Bethel picked up a rock, weighing it in her hands. “Some things you have to learn for yourself. I thought you had.”
Lilette wanted to argue, but some deeply buried kernel of dread kept her silent.
“Why did you come here today, Lilette?”
She swallowed. “Because I’m done waiting for the keepers to free my sister. I’m going to do something about it, and I wanted your help.”
Bethel met her gaze. “You already have all the help you need.”
Lilette didn’t know how to respond.
“We all have our own burden to bear. Mine is to create this.” Bethel held out her hands to indicate the island.
“Haven—a school?”
Bethel laughed softly, a bitter sound, and tossed the rock away. “I’m not making a school. I’m making a last bastion of defense.”
Lilette looked back at the towering cliffs. “You’re carving history, so future generations will know what happened?”
Bethel studied the sculptures on the walls. “Stone lasts longer than vellum. I hope that someday, they will see the message I carved for them. We were once the strongest entity in the world. But someday we will be the weakest.”
The wars and destruction her mother had shown her. But Lilette had freed the other witches from Harshen. She’d prevented that disaster. Hadn’t she?
Bethel’s voice dropped. “I won’t be able to say goodbye to my daughter—she won’t go if I do—and I fear I shall never see her again. Will you tell her for me? Tell her I know she’ll do her part.”
Lilette opened her mouth, then closed it again.
Bethel’s hand rested on her back. “Take Doranna and Harberd with you. You’ll need the protection.”
“Where is it you think we’re going?”
Bethel sighed. “The stone didn’t tell me that.”
Lilette searched the one sculpture whose meaning was not immediately apparent—the woman with three faces. “Is that supposed to be a metaphor for the keepers?”
Bethel’s hand fell away from Lilette’s back “Yes. The one facing out is our present, standing serene and calm in our power. The one looking back is our past, grieving for what we shall lose even as our future destroys itself.”
“Bethel . . .” Lilette whispered.
“When the time comes, you must act,” the older woman said calmly. “We all must. Save those you can.”
Lilette winced. Bethel had used almost the exact same words her mother had.
Chapter 28
I needed Lilette, but I never stopped to consider that she might need me too. ~Jolin
“Lilette?”
A guardian stood a short distance away. Apart from the sailors who delivered supplies, men didn’t come onto the island.
Lilette scrambled to her feet, her stiff legs straining in protest. “Yes?”
The man approached them. He was a little older than Lilette, with a heart-stoppingly beautiful face and an adorable cowlick that made a patch of his hair stand at attention. “My name is Pescal. If you will please come with me.” His arm swept forward, indicating that she should go ahead of him.
Bethel looked up from her place on the hard rocks. She looked so small and lonely. “You’ll remember to tell Jolin?”
Lilette studied the older woman. How must it have been to know dark things were coming, to prepare for them alone, while your peers called you a fool? “I believe you. And I’ll tell her.”
Bethel closed her eyes, tipped her face up to the sky, and smiled.
Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Lilette moved ahead of the guardian. It wasn’t long before they were among the witches again and the path widened enough for Pescal to walk beside her. Remembering her training to become empress, she threw her shoulders back. “I’m waiting for an explanation.”
Pescal’s green eyes studied her. “The Heads have called you back to Grove City. You are to bring your personal effects.”
Was it beginning already? “What for?”
Pescal hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Lilette closed her eyes. Hadn’t some part of her known this was coming? She took in her surroundings. The shorter trees, the witchlings in dresses of green rushing to and from classes, their books clutched to their chests.
She had not been happy here. She’d been lonely and frightened and full of guilt for leaving her sister behind. And she’d drowned out those feelings with the tincture Bethel had given her. All her life, Lilette had dreamed of coming here. In less than two weeks, she was relieved to be leaving.
She stepped through the open door of her tree to find Jolin dumping a whole sack of amber pieces into a potion. Doranna was scrambling to pack books and notes into straw-filled crates.