AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Lily! It’s good to see you again,” Alaric said. Lily turned and saw the sachem striding toward her in his halting gait. Juliet was by his side. There was something about the way the two of them leaned toward each other, a slight but ever-present favoring of any place in which the other stood, that gave it away.
Juliet and Alaric were a couple—a happy couple, very much in love. It only made what she had to do more painful, but Lily was past the point of tallying up future suffering. Everyone was about to get hurt.
Lily stood. Nerves fluttered in her stomach. “Can we talk in private?” she asked. She immediately heard seven voices all asking her the same question in mindspeak.
Why?
She held up her hands, blocking everyone out and keeping them out. “I want to speak with the sachem alone,” she said.
“Anything you say to me is going to get repeated,” Alaric replied, stunned. “I have no secrets from Juliet or from my trusted braves.”
“You mean my sister and my claimed,” Lily said, a rueful smile tugging at her lips.
The sachem smiled back in kind. “That’s the problem with us, isn’t it? Who leads this army?”
“That’s not our only problem.” Lily stared at Alaric, her breath tight in her chest. She could feel Rowan pressing against her mind. He was confused. She couldn’t look at him. She had to shut him out or she’d never do what she needed to.
“The other?” Alaric asked. He crossed his arms over his chest, sizing Lily up.
There was no more hiding from this. The time had come for Lily to take a stand or step back and allow the unthinkable to happen.
Lily faced Alaric. “Has Chenoa finished the bombs yet?”
Alaric’s face froze. He couldn’t have looked more surprised if Lily had spat in his face.
“Lily?” Rowan asked, taking her by the elbow. “What are you talking about?”
“Do they even know about the bombs that you had Chenoa build at Lillian’s college?” Lily asked Alaric, making her voice loud so it was sure to carry. “The bombs that you plan to use to annihilate the Thirteen Cities?”
“What bombs?” Juliet asked, turning to Alaric.
Alaric ignored her, as Lily ignored Rowan, and both of them kept their eyes locked with the other. “How do you know about those?” Alaric asked Lily.
“They don’t know, do they?” Lily asked Alaric.
“No. So my question is, how do you?” he asked. Everyone else quieted down. “I was very careful when I selected braves for you to claim. None of them know,” Alaric said. He had her cornered and he knew it. It was too late to back out now.
Lily looked at Rowan. He was confused and he desperately wanted her to say the right thing so he could go on trusting her and loving her as he had for one perfect night. But Lily couldn’t say what he wanted to hear. She smiled at Rowan, allowing herself to love him as deeply as she could for one final second before she destroyed him.
“It’s okay, Rowan. I’ll be the villain so you can stay a hero,” she whispered.
Rowan’s face blanched. “Lillian said that to me the day she arrested my father,” he said.
Lily nodded. “I know.” She faced Alaric. “I know because Lillian and I have been in contact since I went back to my world. She showed me everything that she knows, and she knew about the bombs. Where are they?”
Alaric shook his head. “And put myself completely at the mercy of a witch?” Alaric looked at Lily as if she were crazy. “My people are trapped between the Covens and the Woven. We can’t survive against both. One of them has to go.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Lily said. “The Woven have to go. They’re the true enemy of your people. Lillian only became your enemy when she found out about the bombs.” Lily turned to Rowan, hoping that she could still convince him. “The shaman told Lillian about the bombs, and that’s why she went after scientists. She was just trying to stop Alaric from blowing up the entire eastern seaboard.”
“Then why did she hang my father?” Rowan asked. “He was a doctor, not a scientist.” Rowan turned to Alaric. “Did my father know anything about the bombs? Anything at all?”
“Not a thing,” Alaric said, meeting Rowan’s eyes to show that he wasn’t lying.
Rowan turned to Lily, waiting for her to explain. She couldn’t. She couldn’t tell him why Lillian had killed River first.
“Please. You don’t understand what these bombs are capable of,” she said. “You saw what happened to the tunnel women—how every cell was destroyed. That was just because they carried the material that makes the bombs. Imagine what will happen if Alaric detonates them. They won’t just destroy the cities, they’ll destroy your woods, too. We call it nuclear winter, and it will poison this entire world. Please bring the fight to the Woven, not the cities. I’ll fight with you.”
Rowan looked down, shaking his head. Lily turned desperately to Caleb, Tristan, and Juliet. She was grasping at straws. “I’ll fuel the braves, but we need to get away from the cities. We need to go west. There’s a mystery behind the Woven, something that we don’t understand, and we can use it to stop them. The answer is west of the Missouri River—the Pekistanoui—I can feel it.”
