Trial by Fire

“I thought I could stand,” she countered. He looked down at her with narrowed eyes, their faces inches away from each other as he studied her.

“No you didn’t. You just wanted me to stop touching you,” he said knowingly. Lily’s eyes darted away. “All you have to do is say stop. And I will.”

Rowan moved back, but he didn’t take his hand off her jacket. Lily busied herself with wiggling the blood back into her toes. He watched her, even though she didn’t look up at him.

“You’re embarrassed,” he said disbelievingly.

“Are we going to spend all day in the tree?” she returned, hoping to end the conversation.

“I’m not trying to seduce you,” he said seriously. “Believe me. You’d know if I was.”

“I know you weren’t,” she responded, ignoring the boastful half of his comment. And the small sting she felt. Did he have to make it so insultingly clear that he wasn’t interested in her? “But where I’m from people don’t put their hands all over each other, okay? We don’t get naked in front of each other, we don’t share boy-girl tents, and we don’t go massaging each other’s groins.”

“Okay,” he said, raising one shoulder in a half shrug.

“Okay,” Lily said back, not sure if she’d made her point—or simply made a fool of herself. With Rowan it was difficult to tell whether you’d won an argument or not.

Rowan turned and started climbing down the tree. Lily thought for a moment that she heard him whisper the word “Puritan” as he picked his way down the branches. She was tempted to yell down at him, but she couldn’t really be sure that was what he’d said, and she didn’t want to seem touchy or defensive. The fact that she couldn’t even argue with him properly annoyed her.

“Are you coming or not?” he called up.

Lily turned toward a branch and began to climb down, muttering to herself the whole way.




Gideon waited for Juliet outside Lillian’s suite of rooms. Listening at the door was pointless. The Witch had set her wards. When Juliet did finally appear, her face had the pinched look of someone who’d just been in a huge fight.

“You’re back,” Gideon said smoothly.

Juliet shut the door behind her and started down the hallway. “As if you didn’t know that. How long have you been watching me?” she growled at him as she passed. Gideon followed her.

“I’m your sister’s head mechanic,” he said without a trace of remorse. “Anything that happens to you affects the Witch. Especially when you go running off into the Woven Woods to visit a camp full of your sister’s enemies.”

Juliet spun around to face him, her eyes flashing. “Are you accusing me of disloyalty?” she challenged.

Gideon had to admit Juliet could be quite pretty when she was angry. “No.” he said honestly. He knew that even though Juliet disagreed with every policy her sister had enacted over the past year, there was no one more loyal to Lillian than her sister. And if anyone knew whether or not Lillian had been able to do the impossible and make a bridge to a parallel universe, it would be Juliet. “But maybe you’d better tell me why you were out there before others—who don’t know you as I do—start to talk.”

“Let them talk,” Juliet said. She turned and started down the hallway again. “Lillian knows the truth.”

“She knows that there’s another witch out there in the woods—a witch who looks exactly like her?”

Juliet stopped and paused momentarily before turning to look at him. When she did, her face was a blank slate. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said lightly.

What a terrible liar she was. “Sweet Juliet,” Gideon said, with something approaching true affection, “you must have the purest heart in this universe.”

Gideon pivoted away from her distressed face and went to go find his father. They had plans to make. An infinite number of worlds had just opened up before Gideon, and he’d barely had a chance to imagine what those other worlds could offer. Or what he could take from them by force if they didn’t offer it.

But first, he had to find this other Lillian.