I can’t. I can’t keep anything from him.
Do you love him?
What a small question. I’d die for him.
But would you kill for him?
I already have. I sent my army into battle for him.
Then tell yourself that you’re doing this in order to understand me well enough that you don’t make the same mistakes I did.
Very noble, but that isn’t really my reason, and I can’t claim that it is. I need to know because I need to know. You aren’t my friend or my sister—you are me, aren’t you, Lillian?
Finally—you accept it, Lily. Yes, we are the same person in different circumstances.
That’s why I need to know why I would hunt people down and hang them. Why I would murder Rowan’s father. Why, Lillian? Why would I do that?
Promise me that Rowan will never know.
Okay, Lillian. I promise.
This is the moment everything changed for me …
… Rowan gathers my curls up in his hands and twists them up behind my head. We’re in my study, but both
of us would rather be in bed. It’s late and I’m tired, but there’s still so much to do. My technical college is facing a challenge I hadn’t anticipated. I was ready to fight the Council and my Coven for as long as it took until they accepted that my school would not only admit both citizens and Outlanders, but it would also offer full scholarships to those who couldn’t afford it. What I wasn’t expecting was that there would be such low Outlander enrollment.
“There’s your neck,” Rowan says, and runs his fingers down my nape. “I thought I’d lost it under that mane forever.”
“I’m trying to work,” I plead through a breathy laugh, already turning to jelly. I look up at him. “Why wouldn’t every intelligent Outlander want to go to college for free?” I ask pathetically.
“Because the loss of a healthy, intelligent young person is a big blow to any tribe,” Rowan says quietly, still running his fingers over my throat. “Everyone would try to talk that person out of it.”
“But it means a better life,” I say, still looking up at him with pleading eyes.
“For that person,” Rowan replies. “But not for the rest of the tribe.”
I sigh and drop my head, letting him run his fingers through my hair. He knows my argument—that an educated Outlander could return to his or her tribe and make it better. But he didn’t go back to his tribe, and has no intention to. Why would anyone with a chance at a better life ever go back to fighting the Woven and living in poverty?
“Lady?” asks a tentative voice by the door. Rowan turns and we both look across my rooms. It’s Gavin, a new page and a possible future mechanic of mine—if he can survive Rowan’s exhausting training, that is.
“What is it?” I ask, noticing Gavin’s drawn expression.
“It’s your mother, Lady Samantha,” Gavin says. “She’s on the wall.”
I’m standing before he can say any more. “What is she doing up there?” I ask calmly, trying not to scare Gavin.
“She’s … balancing,” the boy says timidly. “Right on the edge, like it’s a game.”
I’m running now. I feel chilled and ungrounded, as if all the weight had been stolen out of my body.
As we exit my keep, Rowan is in my thoughts, telling me he’s with me and that we’ll fix it together. He likes to fix things—needs to, actually—but I fear my mother’s fractured mind is in too many pieces for anyone to mend.
“Where?” Rowan asks the page. Gavin points in a northerly direction toward the tip of the oval wall that surrounds the miles-long city. She couldn’t be farther away from my southerly, east-side keep. Rowan’s willstone glitters as he weaves a field of still air around him. Undistorted air is easier to see through, and his vision is sharpened. He sees his target and takes me up against his side. I feel the familiar tug of his willstone, urging me to give him strength.
For a moment I teeter on a precipice of my own, wanting to possess him. He’s so open. I could take over his will, but I resist as I almost always have in the past. I gather my energy, change it into force, and pour it into his willstone. Pure power pumps in his veins and we share in the heady rush of my strength in his body. He leaps upward, the ground shrinks beneath us, and in seconds we have flown to the top of the colossal wall that surrounds the city of Salem. We alight on Walltop. I have read of a wall like this in China. It is rumored to be much longer, but not nearly as tall as this. I dream of going there one day, but I doubt I ever will. This whole continent has been cut off from the others for the same reason we built this wall. The Woven.
Walltop is like China in a way. It is a world apart with its own rules and customs—a world that exists two hundred feet above the city of Salem. Generations have served up here. They even have their own slang and a distinct accent. Technically, I am the absolute ruler of Walltop. The Council and the Coven don’t have any say up here, and my word is law. But secretly I know that Walltop is run according to its own complicated set of rules that I don’t fully grasp.