Rowan Read online

  I’m so angry all I see is a white blur. I stab my finger into the bundle of nerves at the base of her throat, knocking her out. Whatever it is she wanted to get from me by staging this whole chase-and-wounded-bird act, I’m not going to give it to her. I’m not the same person I was a year ago.

  Lillian’s body goes limp and for a moment I consider letting her thump onto the pavement. Let her wake up with a couple of bruises. But at the last second I catch her and gather her up in my arms.

  Oh shit. I’ve just rendered the Salem Witch unconscious. There’s bound to be a law against that. I glance up the alley. People hurry past on the busy main road, oblivious. So far this little encounter has gone undetected, but that stroke of good luck isn’t going to last much longer. Where is her guard?

  I have to get her off the street, and there aren’t that many places I can take her. She ran in the opposite direction from my place, but Tristan’s is close. I’d have to take her out onto a crowded boulevard to get to him, but running into foot traffic can’t be helped now. It’s rush hour.

  I try to tip her head toward me as I carry her so that at least her face is pressed close to my chest. Her bright hair is everywhere. It obscures some of her features, but it’s also like a beacon, drawing stares. As I hurry past, I see people look at me, recognize who I am, then glance down at the slight redhead in my arms and make the obvious connection.

  Their confusion, coupled with the reverence they have for the Salem Witch, is what keeps anyone from stopping me. Still, I move fast, before someone gets it in their head to summon the guard.

  Four blocks later, and I’m at Tristan’s building. I don’t have a free hand so I reach out to him in mindspeak.

  Wake up.

  Go away, Rowan. I’m busy.

  Tell her you forgot about an appointment. This is important.

  He tries to block me out, but Tristan doesn’t have a fraction of my talent. I don’t stop pestering him until he comes down. He pulls open the door with a blanket wrapped around his bare waist. When he sees me his expression pinwheels from angry to confused to terrified in a moment.

  “You crazy son of a—” he says as I barrel past him with Lillian in my arms.

  I carry her up to Tristan’s apartment and dump her on his couch. It’s easier to just show him what happened this morning rather than tell him, so I share the memory while he and I look down on Lillian’s inert body. Of course, the girl he brought home the night before picks that moment to come out of his bedroom.

  “Where’d you go, baby?” she asks, rubbing her sleepy eyes. She’s wearing his shirt and nothing else.

  I rip the blanket off Tristan and toss it over Lillian. That hair of hers. Its uncontainable—poking out from under the edge of the blanket and spilling off the side of the couch in a shining red curtain of curls. The girl sees it and looks up at me, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  Tristan hurries the girl back to his bedroom, telling her that he’s sorry but she’s got to go. He promises her dinner and says something about how much fun he had and how much he likes her before I stop listening. A few minutes later the girl passes on her way to the door, still fastening the buttons on her dress. I give her a weak smile and she eyes me warily.

  “Is she going to be a problem?” I ask Tristan once she’s gone.

  “No idea,” Tristan responds, waving a frustrated hand in the air. “Can’t remember her name.” I roll my eyes, but Tristan’s not having any of my judgment today. “Hey, no one asked you to show up here with her like that!” He pulls the blanket off of Lillian with one quick tug, exposing her slack form. He draws his brow together, really seeing her for the first time. “What is she wearing?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, staring down at her. “I’ve never seen anyone dress like that before. And what’s a nuke?” I add, reading the writing on her shirt. Tristan shrugs.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asks.

  “Get her out of the city.” I’m making this up as I go along. “We should bring her to Alaric.”

  Tristan bites his lower lip, considering. “You know, we could end this whole thing right now,” he says quietly.

  I picture myself placing my hands on the sides of Lillian’s head and giving it one quick twist. This isn’t something new for me. I’ve fantasized about snapping her neck a thousand times in the past year, but as I look down on her all I can see is the soft skin and fragile bones I used to tilt my face into when I held her. I remember breathing her in, and I can’t find the strength in my arms to actually do it.

