Trial by Fire

“Shhh,” Rowan whispered almost silently. “It’s too late to help. Calm down, Lily.”


She swallowed and forced herself to slow her breathing. Squeezing her lips shut and pressing herself against the tree, Lily narrowed her world down to one thing—the sound of the Woven as it tore into the man again and again. She saw parts of the man flying up and falling back down to the forest floor, an arm, a leg, even his insides. Lily put a hand over her mouth.

The Woven ate the man down to nothing. Every bit of skin, muscle, bone, and all of the entrails were consumed. Nothing was left of the man except scraps of clothes. The Woven sifted carefully over every last bit of the killing ground and then moved on.

It was a long time before Lily found her voice.

“Are they all like that?” she whispered.

“No. There are many different breeds, each with many variations.” Rowan’s voice drifted up to Lily from the branch below hers. “The Woven come in all shapes and sizes.”

“Are they all dangerous?”

“To humans. They are territorial, but they tend to leave other animals alone unless they’re hunting them.”

Lily looked up at the stars. This sky here held the same exact constellations, but they seemed closer, brighter, and more varied in color and tone than anything she was used to.

“Let me wrap this around you.” Rowan reached up and looped a rope around her legs a few times, tying her to the branch so she didn’t slip off in the middle of the night. “Try to rest,” Rowan said when he’d finished, his voice edged with concern.

She gripped the rope tightly even though she knew there was no way she would nod off that night.

“Lily?” he called up to her. She could hear him repositioning himself on the branch beneath her, trying to get a glimpse of her face.

“Go to sleep, Rowan. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re in shock. I can feel—” he broke off suddenly, and made an impatient sound. “Good night.”





chapter 6



It was halfway through third watch by the time Gideon made it back to the Citadel with his prisoners. He ached from riding for so many hours on no sleep and with so little to eat, but he wasn’t about to show his discomfort and look weak. The sachem had gotten away, but apart from that, the raid had been a success. Softhearted Juliet had inadvertently led many rebels to their deaths. Gideon couldn’t wait to tell her that.

Carrick was already separating the potential talkers from the hard cases. He moved among them, planting the seeds of hope for a release in those he found pliant. The stoic ones—the ones who neither railed about their loyalty to the cause nor moaned about the injustice of the Witch State—he sent immediately to the dungeons. It was the quiet ones who always ended up as the worst kind of martyrs and needed to be kept apart.

How Carrick, who had never been a mechanic, could sense these differences in individuals and know how to deal with them so adroitly was of interest to Gideon. Carrick was far too old to be trained as a mechanic now, but the talent was certainly there. It was a pity that it had been overlooked when he was young and he hadn’t been brought to the Citadel to be trained; Gideon was almost certain that Carrick knew more craft than he let on, and he was willing to let that go as long as Carrick made himself useful. If he had been given some kind of training, it had been without the consent of the Coven and could get Carrick and his teacher hanged—that, too, could be useful to Gideon as a way to control the inscrutable Outlander.

“A word?” Carrick asked politely when Gideon finally dismounted.

“Found something already?” Gideon guessed, handing the reins to a lackey. Carrick waited until the lackey was out of earshot before answering.