Elves Invasion

53

“Hold her,” Windyard ordered, and Tristan’s hands clamped down on Ava’s head.

Even when Windyard paused momentarily to dip his needle, the burning kept mounting, and soon she couldn’t even feel the prick of the needle over the sting of the ink. A cold sweat broke down her back, and as Windyard tapped the tattoo farther down the side of her neck, she started to shiver. She wasn’t burning. She was freezing.

Tristan had to take more of her weight as the icy acid in the ink started to leach into her blood and chill her from the inside out. Ava could feel the cold sliding down her insides as if she’d swallowed an ice cube. Her teeth began to chatter.

“Okay. Lay her back,” Windyard said.

Ava felt herself being put down and opened her eyes. The stars whirled above. The steady tapping and the cold burn began again along the lower part of her right ribs. Ava tracked the paths of the stars to keep her mind off Windyard’s never-ending tattoo. He worked down from her ribs and curved inside the hip bone, ending just above her bikini line.

“Last one,” he said, and started on the top of her left thigh.

She was numb with cold by the time he had spiraled around the inside of her thigh and ended the third tattoo at the back of her left knee. Windyard ended the spell. The light in his willstone heaved and then went out.

In the absence of his magelight, the soft scintillation of the speaking stone caught Ava’s eye again. Half in and half out of her body to hide from the pain, Ava let her other eye swim in the light of the speaking stone. She idly wondered whether she could reach Pale One and called softly to her claimed Woven.

Ava’s mind seemed to jump into a fast-moving river, and the impressions of places whizzed past her. She saw hills and valleys and then mountains and vast plains. Her other eye skipped from speaking stone to speaking stone, each stone tinting the world a slightly different color, until finally her mind settled inside the claimed she’d named Pale One. Ava waded through a tangle of scents so strong and clear they glowed like colors that painted the whole world, and high-contrast images seen through eyes that were not built like her own. The mind she touched pieced information together differently than Ava’s did, but after a few tries, she deciphered this . . .

Inside, follow. Unseen, but here with me, she calls. Bite itch and lick. Need to howl, but stop. Biggers are close. Smell sweet stink of Biggers’ honey.

Ava asked Pale One if she could join her, and then her vision exploded with color and light. After a dizzying moment, Ava realized she was looking at a fern. She concentrated and panned out with Pale One’s achingly sharp eyes to see a glade, deep in the redwood forest. The colors she saw were richer, and she could see the edges of things more distinctly.

Ava felt the earth under Pale One. She felt the old minds of the trees, their roots running deep and holding the ground to their hearts like million-fingered hands. She read the vibration of the land. It was the low, thunderous rumble of a giant lung, the trees breathing for the whole world. Ava stored the vibration in her willstone and released Pale One.

Run to the rising sun, Ava commanded. Go east until you are safely out of Hive territory.

She calls. I run to where the wolves tend their meat, Pale One responded.

She saw Windyard’s face hovering over hers. His worried frown broke with relief. “Where did you go?” he asked softly.

Ava was about to tell him, but she thought of the expression of barely controlled disgust on his face when she told the coven about Pale One and stopped herself. Instead she just smiled and struggled to sit up.

She looked down at the two tattoos she could see, and was relieved to find out that although they were long, they were as thin as ribbons, and the ink Windyard had used was a very pale pink. She ran her finger over the tattoo on her leg and felt it more than she saw it. It looked like lace had been inserted under her skin.

“Is it going to stay raised like that?” she asked.

“Yes,” Windyard replied. “The compound I tattooed under your skin will help you heal faster each time you go to the pyre. It’s permanent, though.”

Ava studied the delicate filigree of the design. “Does Lillian have one?”

“She has two. One running down her back, and another down the inside of her right leg. I gave you three.”

Windyard’s face was impassive, but Ava noticed he didn’t meet her eyes. She wondered when he had given them to Lillian, and if they had been in love at the time.

“They’re quite pretty,” Tristan said appreciatively.

Ava smiled but didn’t say anything. She touched the one behind her ear that ran in a thin line down the side of her neck. It hurt, but the pain was going away quickly, as was the lingering pain from her burns. She felt stronger, and for the first time in her memory, she actually felt cool.

“Thank you,” she said.

Windyard nodded. “It’s my job,” he said, and then frowned uncertainly.

“It is your job, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Ava said. “You’re my head mechanic. If you want to be.”

Tristan helped Ava stand, but she found that as soon as she was upright, she didn’t need help anymore. She went to the speaking stone and stared at its milky white beauty.

“My army,” she whispered, and her mind whipped through the darkness, into the forest, past hordes of swarming Woven, and into another speaking stone that tinted the world blue. There, it swung over rolling hills until, finally, it settled with the thousands of her claimed still under Alaric’s rule.

Many slept, but those who were awake felt the light touch of her mind—not so much that they would be aware of it, but enough so that a brief thought of her would flutter through their minds like wind across a pond.