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For a moment, Lily wavered. She felt the hungry baby willstones tugging at hers, begging to be fed. The Gift was the name for the level of power used in warrior magic, and in Rowan’s world it was the test that separated the crucibles from the witches. Only a witch could give the Gift. Lily suspected the Gift not only fueled her vessels with god-like strength, but that it also filled them with a berserker fearlessness that sent them running, exultant, into battle. Receiving any level of energy from a witch was always a thrill, but the Gift was more than that. It made warfare transcendent, especially for the witch. The temptation to possess her vessels and Gift them—to send them leaping and screaming down the dark beach in chaotic rapture—was almost irresistible.
Don’t do it, Lily.
She looked down at Rowan’s face, which was looking knowingly up at hers. A spark of rebellion flared inside her. Who was he to tell her what to do? She was the witch. He was her mechanic. She would do as she pleased.
With no one to fight, they’ll turn on one another, Lily. They don’t know how to channel it like I do. Gift me alone if you need to feel it, but not them.
She wanted to tell Rowan that she didn’t “need” anything, but she couldn’t. He was right. She felt a craving for violence, and she hated it. More, she hated that Rowan had found her weakness and called her out on it. Lily fought to control herself and took deep breaths until she was calm enough to feed each of her mechanic’s willstones a moderate amount of power. It wasn’t euphoric like the Gift, but she still reveled with them in the glorious sensation.
Great bubbles of laughter rose up in the air around her as the mechanics began to chase one another around the bonfire. They threw their arms up and hooted at the stars as they jumped ten, twenty, then thirty feet skyward, waving at Lily when they passed by her in midair.
As the fuel of the fire was consumed, the witch wind died down, and Lily sank to the ground. Her mechanics started whirling around the pit, throwing more driftwood on the flames, shouting and stomping their feet. They wanted more.
Lily. Control them so I can teach them how to fight.
She reached out to her mechanics and gathered the individual threads of their consciousnesses, uniting them. Like separate spokes on a wheel they were joined inside the circle of her mind, and could communicate with one another through her.
Listen to Rowan, she told them. Do exactly as he says.
“Tristan. S
tep forward,” Rowan commanded. Tristan met him face-to-face. “Hit me.”
Tristan looked over his shoulder at Lily, confusion widening his eyes.
“Do it,” Lily said.
Tristan threw a punch, and Rowan easily deflected it. “Use the speed and strength Lily is giving you. Come on, Tristan. A witch’s power isn’t just for dancing around bonfires. It’s for fighting. Stop squandering what she’s given you.”
Tristan circled in, angry at being scolded by Rowan. Rowan used that anger and directed Tristan’s movement, correcting his stance and his balance. Lily heard Rowan feeding instructions to Tristan, Breakfast, Una, and Juliet through her mind. Every blindingly fast combination of punches and blocks was broken down and analyzed by Rowan at the speed of thought. It was a much more efficient way for him to teach the new mechanics than by speaking aloud. Through Lily, Rowan simply placed the fruits of his vast experience directly into their heads, and she finally understood why he was so coveted by every witch in Lillian’s world—why witches and crucibles literally threw themselves at him in nightclubs, and why Nina and Esmeralda had been so jealous when they found out that he’d given himself to another witch. Rowan could tip the balance. With him to teach an army how to fight, any witch could conquer the world.
“Good,” Rowan said after half an hour of sparring. “Una. Step forward.”
Una faced Rowan with trepidation. “Not the face, okay? I’ve never done this before and you are scary good,” she said.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Rowan replied, smiling to put her at ease. “But we’re not going to spar. The best strategy for your body type is to get in quick, go for an eye gouge or break a finger, and get out.”
“I can do that,” Una said easily.
“I know. You’ve got grit,” Rowan replied. He looked at Breakfast and Juliet, both of whom had turned a little green at the mention of gouged-out eyes. “Everyone will have their own strategy. Tristan is a big guy, bigger than most, so a standup style is to his advantage. Una is little—but not squeamish. There’s an ambush style my people use that I’ll teach her.” To illustrate what he meant, Rowan used Lily to pass on an image of a ninja-like fighter to everyone. They all saw a small, nimble person climb up someone’s back to slit his throat and then jump down and crouch low to spin across the floor, slicing the Achilles tendons of other enemies. “You strike first, strike to disable or maim, and then clear out. It’s not pretty, but it is very effective.”
“Got it,” Una said, already crouching low like the fighter in Rowan’s image.
They didn’t exchange punches as Tristan and Rowan had—they grappled. Una’s new style of fighting relied on her getting in close and zeroing in on fragile little bones or crucial nerves. Rowan taught her how to get right up against her opponents and knock them off balance while she took a joint and broke it, or shot in like a surgeon to skewer a vital artery. By the end of Una’s grappling session, both Juliet and Breakfast looked like they were going to upchuck from all the gruesome images Rowan had conveyed to them.
“My girlfriend’s an assassin,” Breakfast said disbelievingly when Una brushed the sand off her clothes and sat down next to him. She kissed him loudly on the cheek. “I am so doomed,” he said, grinning.
Juliet looked seasick. “I don’t think I can do that,” she said.
“I don’t expect you to,” Rowan replied, holding in a laugh. “For you and Breakfast, I’m going to focus more on self-defense, rather than attack. Which is incredibly useful for protecting Lily.” Rowan’s tone turned deadly serious. “And that’s what this is all about. Protecting your witch. Never forget that without you, she’s nearly defenseless, although a powerful witch will always have a few last-ditch tricks up her sleeve. I’ll teach you those later, Lily,” he said, tossing Lily a brief image of a witch throwing fireballs and forked tendrils of lightning from the palms of her hands. “But without a witch, a mechanic is as good as dead. Protecting your witch is more important than your individual life, because if she dies, all of her claimed are left without her strength. If you care about each other you must protect Lily first, and you must protect her to the last. Do you understand?”
They all nodded solemnly as the weight of this responsibility settled inside them.
“This is about that guy,” Tristan said, his voice low and rough. “The one that you chased last night. Who is he?”
Rowan started to answer, but Lily stopped him. “No, Rowan. Let me.” She took a deep breath and shared a memory of Carrick from the oubliette. For half a second she let all of them feel what she had felt when he touched her willstones, and then she cut off the sensation before any of them could scream.
“Son of a bitch!” Tristan spat.
