Trial by Fire (Worldwalker 1)

… Scared faces above me. Everyone’s staring at me, horrified. My body twitching and clenching like I’m being struck by lightning. I can hear my teeth clacking together and taste the blood in my mouth. It pools in the back of my throat. I can’t scream. I can’t swallow. All I can do is wade through the panic and hope this seizure ends soon.

Stop!

“—tern,” Rowan finished.

Lily was thrown back into the noise and desperation of their situation. So much had passed between her and Rowan, but almost no time had passed at all. Thoughts really did move faster than words, Lily supposed.

“I have it,” she said. “I have your pattern.”

Rowan nodded, as if he already knew as much, and steeled himself again. “Now”—he paused and swallowed hard—“usually, you’d change the energy inside your own stone and then pour the power into mine, so I don’t even know if this is possible. But we did it with your ankle, so we’re going to give it a try. It’s just more energy, okay?”

“Okay!” Lily said, not really understanding but determined to try if it killed her. “What do I do?”

“Come back in and fill me up.”

Lily’s question was interrupted by the crash of the door breaking down. She saw a jumble of pincers, claws, armored shells, and long thin legs, like the legs of spiders, only much, much bigger. Lily stared at them, a scream choking in her throat. Each Woven looked like a jumble of creatures, their parts pulled from a grab bag and stitched together with bristling hair and teeth.

“There’s no time!” Rowan shouted. He grabbed Lily’s shoulders and shook her until she looked at him, his words sliding into her head.

I’ll try to guide you, but it’s never been done like this before. Look into my stone. Take the heat of the fire. Change its energy into force inside my stone. Give it to me.

Lily forced herself to focus and looked into Rowan’s stone.

It was so beautiful.

The Woven charging toward them through the smashed door seemed to freeze. Lily didn’t think. She just did what Rowan told her to do—she took the heat. Her skin inhaled the radiant energy of the fire and all the air in the room followed, as if she were a black hole. As the wind rushed in on her from all sides, it collided and got pushed up, blowing her hair and arms up with it. Rowan released her shoulders as a column of witch wind built, lifting her in the air until she hovered a few inches off the ground. The heat collected inside her, building into a bright ball like a mini sun gestating in her chest.

Change the energy into force.

The rational, logical part of Lily’s mind, the part that knew about Einstein, understood that matter could be changed into energy. There was an elegant little equation that described it, too. But how was she supposed to change heat into force? Lily couldn’t even begin to fathom that exchange, but she knew it had to be possible because Rowan had said it was. Directing the gathered heat in her chest into Rowan’s willstone, she felt it start to change into force simply because she willed it to.

Lily’s mind squinted at Rowan’s stone to try to understand it. She saw the lattice of its crystalline structure ringing with vibrations as they altered the frequency of the tiniest shards of matter—which were themselves not actually things, but vibrations. Like a finger sliding up a violin string, the pitch changed, but the volume did not decrease. Nothing was lost. All of the energy she’d collected from the ambient heat in the air was turned directly into force.

The enormity of the power generated in this exchange staggered her, but her body took all that force back into itself as if it were the most natural thing it could do, like a lung pulling in a new breath after exhaling.

“Lily!” Rowan screamed.

She looked down at Rowan, bracing himself against the onrush of witch wind. The Woven were inches away from him. One of them extended a long, fanged snout from under its carapace. Its maw opened.

Give it to me. Give me the Gift.

She did. Rowan’s chest swelled, and his head tipped back, an ecstatic look gracing his lovely face.

Light exploded inside Rowan’s willstone. He leapt up from his knees, whirling in midair as he unsheathed his knife and faced the army of Woven that were charging into the cabin.

Lily could feel Rowan’s body soaring, feel the rush of pure force pouring into his limbs. Knife in hand, he slashed through the armored back of a Woven and was on to his next victim before the killed creature could even scream. Caught in her column of witch wind, Lily kept absorbing more heat, changing it, and spilling it into Rowan as he used it. She was the hand of power inside Rowan, bearing him up so he could do impossible things.

His body leapt and spun. It crashed down with tons of force, smashing the Woven beneath him. His arms reached and whirled. He punched and grabbed, slicing through the ranks of invaders like they were no thicker than shadows. He pushed their enemies back, out of the confined space of the cabin and into the clearing so he could kill them more easily.

Even though she could no longer see the battle, Lily’s senses still seeped into Rowan’s. She was with him in his skin, feeling the thrill he felt with her power inside him. Every muscle was stronger than steel and every bone nearly unbreakable. She felt his lithe body all around her, moving and stretching. Her heart pounded with his, thrilling with the purest rush Lily had ever experienced. And right on the edge of his mind, she saw a flash of fear—fear that she would take him over entirely.

She realized that she could control his actions if she wanted. More. She could control his thoughts, his speech, even his dreams. And something in her pinched with lust at the thought of doing it, of taking all of him. Lily realized with a start that she desperately wanted something that she knew was despicable.

Don’t give in, Lily. I know it feels good, but you have to let me keep myself. You don’t know how to fight them.

Lily struggled with herself, resisting not only the desire she felt but the itch of curiosity. It was wrong, and she knew it, but still she wondered what it would feel like to own Rowan completely. Lily’s conscience cringed.

I swear I won’t, Rowan.