Rowan (Worldwalker 1.50)

“I’ll try. Not that girls hear a word I say when you’re around.”

If I were a player like Tristan, he wouldn’t be so jealous. I don’t want the women who want me, and that bothers him more than being second choice. It’s like a thorn in our friendship, stuck halfway between us where neither of us can reach.

“We’ll play it by ear when we get there,” he says, tacking down the last few stitches and sealing off Lillian’s face. “But first, we gotta get there with this.”

The bundled shape looks like a dead body. I see Tristan’s lips twitch for a moment, but his nascent laugh is squashed by a fearful thought. If it wasn’t Lillian in there, this situation might be funny. But it is

Lillian. And if we get caught we’re dead.

“Thanks, Tristan,” I say. He doesn’t make a big deal of it, but he knows that I know what he’s giving up. We’ve kidnapped the Salem Witch. Whatever the outcome, our lives in the city are over.

I wait while Tristan gets dressed. I find myself fretting over Lillian’s body, checking and re-checking her breathing, as if worrying about her is still as big a part of me as it ever was. I consider it might not be so bad if she suffocated. It would be a painless death. Alaric may not be so kind.

Tristan and I heft Lillian’s wrapped body between us and take the back stairs down to the parking structure. The stairwell is clear, but as we enter the level where Tristan’s elepod is parked, we have to drop down and wait so we aren’t seen. We hold our breaths, the unmistakable shape of a human body inside a sewn-up blanket stretched across our crouched legs, as one of Tristan’s fellow tenants walks by us. I overhear Tristan’s inner turmoil.

Don’t look down, Renny. I don’t want to have to hurt you. Just don’t look down.

Luckily, Renny doesn’t see us. After he passes we let out our held breaths in unison. Tristan pokes his head up and looks around, then nods at me. We scoop up Lillian’s body and double-time it to his elepod.

We stretch Lillian across the backseat, hoping that it looks like a rolled-up blanket to anyone who happens to peer inside the back windows. As we head for the safe house, I see Tristan fidget every time we stop for traffic. I can smell his nervous sweat and hear his heart hammering away in his chest, but I’m strangely calm.

I keep thinking about Lillian’s eyes when she saw me through the window of the café. The single golden fleck in her left iris and the unruly whorl in her eyebrow were exactly as I remember them. Every tiny detail was the same. But there was something different. Something I’d never seen before. I play it over and over in my head on a loop. I’m obsessing. Anger is easier, so I chose to be angry. What do I care if that thing I saw in her eyes looked like innocence? I want her dead.

“You okay, Ro?” Tristan asks.

I don’t answer. I don’t say a thing the whole way, and I don’t speak when we get to the safe house. Tristan takes Esmeralda aside and makes up some excuse about the body. While he’s in the other room with her, I hold Lillian. She almost comes around. The two meaty guys that Esmeralda has with her at the safe house for protection hear Lillian make cooing noises, and they see her stirring inside the blanket.

One of the guys clears his throat. “That dead body isn’t dead, Lord Fall,” he says. He must have been raised in the city to use my title like that.

I stare at him until his ears turn pink and he looks down. Then I slip my hand between the loosely sewn-together flaps of the blanket, find Lillian’s throat, and knock her out again. The guy and his compatriot suddenly find the ceiling, walls, and floor far more interesting than my mysterious bundle.

An eternity passes. They offer me food. It turns chalky in my mouth and I can barely swallow it. All I can think about is the heavy warmth of her body in my arms. All I can do is listen to the soft surf of her breath.

After a long session of doe-eyed pleading from Tristan, Esmeralda finally lets us use the tunnel to smuggle our captive out of the city. I catch her trying to get a peek into the blanket as Tristan and I lower it down the hatch to the tunnel below. Unlike the two guys guarding the safe house with her, Esmeralda has some magical talent—enough to sense that the person in the blanket is a witch of great importance. The problem with witches is that they ooze power, and anyone with even a drop of talent is drawn to them. The more talent you have the more they pull at you. For me, being near Lillian is like falling into a well. I have no idea how I’m going to pull myself back up again.

Tristan and I manage to lower Lillian down the long ladder, panting and grunting with the effort. The more tired I get the more tempted I am. There is a wealth of strength right here in my arms. With every step down the long tunnel, I struggle less with the weight of her and more with the weight of my craving.

“She felt so much lighter an hour ago,” Tristan jokes, his sweaty face shining in the gleam of our magelights. He’s trying to change the mood and get my thoughts off this downward spiral.

He doesn’t have to read my mind to know why I’m acting sullen and twitchy. He’s never felt the soaring bliss of the Gift firsthand, but he knows what it’s like through my memories. I feel twice as weak now that he’s called me out on it.

“I’ll carry her for a while,” I say, as if physical strength could somehow make up for what I’m lacking in willpower. I try to take all of Lillian’s weight, but Tristan won’t let me.

“So you’ll be completely exhausted by the time we’re outside the walls with the Woven? Don’t be dense. You’re better at fighting them than me.” Tristan’s glare softens. “Look, I’m tempted too, okay?”

“You don’t seem it,” I snap.

“Yeah, well, I’ve had more practice at wanting and not getting where she’s concerned.”

I don’t know what to say. Lillian has claimed thousands of people, but she never claimed Tristan. She did that to make it clear it was me, the poor Outlander, not Tristan, the son of a rich Councilman, who was her head mechanic. She did it for me, and Tristan has been shut out ever since—a mechanic whose witch won’t claim him. He’s never blamed me for Lillian’s decision, but if his jealousy is a thorn between us, than this is the thicket it came from.

We come up from the other end of the smuggler’s tunnel, past the edge of the Woven Woods. Above ground and out in the open and I feel like I can breathe again. Danger is immediate and basic in the woods, and I’ve always been more comfortable with that than with the hidden barbs and double speak of the city. Tristan isn’t. Dusk has fallen and it’s nearly black in the shade of the old-growth trees. His eyes keep darting around, distrusting every shadow. I read the ground and smile at him.

It’s okay, I tell him in mindspeak. There are no Woven tracks.

He smiles and nods back at me, but I know this is hard for him. He never learned how to track when he was a kid, like I did. Learning how to track is like learning a second language. If you start young enough you can do it flawlessly, but come to it too late in life and you’ll never be wholly comfortable with it. He has good feet, though, and he can move through the brush almost as quietly as I can.

The snap of cool air has cleared my head and given me a second wind. Adrenaline kicks in now and I heft my half of Lillian with more ease. There were no Woven at the exit of the tunnel, but we’re close to the city. It shouldn’t be long before we encounter some.