by Nora Roberts
Lana turned, hugged just as hard before drawing back with a smile. The smile changed as she studied Fallon’s face, a face she cupped in her hands as she said, “Your first time.”
“What—”
“Duncan. Of course Duncan.”
“I—you— How do you know?”
“I had a first time, too. You’ve got knowledge in your eyes, along with the stars. He made you happy.”
“Yes.” The initial awkwardness dropped away. “I love him. He loves me.”
“I know.”
“It was wonderful.” As it rushed into her again, Fallon spun in a circle. “I didn’t know I could feel so much. You can read stories, or listen to soldiers’ sex talk, I could even see the way you and Dad look at each other, but I couldn’t know. I couldn’t know until he touched me.”
With a sigh, she laid a hand on her heart. “And then he did. When we’re together like that, I’m not the Savior or The One, or anything but … I’m just me.”
“I know,” Lana said again.
“It’s like that with Dad, for you?”
On a sigh of her own, Lana put a kettle on, chose teas. “All the months we were together, the time before you were born, and after, he never touched me, never asked. He wanted me, and I knew. Just as he knew I needed my grieving time for Max. And through that time, I fell in love, slowly and completely.”
She got out cups, and the honey Fallon loved. “It was the day Mallick came. The new year. The end of Year One. When we were alone again, the three of us, I told him I loved him and wanted our lives together to really begin. That was our first time together. And when he touched me, finally, I was just me.”
“You never told me.”
“It would have been just a pretty story before. Now you understand. We’re lucky, you and I, to love and be loved by good men. Through all this, the war, the loss, the victories, we can still be women in love with good men.”
She set out the tea, added cookies, and sat to talk, to listen.
“I wasn’t sure I’d know what to do—I mean other than the mechanics. There’s so much more.”
On a laugh, Lana bit into a cookie. “Thank the goddess for that.”
“Or that it would feel so good. Everything. We were still banged up and bloody, and it didn’t matter.”
“Might have added to it,” Lana replied.
“Then in the shower, we…” She trailed off, stirred honey into her tea. “Is it weird hearing this?”
“I’m patting myself on the back right now for being the kind of mother whose daughter feels comfortable talking to her about this. But … let’s not share the details with your father.”
Talk about awkward, Fallon thought. “Will he know, like you?”
“Unlikely. Let me ease him into it.”
Better, Fallon thought, much better to leave that part to her mother. “Good idea. Oh, I forgot. When we, the first time, when we— Well, the light just exploded. It burst everywhere, and through me, through him. Outside, the tree behind the memorial stone changed. It’s a tree of life, like Mallick’s.”
“Ah.” Lana sat back. “That explains it. Our memorial tree, it did the same. I thought it was a sign of victory, but now I see. Then again, love’s a victory.” She put her hand over Fallon’s. “Without it, all the battles mean nothing.”
“There’ll be more battles.”
“But you’ll go into them with one more thing to fight for.”
“I was worried it would make me weak, but I was wrong. I feel stronger. I’ll need to be. There are things coming—I can’t see clearly, but coming. A flame from the north, a madness brewing, a blackened soul behind a mask of innocence. Can you see? A bolt through a faithful heart. The black dragon bringing its long shadow to smother hope. What bargains must be made, what loss suffered, what sacrifice given for the light to burn through the dark?”
Fallon lowered her head. “I can’t see, but I know it’s coming.”
“When it does, we’ll meet it.” Lana took both of Fallon’s hands. “Every one of us.”
“There’s so much more I need to talk to you about. You, Dad, Travis. Ethan, too. Even before we meet with the rest of the commanders, and the New Hope Originals.”
Lana looked over as the door opened. Simon came in. “You’re in luck. We’ll just—” Something in his face stopped her. “Ethan.”
Simon walked to Lana, laid a hand on her shoulder. “He’s fine. He headed over to Eddie’s. Babe, it’s Joe.”
“Oh. I’ll—”
“Lana, Ethan says it’s time.”
