“He’ll be all right. You were brave. You could have run when I fought them. You stayed, and fought back.”
“When they came, Johnny told me to run, to hide, but I wouldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t leave me. He could have left me when they came. He can run so fast, but he stayed, he tried to fight. He’s of the Uncanny, like you.”
“An elf, yes.”
“We ran away. My grandmother, she lived through the Doom. I was only a baby, and she protected me when everyone died. She’s very strict, and doesn’t believe magick can be good, like Johnny. She isn’t bad, she wouldn’t hurt anyone, but—”
“I understand.”
“‘You have to stick with your own kind, Lucia,’ she’d say. Even though once she helped hide a family from the PWs, and the little boy had wings. She says they’re evil, the PWs, but the Uncannys aren’t like us, and we have to stick with our own kind.”
“One day she might see differently.”
“That’s what Johnny says.”
She landed outside the clinic in New Hope. “Wait here. I’ll get a doctor.”
Fallon ran inside, spotted Hannah.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not me. Maybe a little,” she realized. “I have a man outside. Gunshot wound, severe beating. I need help getting him in.”
“I’ll get a gurney. Jonah!” she shouted as she dashed for the gurney. “Fallon has wounded outside. GSW.”
He came on the run, headed straight out with Fallon.
“He had a fractured skull, and I did what I could. I hesitated to do more. The GSW’s not fatal, but he lost a lot of blood.” She rattled off the other injuries she’d found.
Hannah maneuvered the gurney while Jonah and Fallon lifted him down and onto it.
“Please, don’t let him die.”
Jonah secured Johnny on the gurney, searched for life or death, then looked up at Lucy. “He’s not going to die. Let’s get him inside, Hannah.”
“They’re doctors?” With the awkwardness of someone unused to riding, Lucy struggled to dismount.
“They’re medicals, and really good ones. Believe me, if Jonah looked you in the eye and said Johnny wasn’t going to die, he’s not going to die. Go on in.”
“You’re not coming?”
“You’re okay now. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
“Thank you. I need to— Thank you,” she said again as she ran inside.
Because Laoch wanted a run, Fallon rode home at a steady gallop. Fields, she thought, as she had when she’d flown, but while some rested for winter, horses, cattle, goats, sheep roamed. And mists curled out from the Tropics, where summer never ended.
The maintenance committee plowed the roads, and would again, she knew, as she smelled snow in the air. And smoke from chimneys, growing things in greenhouses. She could feel the pulse of life here, not just in the trees and grasses that slept, in the spruce and pine, but inside the scatter of houses where people cooked or crafted, tended children, read books. Where they argued or laughed.
So different, she thought, from the emptiness she’d flown over, so different from the mindless violence that roamed that emptiness looking for prey—not like the hawk for food and survival, but for sport.
It lifted her mood, that pulse, and lifted it higher when Taibhse swooped overhead and Faol Ban streaked out of the trees to run alongside her.
She pulled up outside the stables, slid off the alicorn to give the wolf a rub. “We’ll hunt tomorrow.” She looked over at the owl when he perched on a branch. “In the morning, we’ll go on a hunt together, for fun. But tonight, we’ll go on a different sort of hunt.”
And thinking of it, she took Laoch into the stable so he could rest and feed. She found her father inside, grooming Grace.
“I took her out for a while.” He continued to brush, his back to Fallon, as he spoke. “We both needed a ride.”
“Me, too. Well, a flight. Head-clearing time. So much talk. Fighting’s a hell of a lot easier than talking about it.”
“Maybe, but there’s still some talking to do. You and me,” he said as he stepped over to the stall where she rubbed down Laoch with a cloth. “I need to— Whose blood is that? What happened?”
She looked down, saw the blood on her jacket, her pants. “Crap. Raiders. Five of them about two hundred miles west of here. I spotted them after they’d burned out a couple—young male elf and his NM mate. They’re at the clinic. She’s not seriously injured, but he’d been shot and beaten.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Might’ve picked up a couple of bruises. They were stupid. Now they’re dead.” She rubbed her cheek against Laoch’s. “I gave them a choice, they chose death.”
“You saved two lives.”
