Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(73)

“Lily. Over here,” he said.

She turned and saw a familiar square of black silk spread out and waiting for her. Rowan and Tristan knelt between the runes they had drawn on the silk in salt. They had nothing else with them but a bowl, a long silver needle, and a tiny mallet.

“We’ll start with you sitting up,” Rowan said.

Lily sat down in front of Rowan with her legs crossed. He gestured for Tristan to sit behind her, and Lily felt his hands take her head and tilt it to expose the long stretch of skin from her ear to her collarbone.

“This will leave a mark,” Rowan said.

Lily took a breath and let it out slowly to steady herself. But she didn’t stop him. A haze of light expanded out from Rowan’s willstone, like a bright fog that spun outward to wrap them up in glinting tendrils. He dipped the tip of the needle in the bowl, picked up the mallet, and began tapping the end in a quick staccato.

Lily felt the pricking of the tattoo behind her ear. As the ink started to sink into her skin an itch turned into a burn. The burn began to build.

“Hold her,” Rowan ordered, and Tristan’s hands clamped down on Lily’s head.

Even when Rowan paused momentarily to dip his needle, the burning kept mounting, and soon she couldn’t even feel the prick of the needle over the sting of the ink. A cold sweat broke down her back, and as Rowan tapped the tattoo farther down the side of her neck, she started to shiver. She wasn’t burning. She was freezing.

Tristan had to take more of her weight as the icy acid in the ink started to leach into her blood and chill her from the inside out. Lily could feel the cold sliding down her insides as if she’d swallowed an ice cube. Her teeth began to chatter.

“Okay. Lay her back,” Rowan said.

Lily felt herself being put down and opened her eyes. The stars whirled above. The steady tapping and the cold burn began again along the lower part of her right ribs. Lily tracked the paths of the stars to keep her mind off Rowan’s never-ending tattoo. He worked down from her ribs and curved inside the hip bone, ending just above her bikini line.

“Last one,” he said, and started on the top of her left thigh.

She was numb with cold by the time he had spiraled around the inside of her thigh and ended the third tattoo at the back of her left knee. Rowan ended the spell. The light in his willstone heaved and then went out.

In the absence of his magelight, the soft scintillation of the speaking stone caught Lily’s eye again. Half in and half out of her body to hide from the pain, Lily let her other eye swim in the light of the speaking stone. She idly wondered whether she could reach Pale One and called softly to her claimed Woven.

Lily’s mind seemed to jump into a fast-moving river, and the impressions of places whizzed past her. She saw hills and valleys and then mountains and vast plains. Her other eye skipped from speaking stone to speaking stone, each stone tinting the world a slightly different color, until finally her mind settled inside the claimed she’d named Pale One. Lily waded through a tangle of scents so strong and clear they glowed like colors that painted the whole world, and high-contrast images seen through eyes that were not built like her own. The mind she touched pieced information together differently than Lily’s did, but after a few tries, she deciphered this . . .

Inside, follow. Unseen, but here with me, she calls. Bite itch and lick. Need to howl, but stop. Biggers are close. Smell sweet stink of Biggers’ honey.

Lily asked Pale One if she could join her, and then her vision exploded with color and light. After a dizzying moment, Lily realized she was looking at a fern. She concentrated and panned out with Pale One’s achingly sharp eyes to see a glade, deep in the redwood forest. The colors she saw were richer, and she could see the edges of things more distinctly.

Lily felt the earth under Pale One. She felt the old minds of the trees, their roots running deep and holding the ground to their hearts like million-fingered hands. She read the vibration of the land. It was the low, thunderous rumble of a giant lung, the trees breathing for the whole world. Lily stored the vibration in her willstone and released Pale One.

Run to the rising sun, Lily commanded. Go east until you are safely out of Hive territory.

She calls. I run to where the wolves tend their meat, Pale One responded.

She saw Rowan’s face hovering over hers. His worried frown broke with relief. “Where did you go?” he asked softly.

Lily was about to tell him, but she thought of the expression of barely controlled disgust on his face when she told the coven about Pale One and stopped herself. Instead she just smiled and struggled to sit up.

She looked down at the two tattoos she could see, and was relieved to find out that although they were long, they were as thin as ribbons, and the ink Rowan had used was a very pale pink. She ran her finger over the tattoo on her leg and felt it more than she saw it. It looked like lace had been inserted under her skin.

“Is it going to stay raised like that?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rowan replied. “The compound I tattooed under your skin will help you heal faster each time you go to the pyre. It’s permanent, though.”

Lily studied the delicate filigree of the design. “Does Lillian have one?”

“She has two. One running down her back, and another down the inside of her right leg. I gave you three.”

Rowan’s face was impassive, but Lily noticed he didn’t meet her eyes. She wondered when he had given them to Lillian, and if they had been in love at the time.