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Lily didn’t have a response to that. She repressed the image of her dresser drawer full of slogan-emblazoned T-shirts, especially the one that read I’M VEGAN. AND YES, THAT DOES MAKE ME BETTER THAN YOU.
“What a lively debate we’re having,” Alaric said wryly. He waved his hands at both of them, indicating that they should sit down. “Tristan, would you serve Lily some lentil stew?”
“She can’t have it, Sachem, there are potatoes in it,” Rowan said, taking his seat next to Caleb. “Potatoes are a nightshade. They are poison for her until she learns how to transmute their alkaloids into power. If she refuses to eat poultry—which is a neutral, nonreactive food for you, by the way,” he added, shooting Lily a withering look before continuing, “she may have cooked oats for energy. For protein I’ll figure something else out. Lentils without potatoes, maybe.”
“Problem solved. Amazing what we can accomplish in a morning,” Alaric said with the faintest of eye rolls.
Lily smiled hesitantly at Alaric. His dry sense of humor took some getting used to, but Lily could tell he was pleased that the conflict was solved. Alaric liked finding solutions to problems—even silly ones, like what Lily could and couldn’t eat.
Tristan returned with a wooden bowl of oatmeal for Lily. She smiled up at him in thanks, but her thoughts were still fixated on what Rowan had said. She’d always thought potatoes were so bland that they couldn’t possibly cause a reaction, only to find that an hour or so later, she was burning with fever. It bothered her that she had never noticed this connection before, but it bothered her even more that Rowan had.
“May I ask you something, Rowan?” she called over the fire when she couldn’t stand it any longer. He nodded. “My doctors did test after test, but they could never figure out what triggers my fevers. How do you know what I’m allergic to?”
“You’re not allergic to anything,” Rowan replied with a shrug. “You’re a crucible.”
“Okay, you keep calling me that,” Lily said, putting down her bowl, and addressing the group. “But what’s a crucible? I know what a crucible is in my world—it’s a container that’s used to heat things up. Are you calling me a crucible because my body runs hot and I heat things up?”
“You don’t just heat up substances,” Tristan said. “You change them inside your body.”
“And what do I change substance into?” Lily asked.
“All different kinds of energies and forces,” Rowan replied. “You can also take outside heat, which is a form of energy, and turn it into force.” He gestured to the fire.
“My ankle,” Lily said. She remembered the fingers of fire and how she was able to manipulate the blood, tissue, and bone on the smallest level—right down to the cells. It was impossible. “I turned the heat from that brew you made me drink into a force that rebuilt my ankle?”
“Along with the calcium and other elements we gave you in the brew,” Tristan amended. “You can change things—chemicals into energy, and energy into force—but you can’t create matter or energy out of nothing, which is why we gave you the brew.” He smiled at her. “Your thermodynamo law.”
“Thermodynamics,” Lily corrected absently.
“Your body is a place where matter and energy get transmuted. That’s why you’re called a crucible,” Rowan said, his dark eyes flicking up to catch hers. “Get it?”
“Yeah, I get it,” Lily whispered.
All those baffled doctors, all the allergy tests that came up inconclusive, all the fevers that didn’t come from any kind of infection scrolled through Lily’s mind. They’d never found anything wrong with her because what was wrong with her was so unbelievable, no rational person would ever think to look for it. Lily’s hands were shaking. She clasped them together to steady them.
“I’m a witch.”
“Not yet,” Rowan said seriously. “That’s a title you have to earn.”
“God, you say that like it’s a good thing,” she said with a gasp. Her hands kept shaking, even though she was squeezing them together so hard she was practically wringing blood out of her fingertips. Lily felt a hand on her arm, and looked over at Alaric.
“I think that’s enough for now,” he said.
Lily stood up and nearly ran away from the campfire.
* * *
“Lily? The elders are here to see you,” said Rowan.
Lily had been hiding in her tent for the last half hour, trying to calm down. She paused and took a few steadying breaths, preparing herself to go out there. The last thing she wanted to do was lose it as she had at breakfast and run off crying like a little girl again. She could hear Rowan on the other side of the thin material of the tent, shifting from foot to foot as he waited for her to collect herself.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” she said, and pushed the flap of the tent open.
Rowan looked her over. “You’re feverish.”
Lily swiped the back of her hand across her forehead, and it came back glistening with sweat. “Great,” she said. Half her mouth tilted up in a wry smile. “Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll have another seizure and wake up back home.”