“Oh no. But—”
“He said Joe’s ready. He just needs Eddie to let him go.”
Tears swam into Lana’s eyes. “I need to be there.”
“Go.” Fallon stood. “You go. We’ll finish making dinner. Go be with Joe.”
Lana didn’t hesitate, she didn’t rush for her coat. She flashed.
She found Eddie, Fred, all the kids sitting on the floor of the living room in the farmhouse. Joe’s head rested in Eddie’s lap. Ethan, her strong, sweet boy, knelt, stroking a hand over Joe as the dog’s breath labored in and out.
She knelt beside him, laid a hand on the old, faithful dog. And knew her son was right. It was time. She met Eddie’s eyes, and her heart broke at the hope in them.
“He won’t eat. Maybe you could…”
“He’s so tired, and everything aches.” Ethan spoke gently, stroking, stroking. “He won’t leave you until you say it’s okay. He’ll fight not to rest because the love’s so strong. He still dreams. He dreams of chasing balls and sticks, and going for long walks, playing with you, with kids.”
With hands gentle, tireless, Ethan comforted the dog, read Joe’s heart. “Jem and Scout and Hobo run and play, but he can only watch. He wants to run again, play again, but he won’t unless you tell him it’s okay. He misses Lupa, and knows Lupa’s waiting for him, waiting to wrestle with him and run with him. But you need to tell him he can go.”
“Do you believe that?” Eddie swiped at the tears on his cheeks. “That he’ll go somewhere he can run and chase balls, play with Lupa. Do you really believe that?”
“I know that. Our Harper and Lee are there now. They want to meet him.”
“Can he have a red ball?” Willow buried her curly red head against her mother’s shoulder. “Can he please have a red ball?”
“Of course he can.” Weeping, Fred pressed a kiss to Willow’s hair. She took Eddie’s hand, kissed it.
“Okay. Okay. Y’all say good-bye now.” Eddie took a breath as Joe looked up at him with eyes full of love and trust. “You saved my life. I guess we saved each other. We’ve sure had some adventures, haven’t we, boy? You go ahead now. You take a rest, and let it all go. Then you find Lupa, and meet Harper and Lee, and all the rest. You chase yourself some squirrels.”
Joe licked Eddie’s hand and on a sigh, he went to sleep.
Later, as she walked back home in a borrowed coat, she put an arm around Ethan’s shoulders. “He couldn’t have done it, couldn’t have let Joe go, without you, Ethan. I’m not sure I could have, either.”
“I didn’t want to let him go, but he needed to.” He glanced back. “They’re lighting candles in the windows to help him find his way.”
“We’ll light them, too. Look.” She gestured ahead. “We already have.”
“He’ll come back, you know. Find his way back after a while. Back to Eddie. People do, some animals do, when they love enough.”
He looked at her. It gave Lana a jolt to realize her baby boy now stood eye to eye with her. “It’s why they can’t beat us. I don’t know why they want to kill us, destroy everything that’s good. I can feel what they feel, but I can’t understand it. I know they can hurt us, take from us, but they can’t beat us because we can love a good dog enough to let him go even when it hurts. They can burn the land, but we’ll plant it. They can burn it again, but we’ll plant it again. They can’t stop us. They can’t win.”
“
Oh, Ethan.” She drew him closer as they walked toward the lights in the windows. “That’s exactly what I needed to hear tonight.”
“I need you to let me go with Fallon.”
“Not what I needed to hear.”
“They need support staff to deal with the horses, the hunting and fighting dogs. I can fight, but I’d be more useful freeing up a better soldier. You— It’s time, Mom, for you to let me go.”
“You’ve already talked to your father.”
“Now I’m talking to you. All of you go, and I stay.”
“What you do here is—”
“Important, sure. But I’m not a kid anymore, and I have abilities that can and will help during a fight. I need to use them. You need to let me.”
