Thousands of bodies arched with euphoria and thousands of minds reached for Lily, sharing the experience with her. At the front of all the minds, strong and clear, was Rowan’s. Near to him in strength and familiarity were Tristan and Caleb, and close behind, Dana. Lily poured the lion’s share of power into their stones and connected each of them with the minds of the soldiers she sensed around them. Lily’s newly appointed generals led her army out onto the battlefield at a run.
Her body hanging limply from her chains, Lily’s mind thundered with them toward the oncoming army in her mind. She felt her fighters clashing with Lillian’s, felt the front lines charge through each other and pass in a blur of bodies and steel. She was there with Rowan when he cut off Gideon’s head in the first second of battle.
Lily shared in the experience of battle with her soldiers. She thrilled with them at the feeling of invincibility that so many of them had never experienced before. She also felt it when they died. A one-of-a-kind rhythm would suddenly stop, and that unique part of the symphony would be lost forever. Every time it was a shock to her. Every time, she gasped at the loss. But feeling the loss drove her even harder. The flames bent toward Lily as she greedily pulled their heat into her core and changed it into force in an ever-increasing loop. When she felt one of her soldiers’ strength fail, she would flood his or her stone with power.
The two bewitched armies were evenly matched, and the fighting went on and on. The pyre began to collapse as the wood was consumed. A firestorm whirled around Lily in a tornado of sparks and ashes. She had to fight to breathe among the oxygen-hungry flames. The stake she was chained to crumbled, and Lily easily pulled her shackles free of it. She was so tired. Her skin began to burn as she fell to her knees, struggling to stay conscious. She heard Lillian’s voice in her head.
You can’t win. And I don’t want you to die. I’ll pull my army back if you get off the pyre, Lily.
Why, Lillian? I would think you’d want me dead at this point.
Not at all. You are everything I hoped you would be. I need you. That’s why I brought you here to begin with.
There are an infinite number of us, Lillian. Why not get another one?
No. You’re perfect. And I’d never get Rowan to train a third.
Lily knew Lillian couldn’t lie in mindspeak and wondered if she’d meant to say this, or if she was struggling over there on her own pyre and, in pain, she’d let it slip.
You led me to him that first day, didn’t you, Lillian? You guided me through the city right to him. You needed me to meet him.
Rowan is loyal to a fault. Even to cafes. I knew he would be there, and I knew that even if I found a replacement who had every ounce of my potential, without Rowan, she’d never match it. I needed Rowan to train you as much as I needed you.
You used us. You betrayed us.
I betrayed myself, Lily. And because of that, I know I’ll never get this chance again. You’re the only replacement who will be capable of truly being me. I’m pulling my army back. You must get off the pyre. Now, Lily!
Spent logs gave way under her, and Lily fell into the white belly of the inferno. She thrummed with a giant vibration. She felt herself lifting up and out of her tortured body and sighed with relief. Spirit walking, she looked back down on herself, her blackened skin bubbling and crisping. She was dying. She had to get her body out of the pyre—a universe away if need be. She thought of the shaman. Instead of just jumping up, she jumped up and out into the worldfoam.
Lily heard a new vibration. It was huge. Even though she’d managed to wrangle thousands of individual vibrations and keep them all under control during the battle, what she was experiencing now was so far beyond that she didn’t know how to begin to decipher it. But she’d felt it twice before: once when she’d dived through the worldfoam, and once before that, when Lillian had first brought her here. Lily finally understood what it was. The vibration was so mind-bogglingly complicated that it could only be the key to a whole universe—the key into another universe. It was so huge, Lily knew instinctively she couldn’t store it in her willstones. If she even tried it, her stones would crack.
Lily hovered somewhere in between life and death while she fed this new vibration into her willstones, following a feeling more than precise memory. Her stones pulsed with different lights, each of them trying to process the rhythm of a whole universe and play it back in sequence. Lily didn’t even know what universe she held the key to, where she would end up, or if she would ever be able to find her way back, but it was too late for that now. Ears ringing, Lily’s awareness skipped in and out of her dying body.
She saw burnt logs falling and heard shouts all around her. Fresh air rushed in, feeding the fire in a giant plume of heat. Someone was trying to dig her out of the pyre.
Rowan.
He was burned and bloody. He beat savagely at the glowing wood around her with an ax and pulled her out of the fire with his bare hands. Lily fell back into her body, inhaling a lungful of air.
“Rowan,” she whispered. “You have to let me go.”
“Never.”
“But—I’m leaving.”
The last sequence of the vibration played in her willstones.
Not without me.
The pyre collapsed, and a stream of pressurized heat rushed toward Lily and Rowan. She had no choice but to change the heat into energy or they’d be incinerated. Her willstones took the massive kick of energy, catapulting them both out of one universe and into another.
* * *
The people who love you will guide you like bright lights into the other worlds.
The shaman had told her that. Lily desperately searched for a light.
She saw nothing. Felt nothing. Not her own pain, nor Rowan in her arms. She couldn’t even feel the weight of her skin on her bones. The complete absence of light and sensation was terrifying.