Trial by Fire (46 page)
You used us. You betrayed us.
I betrayed myself, Lily. And because of that, I know I’ll never get this chance again. You’re the only replacement who will be capable of truly being me. I’m pulling my army back. You must get off the pyre. Now, Lily!
Spent logs gave way under her, and Lily fell into the white belly of the inferno. She thrummed with a giant vibration. She felt herself lifting up and out of her tortured body and sighed with relief. Spirit walking, she looked back down on herself, her blackened skin bubbling and crisping. She was dying. She had to get her body out of the pyre—a universe away if need be. She thought of the shaman. Instead of just jumping up, she jumped up and out into the worldfoam.
Lily heard a new vibration. It was huge. Even though she’d managed to wrangle thousands of individual vibrations and keep them all under control during the battle, what she was experiencing now was so far beyond that she didn’t know how to begin to decipher it. But she’d felt it twice before; Once when she’d dived through the worldfoam, and once before that, when Lillian had first brought her here. Lily finally understood what it was. The vibration was so mind-bogglingly complicated that it could only be the key to a whole universe—the key
into
another universe. It was so huge, Lily knew instinctively she couldn’t store it in her willstones. If she even tried it, her stones would crack.
Lily hovered somewhere in between life and death while she fed this new vibration into her willstones, following a feeling more than precise memory. Her stones pulsed with different lights, each of them trying to process the rhythm of a whole universe and play it back in sequence. Lily didn’t even know what universe she held the key to, where she would end up, or if she would ever be able to find her way back, but it was too late for that now. Ears ringing, Lily’s awareness skipped in and out of her dying body.
She saw burnt logs falling and heard shouts all around her. Fresh air rushed in, feeding the fire in a giant plume of heat. Someone was trying to dig her out of the pyre.
Rowan.
He was burned and bloody. He beat savagely at the glowing wood around her with an ax and pulled her out of the fire with his bare hands. Lily fell back into her body, inhaling a lungful of air.
“Rowan.” she whispered. “You have to let me go.”
“Never.”
“But—I’m leaving.”
The last sequence of the vibration played in her willstones.
Not without me.
The pyre collapsed, and a stream of pressurized heat rushed toward Lily and Rowan. She had no choice but to change the heat into energy or they’d be incinerated. Her willstones took the massive kick of energy, catapulting them both out of one universe and into another.
The people who love you will guide you like bright lights into the other worlds
.
The shaman had told her that. Lily desperately searched for a light.
She saw nothing. Felt nothing. Not her own pain, nor Rowan in her arms. She couldn’t even feel the weight of her skin on her bones. The complete absence of light and sensation were terrifying.
Don’t be scared. I know it’s confusing, but focus on finding me. It’s time to come back.
Mom? I’m coming. I’m coming home.
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