Trial by Fire

“What happened?” he asked, resting his elbows on his knees.

Lily knew that he wasn’t her Tristan, but she needed a friend right now, and the way this Tristan sat, the sound of his voice, even the way he rubbed the pad of his thumb across the tips of his fingers when he was anxious were all the same.

“We had a fight.”

“What did I do?” Tristan winced, automatically assuming that their fight was his fault.

“You cheated on me. Well, sort of.” Lily rubbed her forehead tiredly. “It’s complicated.”

Tristan looked like he didn’t believe it. “Are you sure?”

“I saw you with another girl.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It was really horrible actually.” Lily looked at him, momentarily taken aback by the weirdness of the situation. “I’m sorry, but this is freaking me out a little. I’m explaining to you how you cheated on me.”

“This is pretty weird for me too.” He flashed her one of his brilliant smiles. “So we’re lovers?” he asked. He tilted his head toward her slightly, a smile melting on his pretty lips. It was an inadvertently seductive gesture—yet another thing he had in common with her Tristan even if the phrase he’d used was not something a seventeen-year-old guy from Lily’s world would ever say. Lily regarded his smile carefully. She didn’t trust it anymore and that made her sad.

“No. We’re not lovers,” she said, and then breathed a silent laugh. “I think we were on our way to that eventually, but—”

“I ruined it.” He grimaced. “With who? Someone special?”

“No.” Lily felt sad all of a sudden. Now that she wasn’t angry, she felt the hurt much more deeply. She cleared the thickness from her throat and continued. “You don’t even like her.”

Tristan nodded, like that made sense to him somehow. “Sounds like I ruined things between us on purpose.”

“Yeah,” Lily mused, surprised that he was so perceptive. This Tristan seemed older than hers, somehow. Wiser. “You didn’t decide to hurt me, but I do think you did it on purpose to get away from me.”

“And what about the Rowan in your Salem?” he asked in a subdued tone. “What does he think about you and me?”

Lily shrugged. “There is no Rowan in my Salem.”

“Oh,” Tristan said, almost as if he were disappointed. “That explains it then.” Before Lily could ask him what he meant by that, he continued. “So. In your world, I’m an idiot.”

Lily laughed and nodded. “Yes, you are,” she said, not unkindly.

The firelight, and the harsh shadows it cast, seemed to cut Tristan’s face into confusing halves. But even in the unforgiving light, Lily saw a drowned spark rising up out of the well of shyness in him.

“You really aren’t her,” Tristan said, his voice full of awe. “You’re not Lillian.”

“No. I’m not her.”

He stared at her, the silence stretching out between them.

Tristan’s head suddenly pricked up in alarm. Lily heard whipping sounds surrounding them. It took her a moment to identify the noise as bodies running through the brush. Eerie howls filled the air. Lily tried to jump up to her feet but hit the roof of her low, dome like prison. Wrenching at the rune-engraved bonds holding her wrists together, Lily looked around for Tristan.

He was already up by the fire and digging into the dirt with a spade. He threw the earth onto the flames, smothering the smoke in a few quick shovelfuls. Instantly, their little camp, a distant satellite of the main group, was plunged into darkness. Peering through the bushy conifers, Lily could see motion and hear shouts from the main settlement. A desperate fight was taking place. Flashes of light and shadow blinked in the distance as fast-moving shapes struggled around the campfires. She could hear strange yips and growls blending with the screams of men and women.