“Let’s get started,” Rowan said. “Juliet? Fill the cauldron.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent making salve. The new mechanics only needed to see Rowan do it once to memorize every step in the process and store that memory away in their willstones.
“This is cool and all, but what I want to know is when are we going to learn how to jump across rooftops?” Breakfast asked as he spooned salve out of the cauldron and into a small jar.
Rowan looked out the window, his expression severe. “As soon as the sun goes down,” he answered.
Are you sure they’re ready for that, Rowan?
Ready or not, we don’t have any time to waste, Lily. Salve isn’t going to protect you from my half brother.
At dusk, Rowan took them all down to the beach. The shore was cold, dark, and deserted. Right away Rowan placed the square of black silk on a rock and told Lily to sit. Then he had Tristan, Breakfast, Una, and Juliet start gathering driftwood for a bonfire.
“Pile it up in front of Lily,” Rowan ordered.
“What I want to know is when does Lily get off her butt and do some chores?” Tristan said, panting, as he dragged a gnarly stump of bleached wood up the beach. “I feel like I’ve been stacking wood and stoking fires all damn day while she just sits there.”
Rowan gave Tristan a disapproving look. “It’s a mechanic’s privilege to serve his witch. We get back the energy we spend on her a hundredfold.”
Lily sniffed snootily at Tristan and made a show of getting comfortable on her rock. He stifled a laugh and grumbled something that sounded like “insufferable,” then went back to work. When the fire was high, Lily stood up and faced it. All teasing and playfulness vanished from her demeanor. She held her hands toward the bonfire, sucking heat into her willstones, and a howling witch wind buffeted her on all sides, lifting her off the ground.
The awed faces of her new mechanics tilted up as Lily soared ten feet into the air, her arms thrown out wide, and her hair streaming straight up in the column of witch wind that shrieked around her suspended silhouette like it was full of demons.
Don’t give them the full Gift, Lily. They aren’t ready yet.
For a moment, Lily wavered. She felt the hungry baby willstones tugging at hers, begging to be fed. The Gift was the name for the level of power used in warrior magic, and in Rowan’s world it was the test that separated the crucibles from the witches. Only a witch could give the Gift. Lily suspected the Gift not only fueled her vessels with god-like strength, but that it also filled them with a berserker fearlessness that sent them running, exultant, into battle. Receiving any level of energy from a witch was always a thrill, but the Gift was more than that. It made warfare transcendent, especially for the witch. The temptation to possess her vessels and Gift them—to send them leaping and screaming down the dark beach in chaotic rapture—was almost irresistible.
Don’t do it, Lily.
She looked down at Rowan’s face, which was looking knowingly up at hers. A spark of rebellion flared inside her. Who was he to tell her what to do? She was the witch. He was her mechanic. She would do as she pleased.
With no one to fight, they’ll turn on one another, Lily. They don’t know how to channel it like I do. Gift me alone if you need to feel it, but not them.