Trial by Fire

Lily dreamed of the Woven. They were chasing her through the forest. Their bodies were a jumble of fur and barely stitched-together skin. Raw bones showed through their sores, and their eyes and tongues were rotting in their heads. One of them looked like it was half human, half boar—caught in the middle of a painful transformation. The wereboar had yellowed tusks growing out of a human mouth and called Lily by name as it chased her.

Rowan told her to climb, and Lily tried to dig her fingers into the walls of the stone cabin, but she kept slipping. She broke her fingernails down to the quick as she tried to scrabble up the impossibly high wall.

The Woven pulled her down by her ankles. They didn’t wait to kill her before they started eating her. Somewhere, Rowan was screaming her name, but he was too far away, and she was in too much pain to reach him.




Juliet hurried through the market. She was sure now that the young man with the dark hair and light eyes was following her. He had the muscular, lean frame of a fighter, and the enormous willstone at the base of his throat was crawling with the bright filaments of power. He was definitely a witch’s mechanic—a powerful mechanic to a powerful witch.

She turned down a quiet alley and glanced around the corner anxiously, waiting for him to pass her by, but when she looked again, she couldn’t find him anywhere.

“Juliet,” said a deep voice behind her. A familiar voice, she realized, even as she jumped. Juliet spun around, and her pursuer dropped his face glamour. Juliet relaxed when she saw that it was Rowan. “I need your help,” he said desperately.

He looked awful. His eyes were sunken in shadow, his clothes were rumpled, and he hadn’t shaved or combed his hair.

“What happened?” Juliet breathed.

“They’ve taken Lily. Please. I can’t hear her.” He was nearly frantic. “I think they’ve taken her willstones away.”

Juliet’s skin crawled at the thought. “What can I do?”

“She could hear you even without willstones. You’re sisters,” Rowan said. He took Juliet’s hands in his, begging her. “I know your loyalty is still with Lillian…”

“I’ll help,” Juliet said, cutting him off. It hurt her to even think of it, but she didn’t know who she was loyal to anymore. “What do you need me to do?”

Rowan’s eyes closed briefly with relief. “Thank you, Juliet,” he whispered. “Come with me.”

Juliet followed Rowan, knowing full well that every step she took with him brought her farther away from Lillian.




Lily? Where are you?

Lily heard Juliet’s voice in her head, waking her. She opened her eyes. It was so dark she may as well have kept them closed. Her head pounded and she felt dizzy. She tried to reach out to Rowan, Tristan, and Caleb but all she felt was an intense, stabbing pain when she tried to mindspeak with them. A seasick feeling gripped her, as if she were pitching around in the bottom of a ship. The pain had lessened somewhat, but it was still all she could do to keep from throwing up.

“Are you awake, girl?” a man’s voice asked.

“Where are you taking me?” Lily rasped. Her stomach heaved but nothing came out. She was completely empty inside.

“We’re not going anywhere, girl. Nowheres at all, at least not on this earth,” the man said. His voice rumbled with a mix of sympathy and amusement. “It’s the vertigo of being separated from your willstones that makes you feel like you’re being tossed about on the ocean.”

Lily put her hand under her and felt straw, and under that, rough stone. “Well, since there’s never been a boat made out of rocks, I’ll believe you,” she said, even though she could feel herself rising and falling on giant swells.

“Careful, girl. Logical thought like that could get you hanged,” the old man said, chuckling.

Lily sat up and tried to steady herself with her hands. If she could just fix her eyes on something, it might help. “Is there any light?”

“The only light they allow down here is magelight so as not to give you energy. This is a witch’s prison. An old, forgotten one.”