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No. They only dated for
a few weeks and then he vanished.
We can find him if you want. We can find him and punish him. Wait until you see what you can do. Once Rowan is done training you, you’ll never be a victim again.
Una looked up and smiled at Rowan. “When do we start training?”
“Now,” Rowan answered. He cleared everything off the floor of the living room and put down a square of black silk. “Tristan. Put more wood on the fire.”
Tristan did as he was told, while Rowan went to get his pack from the closet. Una turned the pack over in her hands, enjoying the detailing. Lily noticed that Rowan had added some beadwork since the last time she saw it.
“Lily. Sit in front of the fire. Everyone else sit around her in a semicircle, in the shape of a crescent moon,” Rowan instructed.
He took the pack from Una and opened it, removing silver knives and laying them out in a pattern. Then he opened a pouch of salt and placed it close to Lily’s right hand.
“Always offer your witch salt, and always keep salt on you.” Rowan’s eyes flicked up to Lily and he shared a flash memory of him cutting her hair in the woods. They shared a warm smile. “Don’t run out of it.”
He kept emptying the pack, naming the different elements and herbs as he placed them on the black silk—chalk, iron, phosphorus, feverfew, chamomile, hyssop, and poppy. He only had small samples of each element or herb, but he had many different kinds of them.
“You’ll all start carrying a pack like this with you wherever you go. Even when you go into battle, you’ll carry your silver knives on a special belt I’ll make you,” he told them. “From now on, you are a mechanic first and foremost. And a mechanic needs a kit.”
The mechanics exchanged concerned looks at the mention of battle, which Rowan either missed or ignored.
“Everything here can be ordered online, and you’ll know just by looking at a substance if it is potent. If it isn’t, send it back. Una. Look at these two chamomile flowers and tell me which is more potent,” Rowan said. Una inspected both and chose the one on the right. “Correct. Tristan? Find the most vital poppy seed.” Tristan carefully plucked one of the impossibly small specks out from the tiny pile of hundreds of seeds. “Correct,” Rowan said, smiling. “You will always select the best you have when making a potion before you offer it to your witch. Understood?” They all nodded. “The potions I will teach you one at a time. Today we’re going to start with a basic one that mends cuts.”
“What? Like, instantly mends a cut?” Breakfast asked disbelievingly.
Rowan took one of his silver knives and cut a long, shallow gash in the palm of his hand. While everyone gasped and moved toward him instinctively to help, Rowan calmly opened a small jar of salve with his uninjured hand and spread a faint green paste on the wound. He took a rag out of his pocket and wiped away the blood and salve. Underneath, the skin was perfect. It was as if he’d never been cut.
“Superficial wounds are very easy to heal. As long as there is no damage to tendons, nerve, or bone, the skin cells are designed to mend themselves an uncountable number of times,” he said calmly. The neophytes stared slack-jawed at Rowan. “We start with shallow cuts and move up from there. As a witch’s mechanic, what you will be dealing with the most are burns.” He looked at Lily. “And burns are a bitch.”
“You are such a badass,” Breakfast said, his timing priceless. Everyone laughed, releasing the tension.
“Let’s get started,” Rowan said. “Juliet? Fill the cauldron.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent making salve. The new mechanics only needed to see Rowan do it once to memorize every step in the process and store that memory away in their willstones.
“This is cool and all, but what I want to know is when are we going to learn how to jump across rooftops?” Breakfast asked as he spooned salve out of the cauldron and into a small jar.
Rowan looked out the window, his expression severe. “As soon as the sun goes down,” he answered.
Are you sure they’re ready for that, Rowan?
Ready or not, we don’t have any time to waste, Lily. Salve isn’t going to protect you from my half brother.
At dusk, Rowan took them all down to the beach. The shore was cold, dark, and deserted. Right away Rowan placed the square of black silk on a rock and told Lily to sit. Then he had Tristan, Breakfast, Una, and Juliet start gathering driftwood for a bonfire.
“Pile it up in front of Lily,” Rowan ordered.
“What I want to know is when does Lily get off her butt and do some chores?” Tristan said, panting, as he dragged a gnarly stump of bleached wood up the beach. “I feel like I’ve been stacking wood and stoking fires all damn day while she just sits there.”
Rowan gave Tristan a disapproving look. “It’s a mechanic’s privilege to serve his witch. We get back the energy we spend on her a hundredfold.”
Lily sniffed snootily at Tristan and made a show of getting comfortable on her rock. He stifled a laugh and grumbled something that sounded like “insufferable,” then went back to work. When the fire was high, Lily stood up and faced it. All teasing and playfulness vanished from her demeanor. She held her hands toward the bonfire, sucking heat into her willstones, and a howling witch wind buffeted her on all sides, lifting her off the ground.
The awed faces of her new mechanics tilted up as Lily soared ten feet into the air, her arms thrown out wide, and her hair streaming straight up in the column of witch wind that shrieked around her suspended silhouette like it was full of demons.
Don’t give them the full Gift, Lily. They aren’t ready yet.