  “Do you want to—” I don’t know how to phrase this so I let my words trail off. Tristan looks horrified.

  “No. I couldn’t do it,” he says, blanching.

  “You suggested it.”

  “I thought you’d want to.”

  If I don’t kill her, she’ll keep hanging scientists and the Outlanders who harbor them. My people. “I’m not a murderer,” I say.

  “I know that.” He looks at me, carefully weighing his words. “But if we bring her to Alaric, he’ll kill her anyway. He probably won’t be quick about it, either.”

  “Then her death’s on him,” I say, rubbing a hand across my face. I hadn’t thought of that, but he’s right. Alaric will most likely kill her. I’m tired. It isn’t easy to carry a person around without fuel from a witch. I feel weak and heavy and I’m angry about it. “I don’t care what Alaric does to her. She should be punished. Are you going to help me bring her to him or not?”

  “Of course,” Tristan replies, holding his hands out to calm me down. “Just take it easy, okay?”

  I’m acting crazy. A part of me is aware of that fact, but the rest of me is too busy being crazy to care. I take a breath.

  “How long do you think she’ll stay unconscious?” Tristan asks.

  “I can keep her like this for hours,” I reply. “She’s weak right now. And there’s something off about her.” I put my hand on her belly and feel the low thrum of her pulse under my palm. My fingers want to curve around the crescent of her hip, and my thumb wants to nestle inside the hollow of her belly button. “I can’t find her willstone.”

  Tristan frowns and leans over her. His willstone flares as he scans her himself. “She didn’t swallow it, Ro. There’s no willstone in her body.”

  “It’s incredible that she can stand being separated from it. Maybe that explains that strange feeling I’m getting from her. It’s shock.”

  Tristan nods, conceding the point, but still not convinced. “If it’s shock, she might die without any help from us.”

  I don’t answer him. Tristan gets up and I hear him rattling around in the kitchen. He comes back with a needle and thread and starts sewing the blanket shut around Lillian to conceal her.

  “Are you still on good terms with Esmeralda?” I ask.

  Tristan has to take a second to think. “Yeah?” he says uncertainly.

  “She’s watching the safe house over the tunnel this month,” I explain. “We could go there to get Lillian out of the city.”

  “Esmeralda likes you better than me. Bat your eyelashes at her,” Tristan says, teasing me to hide his bitterness.

  “You’re better at sweet talking. I don’t want anyone to see Lillian before we get her to Alaric, and Esmeralda is going to ask questions.”

  “I’ll try. Not that girls hear a word I say when you’re around.”

  If I were a player like Tristan, he wouldn’t be so jealous. I don’t want the women who want me, and that bothers him more than being second choice. It’s like a thorn in our friendship, stuck halfway between us where neither of us can reach.

  “We’ll play it by ear when we get there,” he says, tacking down the last few stitches and sealing off Lillian’s face. “But first, we gotta get there with this.”

  The bundled shape looks like a dead body. I see Tristan’s lips twitch for a moment, but his nascent laugh is squashed by a fearful thought. If it wasn’t Lillian in there, this situation might be funny. But it is
Lillian. And if we get caught we’re dead.

  “Thanks, Tristan,” I say. He doesn’t make a big deal of it, but he knows that I know what he’s giving up. We’ve kidnapped the Salem Witch. Whatever the outcome, our lives in the city are over.

  I wait while Tristan gets dressed. I find myself fretting over Lillian’s body, checking and re-checking her breathing, as if worrying about her is still as big a part of me as it ever was. I consider it might not be so bad if she suffocated. It would be a painless death. Alaric may not be so kind.

  Tristan and I heft Lillian’s wrapped body between us and take the back stairs down to the parking structure. The stairwell is clear, but as we enter the level where Tristan’s elepod is parked, we have to drop down and wait so we aren’t seen. We hold our breaths, the unmistakable shape of a human body inside a sewn-up blanket stretched across our crouched legs, as one of Tristan’s fellow tenants walks by us. I overhear Tristan’s inner turmoil.

