They shuffle closer, confused. They trust no one, but they also have nothing to lose. I feel the boy touch my ankle and I look down at him. Before River took his arm I told him I couldn’t help him—I couldn’t even save myself. He looks up at me now, wondering which was the lie. I know I will think of that look on his face for as long as I live. And I must live. I must go back to my world or the same thing that happened here will happen there. I look back up at the lambs and smile brightly, selling my big lie.
“It’s easy,” I say. “I just need for everyone to join hands and stand around me in a tight group.”
They take some encouraging, but all that is required of them is to huddle and they are lambs. They huddle naturally.
“Bare hands, everyone,” I say, stripping the makeshift mittens off the ones around me. Some don’t have hands, and I amend my order. “I need you all to be touching one another’s bare skin in some way. We need to create a circuit of people. Anyone who is left out of the circuit will be left behind.”
They understand and obey. I stand in the middle of them, smelling their rank bodies and their rotten breath. They are dead already, I remind myself. At least this way they will only suffer for a few seconds longer.
I’ve never drained this many, and I have no idea if the energy in their weakened state will be enough to fuel my worldjump, but desperation has a way of silencing doubt. The last person I touch is the boy. His eyes are round with disappointment and he tries to shake me off. I don’t let him. If I am to eat this sin, I must clean the plate.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and then drain the very life from their bodies.
And I reach through the darkness between the worlds, back to my home. The home I must save in order to pay this grisly debt …
* * *
The sun rose, and Lily found that more than half of her braves had saddled their horses and were preparing to leave her.
“We joined her to fight the Woven, not stand there and stare at them while they circle us,” Dana snapped at Caleb while she cinched her saddle around her horse.
“You’re a coward. You’re afraid of the Hive,” he spat back at her.
“As you should be,” she countered unabashedly. “Even one sting from a Worker can kill—but they don’t always kill you. No. Sometimes they just sting you so you can’t move. That’s when the Sisters come to carry you off, still alive.”
“That’s just something grown-ups tell little children to frighten them,” Caleb scoffed.
“Is it? You know for sure?” Dana asked. “I’ve heard that they do. And we don’t know what they do with the ones they take, because no one that’s been taken by the Hive is ever heard from again.”
“Oh, come on! What’s next, Dana, a ghost story?” Caleb’s face twisted with disgust. “You know, maybe Lily’s right. Maybe the Woven aren’t as bad as I thought. At least they can count on one another to work as a team.”
Dana wheeled her horse to charge at Caleb, and Lily stepped in between, forcing Dana to pull her horse up short.
“Enough. Let them go, Caleb,” Lily said, looking over every one of the braves who were about to leave her. They couldn’t meet her eyes. They hadn’t sworn themselves to Lily, and she couldn’t accuse them of oath breaking, but they all knew that’s what it was.
“Stop them, Lily,” Caleb said in an urgent and low tone. “We can’t make it with just a handful of us.”
“Listen, Caleb,” she said, placing a hand on his wide bicep to calm him. “What I’m trying to do can’t be done if I’m surrounded by people who don’t believe in me. Let them go.”
The rest of Dana’s braves mounted up and started to ride off. None of them stopped, and only Dana looked back.
I’m sorry, Lily. I can’t go any farther, Dana said in mindspeak.
She was waiting for some kind of absolution. Lily didn’t give it because she couldn’t lie in mindspeak.
“Don’t let the Workers sting you,” Dana shouted. “I hear that they don’t always decide to kill, but when they do, I know for a fact that they only have to sting you once.” She looked directly at Caleb. “That I’ve seen for myself.”
Dana turned back around and focused on the road ahead of her.
/> Caleb heaved a breath. “This will leave only fifteen of us,” he said. “Fifteen to get all the way to your California.”
“One of those fifteen is Lily,” her Tristan said defiantly. He raised his voice. “You think you can make it back to the cities without a witch?” He raised his voice even louder so that those already riding away could hear. “You’ll all be dead in a week without her!”
“Tristan,” Lily said, reaching out to take him by the arm. He shook her off and stormed away.
“That went well,” she muttered to herself, rolling her eyes.
“Give him some time,” Caleb said.