became aware of the featherlight presence of him inside her skin. He was barely touching her with his fingertips, but the contact was still more intimate than if he’d slipped his hands under her dress.
“Better,” he said quietly.
“When will I be ready for the pyre?” she asked, keeping her hand close to his.
“You need at least another week.”
“Too long,” she replied with a little shake of her head. “Tomorrow, after I meet with Mary.”
“Mary?” he asked, surprised. “The leader of the tunnel gang?”
Lily replayed her meeting with Riley for Rowan, Caleb, and Tristan to bring them up to speed. After she was finished, Rowan picked up his argument with her where he’d left off.
“You still need to rest for a few more days at least.”
“We leave tomorrow. With or without Mary’s people.” “Lily—”
“Tomorrow,” she said firmly. “You have to get me ready for the pyre.”
Rowan knew what was happening to Lillian’s army without having to be shown. He knew every day they crept along was costing lives. Finally, he slipped his jacket off his shoulders with a sigh.
“There is something else I can do now that I have my full kit again. There’s an ink I couldn’t get my hands on once I left Lillian,” he said reluctantly.
“Ink?” Lily asked.
“Yes. It’s very rare, very old, and it’s going to hurt.”
Lily nodded and looked down at her hands. “Of course it will,” she said, trying to laugh her way through the fear.
“Tristan. I need you,” Rowan called as he headed toward what appeared to be a wall of solid rock beside the headboard of Lillian’s bed.
He laid his fingers carefully against the masonry, took a deep breath, and his willstone flared. The wall gave way with a grinding sound, pushing inward and sliding to the side to reveal a set of hidden stairs. Tristan looked surprised but followed Rowan up the stairway without a word of protest.
Lily frittered the next few minutes away while her mechanics prepared. Una and Juliet gave her uneven smiles that didn’t have the conviction to reach their eyes. Lily tried to comfort herself by thinking that whatever Rowan had planned couldn’t be worse than the pyre, although she knew that the pain of the pyre was offset by the rush of pleasure she got from the power it gave her. Something told her that whatever Rowan had planned would have very little upside to it.
When Rowan returned for her she was trying her best to be brave. He didn’t look at her when he led her up the stone stairway and through a trapdoor that led out onto the roof.
The stars were out, adorning a sickle moon that glowed gold in the warm summer sky. Beneath the horns of the moon an enormous speaking stone glimmered like an opal pillar that was subtly lit from within. Lily found herself drawn to the speaking stone, and nearly had her hands on it when she heard Rowan call her name.