“The gods ask for so damn much.” She looked up at the stars. “Talk to Fallon. I won’t stand in your way. Give me this. We have dinner without any talk of war. We’ll tell Joe stories. After, we’ll talk about this, and whatever your sister needs to tell us.”
“Is she going to tell us she and Duncan got naked?”
“I— Ethan!” His grin brought back her baby boy. “How do you know about that?”
“A little bird told me.”
She had to laugh. “You’re one of the few who can say that and literally mean it. Just keep that to yourself.” She paused at the door. “I’m serious.”
“Dad doesn’t know.”
“Just Joe stories,” she repeated, and opened the door.
After the meal, with the dishes cleared and all the stories dulling the sharpest edge of grief, Lana poured wine for herself and Fallon. Travis, back from Arlington, got a beer for himself and Simon.
Ethan looked at the tea in his cup.
“Why can’t I have a beer? Fallon had a beer when she was my age.”
“A bit older,” Lana corrected.
“And she’d just decked a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man,” Simon recalled. “No magickal assistance. You do that, I’ll personally serve you your first beer. Meanwhile…”
“Meanwhile,” Fallon repeated. “There are some things I want to go over here before the formal meeting. I want to hear about the status of the wounded, and the rescues, but before that, I need to talk to you about the POWs.”
“We’ve debriefed about sixty so far,” Simon told her. “Some hard-asses in there. And some who were conscripted, if that’s what we’re calling being rounded up and forced into service. You’ve got some barely older than Ethan, taken from their families, put into training camps where they’re hammered every day about the Uncanny threat. And most of them, nearly all, have family, magickal family members.”
“They turn them, or try to, against us.” Eyes hard, Travis tipped back his beer. “To them we’re the same as the DUs. Shit, plenty of them are waiting for us to torture them the way they do us, or just call down a lightning strike and kill them on the spot.”
“They’re indoctrinated, brainwashed. We know this.” Fallon lifted a hand. “We can, and have, successfully turned some back. It’s vital we continue trying. But for those committed to wiping us out, we need another solution. For some, like Hargrove, that’s life in prison. We can’t sentence potentially thousands more to the same. There can be a choice, for us, for them.”
“Such as?” Simon asked.
She told them about the islands, about the basic outline, one she and Duncan had refined.
“It may be we use one for the harder of the hard-asses, and the other for those we think, or hope, might build another kind of life.”
“It’s pretty radical,” Travis began, but Simon shook his head.
“Not without precedent. The English sent people here—what was the Colonies—and to Australia.”
“Without a choice, and as indentured servants. We’ll give them a choice,” Fallon added. “And they’ll have a kind of freedom. Maybe it’s not a perfect choice. Prison or relocation. We’d need a council of some sort to determine who would be eligible for the choice. And to determine who would be given the choice to come back, and when. We’d need to calculate how much in the way of supplies, equipment, and resources to send with them. It’s going to be complicated, and there will be more than one who argues against giving any enemy combatant a choice.”
“But it’s the right thing.” Though she’d said nothing throughout, Lana had listened, weighed, searched her own mind and heart. “On the way here, the first time, I saw those, with powers and without, who could never be redeemed. Even before the Doom, it was the same. But I saw people who were afraid or desperate and did things out of fear and desperation they’d never have done otherwise. I’ve used my power to harm, to kill, and will again. That’s a choice we all live with because what we fight against demands it. But we’re not what we fight against, and when there is a choice, we choose what’s right. This is right.”
“Couldn’t have said it better.” Simon toasted her with his beer. “Let’s work it out so when we run up against those arguments, we’ve got the answers. Do you want Duncan in on this?”
At Ethan’s snicker, Fallon sent him a threatening glare. Simon simply looked puzzled. “What?”
“It’s nothing.” With a smile, Lana gave Travis a magickal, motherly buzz. “I’m sure Katie’s happy to have Duncan around. Let’s leave that for tomorrow. So where are these islands, exactly?”
“I’ve got maps.” Rising, Fallon went for her bag, then spread the maps on the table.