  Don’t look down, Renny. I don’t want to have to hurt you. Just don’t look down.

  Luckily, Renny doesn’t see us. After he passes we let out our held breaths in unison. Tristan pokes his head up and looks around, then nods at me. We scoop up Lillian’s body and double-time it to his elepod.

  We stretch Lillian across the backseat, hoping that it looks like a rolled-up blanket to anyone who happens to peer inside the back windows. As we head for the safe house, I see Tristan fidget every time we stop for traffic. I can smell his nervous sweat and hear his heart hammering away in his chest, but I’m strangely calm.

  I keep thinking about Lillian’s eyes when she saw me through the window of the café. The single golden fleck in her left iris and the unruly whorl in her eyebrow were exactly as I remember them. Every tiny detail was the same. But there was something different. Something I’d never seen before. I play it over and over in my head on a loop. I’m obsessing. Anger is easier, so I chose to be angry. What do I care if that thing I saw in her eyes looked like innocence? I want her dead.

  “You okay, Ro?” Tristan asks.

  I don’t answer. I don’t say a thing the whole way, and I don’t speak when we get to the safe house. Tristan takes Esmeralda aside and makes up some excuse about the body. While he’s in the other room with her, I hold Lillian. She almost comes around. The two meaty guys that Esmeralda has with her at the safe house for protection hear Lillian make cooing noises, and they see her stirring inside the blanket.

  One of the guys clears his throat. “That dead body isn’t dead, Lord Fall,” he says. He must have been raised in the city to use my title like that.

  I stare at him until his ears turn pink and he looks down. Then I slip my hand between the loosely sewn-together flaps of the blanket, find Lillian’s throat, and knock her out again. The guy and his compatriot suddenly find the ceiling, walls, and floor far more interesting than my mysterious bundle.

  An eternity passes. They offer me food. It turns chalky in my mouth and I can barely swallow it. All I can think about is the heavy warmth of her body in my arms. All I can do is listen to the soft surf of her breath.

  After a long session of doe-eyed pleading from Tristan, Esmeralda finally lets us use the tunnel to smuggle our captive out of the city. I catch her trying to get a peek into the blanket as Tristan and I lower it down the hatch to the tunnel below. Unlike the two guys guarding the safe house with her, Esmeralda has some magical talent—enough to sense that the person in the blanket is a witch of great importance. The problem with witches is that they ooze power, and anyone with even a drop of talent is drawn to them. The more talent you have the more they pull at you. For me, being near Lillian is like falling into a well. I have no idea how I’m going to pull myself back up again.

  Tristan and I manage to lower Lillian down the long ladder, panting and grunting with the effort. The more tired I get the more tempted I am. There is a wealth of strength right here in my arms. With every step down the long tunnel, I struggle less with the weight of her and more with the weight of my craving.

  “She felt so much lighter an hour ago,” Tristan jokes, his sweaty face shining in the gleam of our magelights. He’s trying to change the mood and get my thoughts off this downward spiral.

  He doesn’t have to read my mind to know why I’m acting sullen and twitchy. He’s never felt the soaring bliss of the Gift firsthand, but he knows what it’s like through my memories. I feel twice as weak now that he’s called me out on it.

  “I’ll carry her for a while,” I say, as if physical strength could somehow make up for what I’m lacking in willpower. I try to take all of Lillian’s weight, but Tristan won’t let me.

  “So you’ll be completely exhausted by the time we’re outside the walls with the Woven? Don’t be dense. You’re better at fighting them than me.” Tristan’s glare softens. “Look, I’m tempted too, okay?”

  “You don’t seem it,” I snap.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve had more practice at wanting and not getting where she’s concerned.”

  I don’t know what to say. Lillian has claimed thousands of people, but she never claimed Tristan. She did that to make it clear it was me, the poor Outlander, not Tristan, the son of a rich Councilman, who was her head mechanic. She did it for me, and Tristan has been shut out ever since—a mechanic whose witch won’t claim him. He’s never blamed me for Lillian’s decision, but if his jealousy is a thorn between us, than this is the thicket it came from.

