Lily felt hands around her waist, snatching her off her horse. “Fire,” her Tristan said in her ear as he placed her numb body on the ground. “You need to build a fire.”
There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The gentle breeze sighed through the grass, turning it over and flashing the light side of the blades against the dark in teasing ripples. Its placid beauty taunted them. There wasn’t a tree, a rock, or a river in sight. The open plain left them as exposed as if they were in a raft on a becalmed ocean.
“What do I burn? There’s no wood,” Lily said, holding her hands out uselessly.
“Burn the grass,” Caleb ordered as he dismounted. “Light it all on fire if you have to.” He turned to the remaining braves and addressed them. “Everyone get off your horses and set them loose. They’ll only slow you down in this fight, and they’ll probably just die under you anyway.”
Juliet steadied Lily’s hands while she struck at her flint. “Calm down.”
Lily looked up at her sister, and her voice came out wispy and weak. “I think I’ve killed us all.”
“We’re not dead yet. Breakfast! Hurry and help,” she said, yanking up what hunks of yellowing grass the sea of green around them offered, and laying them in a pile in front of Lily. Breakfast unsheathed his dagger and started hacking his way through bundles of grass.
“Here,” Breakfast said, handing Juliet an extra knife. His face was grim and his mouth set in a line.
“We’ll keep gathering as much fuel as we can, and you keep giving us strength, okay?” Juliet said. Her big brown eyes were level and bracing. Lily nodded, focusing her panic into purpose.
“Stay upwind of the fire. I don’t have any way to contain it,” she said, and then turned her attention to the blaze already building at her feet.
Lily connected herself to the fourteen willstones awaiting her power. She drew in a breath, and the wind followed. The buzzing of the nearing Hive was drowned out by Lily’s shrieking witch wind. Licks of fire caught in the underbrush and the blaze spread out astonishingly fast. She gathered the heat—taking it, changing it, and then feeding it into the unlocked willstones of her braves.
A column of witch wind threw her into the air with a clap of thunder. Lily felt the physical sensations of all her braves as they raced toward the Hive ahead of the wildfire, but brightest and clearest among them was her Tristan. She let her mind nudge against his and he welcomed her in, opening himself to her so she could share his body. She felt his muscle and skin wrap around her. His hands flexed, and Lily felt the grip of his knives in them. They both reveled in the Gift, sharing the thrill with each other as Lily beat back the temptation to take him over completely. She wilted under the urge that ran through her like lust, and for just a moment she felt Tristan shy away from her with fear.
Please, Lily. Don’t.
I swear, I won’t.
Lily calmed herself and waited for the craving to pass. The only other person she’d shared this depth of sensation with had been Rowan, and Lily realized that by choosing Tristan to shelter her consciousness during the battle she had made him her new head mechanic. He seized the honor by pulling ahead of the other braves and leading the charge against the Hive.