Trial by Fire

The longer she and Rowan went without talking to each other, the more Lily wanted to be near him. She started to miss him, even though she saw him every day. The craving for any kind of intimacy to him drove her to sneak into the spare bedroom he’d been using one morning when he was out.

As soon as she walked in, she could tell the room had belonged to someone other than Rowan. It was a large room, but the bed was small and narrow, as if the owner had never adjusted to having so much space. The coverlet over the bed was a faded handmade ikat quilt of many colors. Lily trailed her hand over the dresser, lightly touching the trinkets neatly placed on top—a pair of glasses, a hand-carved comb, and a plain gold ring that Lily was certain was a wedding band. They were old items, scuffed, worn, and heavy with the memories of an entire life. A lost life.

There were no handy photographs announcing whose room this had been, but Lily didn’t need them. She knew the room must have belonged to Rowan’s father, but she didn’t know how or why his father had died. Lily ached to ask Rowan about it, to exchange confidences with him again like they had in the cabin.

The longing for Rowan that was building in her and the energy it took to push it down was exhausting and made her intense workload harder to bear. When Lily wasn’t sleeping, playing cards with Tristan, or making potions to supply Alaric’s never-ending list of needs for the rebels, Rowan had also insisted that she learn camouflage magic. This type of magic would make her seemingly disappear in low light, as Rowan had when they’d been in the woods.

One of the camouflage spells she learned was how to cast a glamour, which worked on the same energy field principles as ordinary camouflage but didn’t make her blend into the background. Instead, it shifted the way light hit her face, subtly altering the way she looked. Since Lily had learned how to cast a glamour, she’d been harassing Rowan and Tristan to let her leave the apartment and take a walk outside in the fresh air, which, considering they had her working double shifts and the fire was burning day and night, was getting harder to come by.

“You coming or not?” asked Tristan’s voice outside the bedroom door.

“Yeah,” Lily said, rushing to join him.

When they crossed through the living area, Rowan was sitting on one of the sofas, reading. Lily caught a glimpse of the book cover as she and Tristan passed on their way to stairs.

“Was that a geometry book he was reading?” she asked when they got to the roof.

“Uh-huh,” Tristan replied.

“Why? Rowan’s way past geometry. I know he knows calculus.”

“Yes and no,” Tristan said, dodging an explanation. Lily stared at him with a cocked eyebrow until he continued. “You’ve noticed that your memory is crystal clear now that you have willstones, right?” Lily nodded. “That’s because willstones are like extra memory space—not infinite, but really big. When Rowan smashed his first stone to get away from Lillian he lost a lot. It’s not that he doesn’t understand geometry anymore.”

“But he doesn’t have it memorized anymore,” Lily finished for him. She thought about it for a bit, imagining what it would be like to make that kind of sacrifice, and desperately trying not to feel everything that touched Rowan as deeply as she did. Sometimes Lily thought that if someone were to pinch Rowan, she’d be the one to say ouch. “So that’s why he’s always reading.”