  We come up from the other end of the smuggler’s tunnel, past the edge of the Woven Woods. Above ground and out in the open and I feel like I can breathe again. Danger is immediate and basic in the woods, and I’ve always been more comfortable with that than with the hidden barbs and double speak of the city. Tristan isn’t. Dusk has fallen and it’s nearly black in the shade of the old-growth trees. His eyes keep darting around, distrusting every shadow. I read the ground and smile at him.

  It’s okay, I tell him in mindspeak. There are no Woven tracks.

  He smiles and nods back at me, but I know this is hard for him. He never learned how to track when he was a kid, like I did. Learning how to track is like learning a second language. If you start young enough you can do it flawlessly, but come to it too late in life and you’ll never be wholly comfortable with it. He has good feet, though, and he can move through the brush almost as quietly as I can.

  The snap of cool air has cleared my head and given me a second wind. Adrenaline kicks in now and I heft my half of Lillian with more ease. There were no Woven at the exit of the tunnel, but we’re close to the city. It shouldn’t be long before we encounter some.

  I can’t see the moon rising, but I know it’s there because the gloom has a texture to it. A moonless night is flat black and you have to use the stars to tell the time—which is hard to do when you only get glimpses of the sky through the treetops. We enter a clearing and I catch a faint silver shine glancing low off the glossy side of the leaves. From the angle I know that the moon is about two fists high in the sky. The night is young yet. A half past eight, give or take. Reading the darkness relaxes me.

  Where are we going? Tristan asks in mindspeak.

  Caleb, I reply.

  I reach out to our other stone kin, feeling my way toward him. Caleb’s one of Alaric’s elite guards and always knows where he is. I get a faint reply from him—not enough to actually discern words, but enough to know which way to go. I alter our course slightly in his direction.

  I count my heartbeats to keep track of time. I don’t need to, I suppose, but it gives my mind something to do other than obsess about Lillian. After ten thousand beats—about an hour and twenty-three minutes and six and a half miles—I find Caleb’s trail. Our tribe doesn’t leave much of a mark on the forest, but the passing of so many feet and so many horse hooves is impossible to hide. Even Tristan can see the churned earth, and I feel an unloosening inside him as he does. He’s relaxing too soon. Two hundred yards ahead, I spot Woven sign. Lots of it. They’re tracking our people.

  I
don’t tell Tristan. A little bit of fear sharpens the wits—a lot steals them.

  When we start to get closer to Alaric, I can hear Caleb more clearly and I send him a warning.

  Tristan and I have kidnapped Lillian. We’re bringing her to Alaric for justice.

  I feel a swell of emotion from Caleb.

  I’ll hang back for you and bring you to Alaric myself, he replies in mindspeak.

  Careful. Woven are right behind your group.

  Tell me something I don’t know.

  Tristan sees me smiling. “You reach Caleb?” he guesses. His range for mindspeak isn’t as far as mine. I nod and Tristan relaxes even more knowing we’ll have our stone kin with us soon. As his anxiety thins, mine thickens. I’m bringing Lillian to justice for what she’s done, and if Alaric is fair, he’ll give her the same sentence that she’s passed on to so many of our people. He’ll hang her. My feet slow.

  Trouble? Tristan asks.

  I shake my head and pick up the pace.

  It isn’t long before Caleb finds us—silently appearing between the dark trees in a way that defies logic for such a giant. He’s on foot and carrying a lacquered wicker cage. We use that kind of cage to trap large animals, but that’s not why Caleb brought it. The cage is for Lillian. He wants her contained, probably so she can’t run away.

  After we greet each other, and the initial shock of seeing Lillian in the flesh passes for Caleb, we put her in the cage. For a while we just stand over her, looking. None of us can believe we captured the queen.

  “What is she wearing?” Caleb asks. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen thick cotton breeches like that before.”

  “I’ve never seen Lillian wear breeches, period,” Tristan adds. He turns to me. “You?”