Lily replayed her meeting with Riley for Rowan, Caleb, and Tristan to bring them up to speed. After she was finished, Rowan picked up his argument with her where he’d left off.
“You still need to rest for a few more days at least.”
“We leave tomorrow. With or without Mary’s people.” “Lily—”
“Tomorrow,” she said firmly. “You have to get me ready for the pyre.”
Rowan knew what was happening to Lillian’s army without having to be shown. He knew every day they crept along was costing lives. Finally, he slipped his jacket off his shoulders with a sigh.
“There is something else I can do now that I have my full kit again. There’s an ink I couldn’t get my hands on once I left Lillian,” he said reluctantly.
“Ink?” Lily asked.
“Yes. It’s very rare, very old, and it’s going to hurt.”
Lily nodded and looked down at her hands. “Of course it will,” she said, trying to laugh her way through the fear.
“Tristan. I need you,” Rowan called as he headed toward what appeared to be a wall of solid rock beside the headboard of Lillian’s bed.
He laid his fingers carefully against the masonry, took a deep breath, and his willstone flared. The wall gave way with a grinding sound, pushing inward and sliding to the side to reveal a set of hidden stairs. Tristan looked surprised but followed Rowan up the stairway without a word of protest.
Lily frittered the next few minutes away while her mechanics prepared. Una and Juliet gave her uneven smiles that didn’t have the conviction to reach their eyes. Lily tried to comfort herself by thinking that whatever Rowan had planned couldn’t be worse than the pyre, although she knew that the pain of the pyre was offset by the rush of pleasure she got from the power it gave her. Something told her that whatever Rowan had planned would have very little upside to it.
When Rowan returned for her she was trying her best to be brave. He didn’t look at her when he led her up the stone stairway and through a trapdoor that led out onto the roof.
The stars were out, adorning a sickle moon that glowed gold in the warm summer sky. Beneath the horns of the moon an enormous speaking stone glimmered like an opal pillar that was subtly lit from within. Lily found herself drawn to the speaking stone, and nearly had her hands on it when she heard Rowan call her name.
“Lily. Over here,” he said.
She turned and saw a familiar square of black silk spread out and waiting for her. Rowan and Tristan knelt between the runes they had drawn on the silk in salt. They had nothing else with them but a bowl, a long silver needle, and a tiny mallet.
“We’ll start with you sitting up,” Rowan said.
Lily sat down in front of Rowan with her legs crossed. He gestured for Tristan to sit behind her, and Lily felt his hands take her head and tilt it to expose the long stretch of skin from her ear to her collarbone.
“This will leave a mark,” Rowan said.
Lily took a breath and let it out slowly to steady herself. But she didn’t stop him. A haze of light expanded out from Rowan’s willstone, like a bright fog that spun outward to wrap them up in glinting tendrils. He dipped the tip of the needle in the bowl, picked up the mallet, and began tapping the end in a quick staccato.
Lily felt the pricking of the tattoo behind her ear. As the ink started to sink into her skin an itch turned into a burn. The burn began to build.
“Hold her,” Rowan ordered, and Tri
stan’s hands clamped down on Lily’s head.
Even when Rowan paused momentarily to dip his needle, the burning kept mounting, and soon she couldn’t even feel the prick of the needle over the sting of the ink. A cold sweat broke down her back, and as Rowan tapped the tattoo farther down the side of her neck, she started to shiver. She wasn’t burning. She was freezing.
Tristan had to take more of her weight as the icy acid in the ink started to leach into her blood and chill her from the inside out. Lily could feel the cold sliding down her insides as if she’d swallowed an ice cube. Her teeth began to chatter.
“Okay. Lay her back,” Rowan said.
Lily felt herself being put down and opened her eyes. The stars whirled above. The steady tapping and the cold burn began again along the lower part of her right ribs. Lily tracked the paths of the stars to keep her mind off Rowan’s never-ending tattoo. He worked down from her ribs and curved inside the hip bone, ending just above her bikini line.
“Last one,” he said, and started on the top of her left thigh.
She was numb with cold by the time he had spiraled around the inside of her thigh and ended the third tattoo at the back of her left knee. Rowan ended the spell. The light in his willstone heaved and then went out.
In the absence of his magelight, the soft scintillation of the speaking stone caught Lily’s eye again. Half in and half out of her body to hide from the pain, Lily let her other eye swim in the light of the speaking stone. She idly wondered whether she could reach Pale One and called softly to her claimed Woven.