“Yes.” Lives taken, lives saved. She went back to the rubdown. “I saved two lives. They’re in love, those two lives. Her grandmother doesn’t approve of mixed relationships, so they ran off together. I think they’ll be fine now.”
He set a hand on her shoulder. “We need to talk.”
“Is something wrong?” She set the cloth aside. “I wasn’t gone that long.”
“I saw you leave. I was about to come out, happened to see you and Duncan.”
“Oh.” Then it hit her. “Oh,” she repeated. “Dad—”
“Hold on. Just hold on.”
Like Duncan—so like Duncan, she realized in a huh moment—he shoved his hands in his pockets, paced away, paced back.
“You’re a grown-up,” he began, a war clear in those changeable hazel eyes she loved. “More. You’re a warrior, a leader. You’re not an idiot. You’ve never been, I don’t know, flighty or careless, and…”
He stopped, and with his face covered in frustration, stared at her. “You’re still my baby, damn it. You’re still my girl, so I’ve got things to say.”
“You disapprove.” And his disapproval, his more than anything or anyone, would cut her to the bone.
“No. Yes. Shit! Yes, on a general level, because my baby, damn it. Specifically Duncan? No. I’m not an idiot, either.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Why the hell should I have to make sense?” His hands flew out of his pockets, into the air. “Sense, my ass, when I look out and see—and realize—”
“I thought Mom had, you know, prepared you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Hands back in pockets, more pacing. “She reminded me, but I didn’t really … I just figured, okay, a little puppy love. It doesn’t matter I knew better somewhere in my head, it was a nice buffer until I look out and see his hands on you, and the two of you. My baby.
“Buffer?” He took his hands out again, mimed an explosion. “And I get, on some level, why you talked to your mom about it and not me, but you didn’t, so it smacks me in the face, and I’ve got about thirty seconds to adjust before I grill Duncan.”
“You … you grilled Duncan?”
“It’s my fucking job, Fallon. My goddamn job.”
“Yes.” Touched, amused, a little horrified, she got an apple out of the bin, carefully cut it in half for Laoch and Grace. “It is. How’d he do?”
“He did all right,” Simon replied. “He’s not an asshole.”
“Good to know.”
“Maybe I knew this was coming. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, from the time we got here, when you’re not looking. I know that look because I used to look at your mother when she wasn’t looking the same damn way. But—”
“Really?”
“I’m not going there, adding to the damn stars in your eyes. It’s too much for me. I know he’s a good soldier. I know he’s a good son, a good man. I know when he tells me he loves you he believes it.”
“So do I. I love him. I had feelings for him pulling at me since the first time I saw him in a dream. The reality’s stronger. I know he’s loyal to The One, to the light. There’s no question of it. But he sees me, Dad. He sees Fallon Swift, and he loves her.”
She stepped to him. “You were the first one to hold me. You were the first man to love me. To love Fallon, just Fallon. You showed me, all my life, what it was to be a man with strength and heart and courage. I couldn’t love a man who didn’t pass the bar you set. I could want, but I couldn’t love. So I know, with all that’s asked of me, all that’s happened before, all that’s to come, I’ve been blessed. You’re the love of my life, Dad. And now I’ve been given another.”
She put her arms around him, nestled her head on his shoulder. “Two loves of my life.”
He wrapped around her hard. “You’re still my baby.”
“I was born in the lightning, in the storm, as it was foretold, and your hands were there to bring me into the world.”
He eased back to look into her eyes, into the visions.
“You were there for the mother, there for the child, and you loved without demands or restrictions. That is love pure. It is light beyond power. And with the sun of that morning, after the storm, while the mother slept, you held me on your heart, and I knew you. You are the father given me, a gift from the gods.”
She came back, let out a breath. Smiled at him. “Daddy.”
And like Duncan, so like Duncan, he just lowered his forehead to hers.
* * *
With Simon, Lana stood in the cold with the first snowflakes drifting while Fallon called Taibhse to her arm.
“Are you sure about this? We could come with you.”
“It has to be the three of us. Well, six.” She laid a hand on Laoch’s neck while Faol Ban sat at her feet.
“Maybe you could have Mom and Hannah over for a while,” Tonia suggested. “I think Mom’s having some sad because of where we’re going.”