Rowan (Worldwalker 1.50)

Rowan ran a hand over her face in a clinical way, checking her for fever like he had been her doctor for years. His hands were warm, but they still made Lily shiver. He trailed sensitive fingertips down the sides of her throat, feeling lightly over her glands. Confusion darkened his face.

“Where’s your willstone?” The anger and impatience she’d sensed in him earlier were completely gone. He looked afraid now, as afraid and lost as Lily felt.

“Help me, Rowan? Please,” Lily begged, figuring she had nothing left to lose.

She saw his dark eyes narrow with suspicion. He hooked a finger into the divot at the bottom of her throat, pressing hard on a sensitive point buried deep inside that U-shaped hollow. A chill swept up Lily’s already exhausted body, and she blacked out.

* * *

Gideon pushed his way into Lillian’s chamber. It should have been sealed, impossible for him to enter, but the heavy door swung open with the slightest nudge from his willstone. Lillian must be very ill, he thought. Or dead.

“What are you doing here?” Juliet asked.

She stepped in between him and the bed. Her eyes darted behind Gideon to the door as he closed it, her nervousness apparent. The willstone on her neck pulsed, but no power followed it. Juliet was a latent crucible. She carried the gene but not much talent, as if being the sister of Lillian had sapped most of her potential gifts. Gideon brushed past Juliet’s weak intervention and went straight to the bed.

Fiery red curls snaked up from under the covers and coiled over the white pillow, but the rest of Lillian’s fragile frame was buried in blankets. She was so thin now that her body looked to be no more than a wrinkle in the plush duvet.

“So she is here,” Gideon said. “The guards said she’d run away. They also said that before she left, they saw her on the beach, wandering around aimlessly. Like she didn’t know where she was.”

Gideon watched Juliet’s face. It was a pretty face, although she frowned too much. He’d break her of that when they were married. His father had arranged the match, and the Witch didn’t oppose it. It made sense for them to wed, even if Juliet wasn’t to Gideon’s taste.

“The Witch is sleeping,” Juliet replied in a lowered voice. “Please get to your point quietly.”

“Fine. Is she going crazy like your mother did?” he asked bluntly.

“No,” Juliet replied, offended even though she shouldn’t be. It happened every now and again in families that had true power. The dark side of great talent was often madness. It went hand in hand with genius, and it was nothing to be ashamed of. It meant the Proctor family had true power in its bloodline. Power that Gideon wanted for his own offspring, even if it meant he had to get them from Juliet.

“Then why was she wandering around on the beach—dressed very strangely, the guards said—and without her willstone? How’d she even tolerate being separated from it?” Gideon leaned close to Juliet. He saw her lips pinch together with distaste and considered slapping her, but the Witch would punish him for that. Soon, Gideon promised himself. She’d learn her lesson soon. “We all know the Witch has been struggling with a sickness of some kind for the past few months,” he continued. “If she would let me—or any another competent mechanic of her choice—look her over, we might be able to help.”

“I know her behavior must have seemed strange to the guards,” Juliet said, ignoring his request to lay hands on Lillian for what seemed to Gideon the thousandth time. “But Lillian has her reasons.”

She was hiding something for her sister, something other than the cause of Lillian’s mysterious illness. Gideon was sure of it now. “Well, when she wakes, let her know that both me and my father would love to know what those reasons are.”

Juliet’s colorless face blanched an even paler shade at the mention of Thomas, and Gideon repressed a pleased smile as he turned and left. The Witch might rule, but she still had to deal with the Council and its leader. His momentary triumph was marred by the nagging feeling that something important had just happened. Something huge. And it was being kept from him.

Gideon was tired of being pushed aside. He was the Witch’s head mechanic in name only, and that fact was not lost on the rest of the Coven. If Lillian wouldn’t give him responsibility, then he’d just have to take it.

* * *

Lily woke, but not to the sterile bleakness of a hospital or to the familiar four walls of her bedroom. It was dark out—dark and cold. She could smell loamy earth under her and wood smoke on the air. Flickering firelight revealed crisscrossed wooden bars all around her. She tried to move her arms, only to discover that they were tied in front of her. She was a prisoner. Leather creaked as she tried to twist her wrists out of their bonds. There was writing on the leather straps. Lily squinted in the low light and tried to make out the unfamiliar shapes. They looked like something carved on the side of a standing stone, or engraved on the cover of a leather book. Runes, Lily thought, recalling the description from an old movie she’d seen once.

Lily heard the snap and crackle of a campfire and wind buffeting the tall trees above her. She caught a glimpse of a thick tree trunk a few yards away from her cage and realized that she must be in a deep, dark forest. Some place old and full of wildlife. She could hear all kinds of rustles and scratches from what she hoped were just small, furry animals in the forest—preferably animals that didn’t have too many teeth.

Long shadows, cast by legs standing around the campfire, reached into her primitive cage and darkened her view. Lily swallowed hard to moisten her throat and stifle the hacking cough that threatened to burst out of her. She could smell all kinds of fecund things in the ground beneath her—mushrooms, pulpy woodbark, and leaf mold. Mold spores could kill her. She had to get out of this world, but she needed more information. Her heart pounding and her eyes and nose watering, Lily stayed very still and listened to the conversation by the fire.

“I don’t trust her,” Rowan said, his voice heavy with hatred.

“That’s nothing new,” replied an unfamiliar man sardonically.

“No, something’s wrong with her, Caleb. Off.” Rowan’s deep voice was nearly a growl of frustration. “And it’s not just because her willstone’s gone. Her body felt different. Clogged and neglected. Like it had never performed magic.”

“An imposter?” Caleb asked in a lowered voice.

“No. It’s her,” Rowan replied passionately. “Down to the deepest parts of her cells—that’s Lillian.”

“Well, no one knows her body better than you.” Caleb sighed. “A genetic copy then?”

Lily swallowed again, trying to suppress another cough. Wherever she was, they talked about human clones as if they were eas