“And what are you going to do to keep me here? Tie me up? Put me in a dungeon?” Lily asked, trying her hardest not to think how similar her vicious tone, even the cadence of her sentences, was to Lillian’s. A thought dawned on her. “You said you brought me here for a reason. You need me, don’t you? You need me so much, you can’t even stop me from leaving.”
“By all means, go,” Lillian said with a calculating smile. “Run along.”
Lily turned and walked away from the bed, marveling at her own audacity. She had no idea where to go. She felt light and strange, like her blood had filled with cold bubbles and her belly with slippery rope. Her vision shrank in from the sides, collapsing until all she could see was the door. Lily lunged for it, praying that she didn’t faint first.
“Lillian!” Juliet cried.
“Let her go,” Lillian said. “She needs to go.”
“She could get hurt out there. It’s too dangerous,” Juliet said, incredulous.
“She’ll be back.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you can’t run from yourself forever.”
* * *
Half blind and numb with shock, Lily stumbled past the guards, through the gate, and down the steep hill of the Citadel toward the strange city. She heard people calling out to her, telling her to stop, pleading with her to come back to the safety of the keep, but she was too overwhelmed to respond. All she wanted to do was get away—to get as far away from this waking nightmare as possible.
As she walked, she told herself that what she was experiencing had to be some kind of hallucination. Something happened to her when she’d had that seizure, she decided. Maybe she’d never even woken up this morning.
The more Lily thought about it, the more convinced she was that none of this was really happening. Tristan hadn’t cheated on her. They’d never had a fight or ended their friendship. She’d never gone down to the water or agreed to come to this strange place. None of this was real.
Lily paced down a cobbled street and headed into the heart of the strange city. She wasn’t really paying attention to which way she went; she was just following a vague sense inside her that told her when to turn or continue straight ahead. She talked to herself sternly the whole way, convinced that this was all some fever dream she couldn’t wake up from, probably because the doctors had drugged her.
“That’s it,” Lily said loudly, making several pedestrians stop and stare. She lowered her voice but continued to mumble to herself, trying to keep panic at bay. “When I heard that voice inside my head, the one that said it would be frightening, it was just the doctor warning me before she gave me a shot. She was telling me that the drugs were going to do this to me. That’s all.”
No matter how real it felt, she knew that she would wake up eventually and the meandering streets that she now wandered through, with their tall, latticed towers of vegetation, and their tinkling sounds of running water, would all disappear.
Lily’s wild eyes bounced from one strange sight to another. Colonial-style carriage houses and brick townhouses, right out of her version of Salem, were interspersed with modern wood-beam and glass buildings that had a tent-like feel. A few steps down, she saw spiral-shaped domes that had gardens growing on side tiers, interspersed with glass windows. They looked like hives that housed plants instead of honey in their combs. Lily glanced into the glass windows of these hive houses and saw only more greenery inside. They were multifaceted greenhouses that were growing things both inside and out.
Rotating around, she realized that there was one on every block, and where there wasn’t, there was one of the tall, latticed green towers that went up to find the sun rather than wait fo
r it to hit the ground. Lily wandered closer to one of the towers, trying to look inside the soaring double helix of greenery.
Something growled. Lily looked down slowly. At her feet, chained to the base of the tower, were three monstrous dogs. Or were they bears? One of them hissed, showing fangs like a tiger’s.
Lily screamed and threw her body back, away from the unnatural creatures, and didn’t stop until she slammed into something hard. She spun around frantically and saw that she had backed up against a large glass window. It was the front of a café.
Peering inside at the startled patrons, Lily’s eyes locked with a young man’s. They were dark eyes, such a deep brown they were nearly black. His eyes widened, momentarily, stunning Lily both with their intensity and with the recognition she saw inside of them. She’d never seen him before, but he knew her. The young man stood up from his table abruptly, tipping his heavy chair to the ground behind him. His lean body was tense and his angular face was immobile with fury. She saw his fists clench and his lips mouth a single, unmistakable word. “Lillian.”
The malice she saw in him was breathtaking. He hated her—really hated her—and he looked like he wanted to hurt her. The dark-eyed boy took one stiff step toward her. Lily turned and ran.
The monsters chained to the bottom of the green tower roared at Lily as she streaked past. She shied away from them with horror even though they were chained and couldn’t get at her as long as she stayed on the sidewalk.
Lily could hear the footsteps of the boy with the dark eyes behind her. He was gaining on her easily. Any vestiges of the adrenaline rush she’d experienced when she had found herself surrounded by men with crossbows was long gone. She was still dangerously drained from the seizure and from the fact that she hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before. After running only a few blocks, Lily’s legs were turning to jelly, her inner ears were burning, and all she could hear was the ragged wheeze of her own breathing. A cold sweat broke out across her upper lip and down her back, but her head still felt unbearably hot. Lily knew this feeling. It meant she was going to faint.
In a desperate effort to shake off her enraged pursuer before she passed out, Lily darted down a narrow alley, hoping to hide until the dark-eyed boy ran past. She took several sharp turns, ducked into a low niche in the solid wall of stone and crouched down, trying to hide herself in the shadows before he rounded the last corner.
Her legs shook and she half sat, half fell into what she belatedly realized was a garbage-filled drainage grate. She heard his footsteps pounding past her, then held her breath when she heard the footsteps stop and turn. A pair of black boots pointed into her disgusting niche, blocking most of the light. She heard him sigh.
“You know you can’t hide from me, Lillian,” said a deep, rich voice. The ringing in Lily’s head turned to clanging, and her ears popped. Two hands reached in and scooped up her spent body. The young man placed her on her feet and examined her sweaty face carefully. Lily’s vision was wobbling in and out of focus, but she could have sworn the dark-eyed boy actually looked worried for a moment.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“You know damn well it’s me,” he said angrily. He searched her eyes, and realized that she truly didn’t recognize him. “Rowan,” he said slowly. Lily shook her head, the action making her wobble unsteadily. His expression changed. “What did you take, Lillian? Belladonna?”