Trial by Fire

“Come here,” Tristan said behind her, his voice rough. “I’m cold.”


Lily turned to see him sitting again and noticed that his breath was a smoky cloud around him. Frost was settling into the dark corners where the falling sun failed to shine. She went to Tristan, sinking down next to him into the cushions of the patio furniture. He picked up her hand and turned it over, exposing the underside of her wrist.

“May I?” he asked quietly.

After a moment, Lily nodded and Tristan laid the tips of his fingers against the pulse point on her wrist. He sighed deeply and leaned back, his eyes closed, and Lily felt her perpetual fever cool a little as he took some of her heat. She hadn’t claimed him so they couldn’t share mindspeak or memories, but there was something intimate about warming another person with your body. Feeding them with your heat.

“What does this feel like for you?” Lily asked. To her it felt like stepping into a cool pool on a hot day. It was refreshing, but there was something so rapturous about the look on Tristan’s face that it made Lily think there was more sensation in receiving than in the giving. Lily couldn’t help but remember how Rowan had looked when he’d taken some of her heat in the cabin. How his head had tipped forward and his eyes had closed with pleasure.

“Like drinking sunshine, I guess,” Tristan answered. He turned and opened his sparkling eyes to look at her. “I can think of a few things that feel better. But not many.”

Lily watched Tristan’s face. His lips fell apart expectantly and his breath deepened. She’d seen this look on his face before, and she wished she felt something more.

Lily pulled away from Tristan, purposely ruining the mood, and looked out over the city. Her eyes skipped around, trying to take in everything that this huge walled city encompassed, all six miles long and three miles wide of it, and in some places, hundreds of stories high. Something strange caught her eye.

“Is that building over there empty?” Lily asked. She pointed to an elegant seven-story brownstone a few streets over that seemed to be shuttered. Real estate was the single biggest commodity inside the limited walls of Salem, and Lily couldn’t recall ever seeing a tenantless window, let alone a whole empty building before. Tristan stood from his seat and joined Lily at the balcony wall.

“Oh,” Tristan said, following her line of sight. “That’s the technical college Lillian started.”

Lily looked at him, surprised. “She can afford to leave it empty?”

Tristan smirked. “Oh, yeah. The Coven is the biggest landowner in Salem, and they don’t have to pay taxes. Real estate is where they make their real fortune. They have lots of buildings that they can just sit on. Lillian took that one over when she outmuscled everyone else in the Coven and became the Salem Witch when Olga, the last Witch, died.”

“How did she do that?” Lily interjected. “Wasn’t she only sixteen?”

Tristan shrugged. “Didn’t matter how old she was. The Coven chooses their leader in a simple way—the strongest rules until someone stronger comes along and knocks her off the throne. And no one has ever been stronger than Lillian. Especially not with Rowan as her head mechanic.” A dark look crossed Tristan’s face at the mention of Rowan.

“Go on,” she urged. “Why did Lillian take over that building?”

“She was going to change the world, she said,” Tristan continued quietly. “Lillian turned it into a school where promising non-magical youngsters—mostly Outlanders—were given full scholarship to study all of the Coven’s writings on natural phenomena and apply those theories inside the newest and shiniest laboratories.”