Trial by Fire

“Not really,” she said, smiling briskly. “I just miss my sister. Both versions of her.”


For a moment, as Lily stared at her sister’s name at the bottom of the letter, she felt as if she would cry. Tristan tactfully changed the subject. He started asking Lily questions about her trek through the woods, and they fell easily into conversation. It felt so normal to be sitting and chatting with him that she could almost ignore the fact that she was in a different world where she didn’t belong, until she glanced over at Rowan and noticed him scowling at her. How had she overlooked his open animosity toward her when they were alone in the woods together?

“So, when can I start training?” Lily asked when breakfast was finished. Rowan and Tristan exchanged a look.

I know you two are sharing mindspeak, Rowan. Do me a favor and just say it out loud, okay? I’m not an idiot. Lilly didn’t even try to hide her annoyance. She wanted him to feel how upset she was, although she was careful to keep the root of that annoyance—how much he’d hurt her—to herself.

Rowan met her eyes, his mouth pursed in anger. “Tonight. If that’s alright with you,” he said with mock deference.

“The sooner the better,” she replied, holding Rowan’s angry gaze. So I can get the hell out of here and away from you.

Rowan looked away first, but Lily still didn’t feel like she’d won.





chapter 9



Lily spent the rest of the day at the kitchen table with Tristan, trying to make a necklace out of her willstones, while Rowan was out arranging a meeting with Caleb. During that time, Tristan gave her a crash course in willstones, their properties, and some of the complicated social conventions that had been established to accommodate them.

Even after just one day, Lily had already noticed some of the obvious benefits to having a willstone. She now had a photographic memory. Everything she learned from the moment she bonded with her willstones—every image that passed before her eyes—was recorded and dated and filed away neatly for her to reexamine at any time. All Lily had to do in order recall an entire conversation, word for word, was think about it. She could read a page in a book and recall it without omitting one letter, although her willstone couldn’t make her understand what she read any better. She’d already tested her comprehension by pulling Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes off Rowan’s bookshelf and found it really hard to follow. For now, anyway. She was sure her reading comprehension would expand to keep pace with the library she intended to stuff into her head.

Tristan added to what she’d already discovered by teaching her how to open doors with her willstone by having it communicate with tiny shards of lattice—a willstone-like crystal, but much less complex—that were embedded in the doorframes. Lily thought it was Star Trek cool to open doors with her mind. For a good ten minutes, she walked through Rowan’s apartment, watching the doors swish open and closed like, well, magic.