By the time she went downstairs, she felt they had more of those answers, and with unified family support a strong force against any dissenters.
When she opened the door to her room, Duncan rose from the chair, set his sketch pad aside. “Took you long enough.”
“I didn’t know you were here. We were working out more details on the islands. You should’ve come up—in. Oh well.”
“It’s a little weird with your family upstairs, and then there’s the idea that if your dad catches me in here, he’ll kick my ass. But.”
“But.” She sealed the door, and went to him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As the commanders arrived, Fallon wondered how long the celebratory air would hold after she laid out the proposed agenda.
She greeted Mick and, amused, tugged on the side braid he’d dyed a bright blue.
“It’s an elf thing,” he told her.
“If you say so.”
“A lot of the shifters are going for tats of their spirit animals. It’s a way of—”
“Embracing heritage,” Fallon finished. She looked around at the mix of people. “And a statement. Magickals won’t hide who and what they are. I like it.”
Duncan moved to her, laid a hand on her shoulder in a way that had Mick’s grin fading. “Mick. Like the blue. Mallick’s here.”
“Oh.” Fallon shifted to look for him. “I wasn’t expecting…” She looked back, saw the hurt in Mick’s eyes, felt it. Before she could speak, he stepped back, stiffly.
“I’ve got stuff.”
“Hard for him,” Duncan commented, and had Fallon turning.
“What do you know about it?”
“Jesus, Fallon, I’ve got eyes. I see the way he looks at you, probably because I look at you the same way.”
“Did you come over here to tell me about Mallick, or what, stake your claim?”
“Both.”
“Ass.”
Unoffended, Duncan shrugged as she cut through the room to Mallick.
“You left your bees.”
“They’ll be there when I get back. I thought you might need me here today.”
“I do. I’m glad you came. I expect some strong objections to what I’m going to propose today.”
“Is it a proposal?”
“What I saw in D.C., beyond the battle. In the chambers of power, such as they were? We won’t go back to that.”
She thought of Mick’s blue braid, of tattoos of spirit animals. “Tribes are forming, Mallick, and pride in them. They need their voices heard. And still…”
>
“They must be led, and united in purpose. There must be laws established for peace to hold when peace is won. That is for you.”
“Then I’d better get started. Will you sit by my side?”
“Always.”
She caught her father’s eye as she walked to the big table, nodded. He gestured to Colin, brushed Lana’s arm.
As they took their seats, others followed.
“I know you all have stories of the battle of D.C.,” Fallon began. “We’ve buried our dead, treated our wounded. I’m grateful to all of you for your leadership. It’s that leadership that will take us from this victory to New York.”
She listened to the cheers and battle cries, the thumping of fists on the table. Tribes forming, she thought again, and war drums still beating.
“We led ten thousand into D.C.” She lifted her voice over the din. “We’ll lead ten thousand and more into New York. The Dark Uncanny rule there, and Raiders burn and pillage its boundaries. While Hargrove’s rule is over, there are still military that hunt us as mercilessly as they do the DUs, who forcibly conscript non-magickals to increase their numbers, and PW enclaves that hold slaves and executions.”
“There won’t be so many of them when we take New York.” John Little gave the table another fist pound. “We’ll cut them down. We’ll lock them up. My troops are ready.”
Fallon nodded, and took the opening. “We’ll all be ready. But we need the ten thousand and more. And more,” she repeated. “Some we’ve locked up were conscripted. Forced to fight. They would fight with us, or serve as support.”
“How many of us did they kill?” Little demanded.
“How many of them did we?”
Duncan took his cue. “Jamie Patterson,” he began, “seventeen, NM. Taken from his family in a military sweep, conscripted. They took his family, too. His sister, an elf, age fourteen. And his parents. They told him his sister would be held in a containment camp. His father would go to another training center, his mother to another. After five years, they’d be released from service. If he attempted to desert, refused to fight, he and the rest of his family would be tried as traitors and executed.”
“Maybe that’s his story,” Little began, “but—”
