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I slip into the forest, heading in Caleb’s direction, not really caring anymore if they follow. Lillian crashes along after me, tripping over everything as if on purpose. She’s having a horrible time of it, and that’s only making me angrier. Her skin is reacting to every irritant possible, and she doesn’t do anything to counteract it. She even twists her ankle and pretends not to know how to mend it.
I glance at the ankle and see that it’s broken. She’s in a lot of pain. Crying, even. A sinking doubt starts to creep in on my anger. This can’t be an act anymore, can it? Tristan picks her up and carries her. Just seeing her in his arms, and the way she settles into him like she’s done it a million times before, eats away at me. I go ahead of them and give Tristan the direction of the rendezvous point in mindspeak.
When they arrive at camp after me, Caleb goes to them. Tristan tells him that the girl isn’t Lillian—he believes her story now. Caleb and I go to get the sachem. We bring the sachem to her, and he bends down close to look her in the eye. He asks her a few questions and makes up his mind.
“This isn’t Lillian, Rowan,” he says.
I fight it—of course I fight it. What Alaric doesn’t understand is that I can look into her cells and see the life helix. I know this is Lillian.
“Look in her eyes, Rowan,” he tells me. “There’s no death there.”
He has a point. I look down at the girl sitting next to the fire, and see again what I saw when I first laid eyes on her outside the café this morning. Innocence. Alaric asks me if this girl is as powerful as Lillian.
“There’s none stronger,” I say. And it’s true. She’s so heavy with power she seems to punch a hole in the night. But her power doesn’t flow through her as it should. It’s dammed up inside of her … because she’s never used it. More doubt weakens my resolve.
“Can she do everything that Lillian can?” Alaric asks.
“Maybe. With training,” I answer. I see something light up in Alaric’s eyes.
He speaks some more with her, but I barely hear them. Is she really from another world? I can’t accept it. Alaric has accepted it so easily. Too easily.
He orders me to fix her ankle, and I’m glad because it gives me something to do. I can’t look at her. I touch her ankle with my fingertips and focus on her injury. This is Lillian’s skin. I know it so well. The dusting of gold hair that rises when I skim my fingers over it. The taste. I’m losing focus again. I pull my thoughts back to where they belong and try to reduce the swelling.
My willstone flares and I look up at her. She gasps and swears and tries to pull away from me. “Your eyes are on fire!” she shouts. And just like that I don’t recognize her. This girl is a stranger to me.
It’s like ice down my back. “You’re not Lillian,” is all I can say.
“No. I’m really not,” she whispers.
Tristan comes back with the supplies. He’s worried about “Lily,” as she likes to be called. He thinks I might have hurt her. I guess I deserve that. I’ve been a brute all night, and as I replay my behavior, I’m embarrassed by the way I’ve been acting toward her. Lily. The stranger in Lillian’s body.
It occurs to me that I might not be able to heal her. She’s blocking me because she doesn’t trust me. I tell Tristan
that she has to heal herself, using my stone. I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before, but for some reason, I know it will work.
Lily watches me as I prepare the brew. Knowing that her eyes are on my hands makes me aware of them, and it takes me longer than it should. She has no idea what to do when I give her the boiling pot. She’s like a virtuoso who’s never heard music, and I get to be the one who teaches her to sing her first song.
As she swallows the brew I realize I have to get closer to her so she can access my willstone. I lay her back and hover over her, but I don’t let my stone touch her. Forks of energy jump between us, and I feel all the hairs on my body prick with static. This is an inefficient way to transmute, but she’s so powerful it works anyway. I guide her, watching from the inside, as she uses her gift for the first time.
An “Oh” of surprise hangs in her chest. The wonder and the blinding brightness of understanding she feels are too much, and a lump forms in my throat. Her hands are braced against my chest and I feel them curl as she clutches at my shirt. She wants me nearer. She softens under me and I have to look away. I back off, helping her sit up.
“Magic,” she says. The word stumbles out of her mouth awkwardly, and I wish my mouth was there to catch it.
Something snaps in her. I watch as she struggles not to cry. She presses at her breastbone with her hand, like she’s trying to keep her heart inside her chest. Tristan and I tell her that she doesn’t need to be locked up and she can sleep in the tent behind her. She clambers into it, blind with fatigue and shock. I can hear her panting with panic on the other side of the thin sheet of fabric.
I stand there, listening to her smothered cries, wishing I could make them stop. I’m too scared to think it, but three words fly recklessly through my head anyway.
… A second chance.
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CHAPTER 1
Lily Proctor ducked into the girls’ room, already yanking back her rebellious hair. Aiming for the toilet through a blur of tears, she vomited until her knees shook.
Lily had been symptomatic all day, but she knew she’d rather eat her own foot than get sent home. Tristan would never take her to the party that night if he knew she was having another one of her epic reactions, and Lily couldn’t afford to miss this party. Not now. Not when things between her and Tristan had so recently—and so wonderfully—changed.
