Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker 3)

“Alaric?” he asked. Lily shook her head and showed him what Toshi had just shown her.

“The Hive did it,” he said, surprised.

“They had the most reason to hate her, I suppose,” Lily replied. She narrowed her eyes at Rowan. “You knew Alaric ran up there to kill her, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes.” Rowan met Lily’s eyes and held them. “And I was going

to let him.” Lily nodded, accepting it, and pulled his arm even tighter against her body. The subject was closed.

Rowan helped Lily out of the blackened crater, but she wouldn’t let him carry her. No matter how much it hurt, she was going to walk away from this. As she minced through her claimed on her blackened feet, Lily passed Breakfast, still hefting his ax, his other arm draped over Una’s shoulder. Una stood next to a lion, her hand resting casually on her new stone kin’s back. Tristan grinned at Lily and Rowan and she grinned back. Beside Tristan, Caleb stood with Alpha. She noticed that they had exchanged knives and raised an eyebrow at him. Caleb shrugged to show he was as surprised as she was at this new alliance. Mary and Riley were there, scattered among the painted braves who still guarded Juliet. Lily even caught a glimpse of her mother, wandering among the stumps of the hacked-down trees. Samantha looked sad, as if she were mourning someone.

Lily leaned on Rowan’s arm, limping her way across the battlefield. She met Leto in the middle.

“We took the field, Lady,” he said, grimacing in pain from his broken leg.

“We did, Captain,” Lily replied gravely, surveying the heavy losses Walltop had incurred.

“Stay where you are,” Rowan told Leto. “We’ll send a stretcher.”

“There are few injured,” Leto said, despite his condition. “The Warrior Sisters don’t stop until either they’re dead, or their opponent is.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Lily said.

“Lady,” he replied, bowing awkwardly from his prone position as Lily passed.

Lily released Rowan’s arm and walked across the battlefield on her own. She summoned healers to the battlefield to tend to the wounded. She called to them in mindspeak, and then jumped them directly to those who needed help.

Her feet, always the first to burn on the pyre, screamed at her with every step. Blood dripped down her hands and off the tips of her fingers from the raw skin under her jingling shackles. Her crown dug into her scalp, heavy and sharp, and she lifted her chin under its weight.

Lily stood in front of the gates of Bower City, her coven—both human and Woven—arrayed behind her. At her feet was the split corpse of the witch she had conquered.

“Open the gates!” Lily called out over Grace Bendingtree’s dead body.

The heavy doors opened. Toshi stood on the other side with Alaric to his left, Ivan to his right, and Mala standing behind them. Mala’s mouth was smiling but her eyes were glowering.

“The city is yours,” Toshi said, relieved.

Lily walked through the gates and stumbled to her knees.

EPILOGUE

Former Special Agent Reba Simms switched her bag of groceries to her left arm so she could reach her keys.

She let herself into her Dorchester apartment already knowing someone was in there. She’d always known when there was someone behind a wall or just around the corner. That ability to sense things she couldn’t see or hear had saved her life more than once. Still, when she rounded into her kitchen, the gun she kept taped under the coffee table drawn and pointed in front of her, she was surprised to see who was waiting for her.

“Please, Agent Simms. There’s no need for that,” Lily Proctor said, gesturing casually to the gun.

She looked different. She was dressed in a spidery-black gown and her fiery-red curls were arranged carefully around what appeared to be a tiara made of some kind of twisted black metal. It was studded with white gems and Simms would bet anything they were real. Next to her sat Rowan Fall. He was dressed differently, more like a man than a teenager, in a crisp linen shirt and perfectly tailored jacket that hugged him with such devotion it appeared to be in love with him. Not that Simms could blame it. There was something about his eyes and the way he looked into people, never just at them, that was embarrassingly alluring.

The extraordinary-looking pair of young people weren’t holding hands, but the way they tilted ever so subtly toward each other made it clear that they didn’t have to touch to feel the other. Even the air between them crackled with a kind of magnetism that had yet to be discovered by science, but that poets had been writing about since the dawn of time.

“We came here to offer you a position in a new city out west,” Rowan said. Lily and Rowan looked at each other and shared a secret smile.

“Rowan and I have our hands full in Salem, but this new city needs some restructuring. It could use an honest and . . . ah . . . persistent woman like you.” Lily frowned at the still-raised gun. “You know that doesn’t work on me.”

Simms lowered the gun a little, but she didn’t put it away. “How did you get in here?” she asked. Probably the dumbest question out of the thousands that she had for Lily Proctor, but it was the first one that came out of her mouth.

“I’m a witch, Reba. And so are you,” Lily replied.