There was also a part of her that was insulted. Tristan had called them Alaric’s braves, but nearly all of them were Lily’s claimed. As she thought of them, she could feel them. Her army. They raced to join her, impatient to be near their witch again. She smiled to herself. They didn’t belong to Alaric. They belonged to her.
“Juliet’s excited to see you,” Tristan added. “She wanted to come with Caleb and me, but Alaric thought it would be safer for her to stay with him.”
Lily looked at Tristan sharply. Before the battle with Lillian, Lily had asked Alaric to watch over her sister. He’d kept his word, but for some reason Lily wasn’t grateful that he had. The word “hostage” kept echoing through Lily’s head.
“Lily?” Rowan asked, concerned.
Alaric wasn’t her enemy, but she didn’t want to make the mistake of assuming he would always be her ally. Especially not if she asked him to dismantle the thirteen bombs. Lily looked at Caleb and Tristan. They both wore Alaric’s war paint. Too many of the people she loved were tied to him. She wanted Juliet away from Alaric, just in case.
“I wish she’d come,” was all Lily would say.
“You’ll see her tomorrow,” Rowan said with an indulgent smile. He didn’t even suspect that something else was troubling her. Lily was getting better at hiding her true feelings from Rowan. The thought made her sad.
They rode deep into the forest for the rest of the day, always on the alert for Woven, and Lily was exhausted by the time they made camp. She’d spent the night before in agony with a dislocated shoulder, and then she’d lost a lot of blood that morning to the pale Woven. Rowan wasn’t in good shape, either. The two of them ate quickly and fell asleep together by the fire while the comforting sounds of their friends’ voices lulled them into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER
12
The next day they started at the crack of dawn. Lily’s only comfort was that Breakfast looked even more miserable than she did.
“I wasn’t cut out for the cowboy life,” he said, rubbing his sore bottom. “But now I know why John Wayne walked like he was holding a grape between his butt cheeks.”
They all mounted up, some more stiffly than others, and started cutting a quick and quiet trail through the trees. As they moved south, the temperature rose a little. It wasn’t spring yet, but in the area that Lily knew of as Virginia, winter was loosening its grip a little.
Lily kept seeing flashes of an animal with light-colored fur between the thick brush. She couldn’t see it clearly enough to know what it was, but she could sense it out there in the trees—keeping close, but not attacking. Lily got the feeling they were being followed by the pale coyote Woven, but she didn’t bring it up. She didn’t want to get into another argument with Rowan about it. She knew he’d probably say that if Woven were following them, they would have attacked already.
They reached Alaric’s camp just after nightfall. As they rode in, Lily could feel a giant weight lifting off Rowan’s shoulders. He no longer had to be on guard every second, and he dismounted eagerly to greet old friends and fellow braves. Lily got off her horse slowly. She felt the awareness of her presence rippling through her claimed. They stared at her with a reverence that made her uncomfortable. The first to come forward was a young woman, barely out of her teens.
“You saved my husband’s life by making him strong in battle,” she whispered. “Thank you, Lady.”
“And mine,” another woman said. She rubbed her pregnant belly. “And my child’s life.” The woman said something that sounded to Lily like “meegwetch.” Lily didn’t need to be told it was a word of thanks.
She smiled and nodded at the women, and dozens suddenly streamed forward, all of them speaking in Sioux or Iroquois or some blend. Lily even thought she heard some French, and an amalgam of languages that she couldn’t even begin to fathom washed over her. They offered her things—clothes, beads, salt, and herbs. Overwhelmed and speechless, Lily looked around frantically for Rowan, and finally found him in the gathering crowd.