Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(75)
She came out of the bathroom and saw Rowan waiting for her, dressed all in black and looking brutally beautiful. The collar of his shirt was open to show off his huge willstone, which danced with light and power. He held something sparkly in his hand.
“Turn around,” he said, his voice catching as he stared at her.
Lily felt him place something on her head. He angled her toward a mirror and she saw that it was a spiked crown of iron and diamonds. The Salem Witch’s crown. Lily remembered it from Lillian’s memory. It was a cruel-looking thing, twisted and sharp. The metal was burnt black where it wasn’t shining with white diamonds. Rowan opened a case and showed her what was nestled in the velvet inside. Matching shackles. Lily smiled wryly at them, remembering Lillian and how she had balked, refusing to wear them. She wouldn’t even look at them.
Rowan put the matching iron-and-diamond cuffs on her wrists and locked them shut. The cuffs came complete with rings ready to chain her to the pyre.
Lily turned her wrists over and heard the metal clink. Every gesture she made would be accompanied by the sound of iron chains. She watched a slow smile spread on Rowan’s face as she realized that she was a prisoner as much as she was a queen.
“So this is what it is to be a warmonger witch,” she said, breath fluttering.
“You are chained to your claimed as much as they are to you,” he replied. “And if you fail, you burn.”
Lily looked up at him and knew he would never let that happen. He’d pulled her from the fire before, and he’d do it again because he loved her.
Tristan appeared in the doorway, sensed that he was interrupting, and dropped his eyes. “They’re ready for you, Lily,” he said.
Rowan and Lily took a guilty step back from each other.
“We should go down first,” Rowan said to Tristan and then turned back to Lily. “Wait five minutes and then come down.”
“You’re not coming with me?” she asked, her voice piping with nerves.
“This is your moment,” he replied with a little shake of his head.
Instead of going to the door, Lily crossed farther inside the room.
“They’re expecting you,” Rowan said, not understanding what she was doing.
“I know,” she replied, and went to the wall behind the bed. She started feeling around the chinks in the masonry. “I’m not going to claim them one at a time. There are too many. I have to use the speaking stone. Like Grace does.”
Lily felt the catch and pressed it. The hidden doorway swung open and she gestured up the secret stair.
“Will you be able to claim them that way?” Tristan asked.
“Yes, she will, as long as they consent to it,” Rowan answered for her.
They climbed up the secret staircase together, Tristan in front of her and Rowan beside her. She could feel the flurry of their mindspeak swirling about her head like a buffeting wind, but she didn’t need to be a part of it.
She pulled Rowan’s arm against her side and let herself feel the shape of his arm under his sleeve. She felt cold and pressed the solidness of him against her. He glanced down at her cautiously, like he was watching something wild and rare that would run off if he looked too closely.
She could hear the low murmur rising up from the throng of people waiting for her before she reached the edge. She placed a hand on the cold granite of her keep and leaned out so everyone could see her. Silence fell over the multitude.
The drawbridge had been lowered, and the doors of the castle had been opened onto the bailey. People filled the hall and the bailey; they streamed over the drawbridge and, for all Lily could see, they were packed several streets deep into the city. All of them waiting to be claimed. In the silence, Lily’s iron shackles clanked. She looked down at her wrists already rubbed red by the rough metal and felt their eyes on her like a watchful sea. She raised her head, ready now. For a moment she saw herself as they saw her—terrible and glorious as a blizzard.
“Are you willing to be claimed?” she asked. Her voice drifted through the silence and came to each individual as if she had whispered it privately in his or her ear.
“We are,” they answered together.
She crossed to the speaking stone and looked into its soft lights. At first she couldn’t think how to connect with all the waiting willstones below her. Before, she’d always had to touch a willstone to feel its unique vibration, and then once she had the pattern of it, she could use the vibration to unlock the bearer’s mind. She had to think of a way of finding the vibrations without touch, but she knew that if Grace could figure it out, so could she.
Nothing came to her. She took a step back and tried to calm down. Strangely she thought of the shaman, and of the time she spent with him in the oubliette. She wiped her mind of any expectations. This wasn’t a contest between her and Grace.
She stared into the speaking stone and waited.
“Those funny little lights. Look at ’em go,” she murmured to herself. She giggled under her breath at how alive they looked. Each little thread of light quivered through the lattice of the crystal in its own way. Some swam up, quivering quickly. Some swooped down slowly. Others looped sideways, making tight corkscrews. Each one moved in a unique pattern, each one an individual mind. Lily laughed aloud when she figured it out.
She realized that the speaking stone worked like a net, gathering up the vibrations of every willstone nearby and displaying each of them as a vibrating string of light. Lily worked as fast as she could, her eyes skipping through the speaking stone as she learned the thousands of different vibrations. She imprinted each inside her willstone before moving on to the next. When she had them all, she played the strings’ vibrations back like many voices singing one sweeping song, and claimed them all. Lily blinked her eyes and sighed.