“It’ll be a long list,” Simon interrupted. “Get your shower, we’ll get some other brains in on that list, get some food, and work it out. But first.”

He held up his glass, waited.

“Okay.” She let out a long breath, steadied herself. Then lifted her glass. “To Mick.”

* * *

Duncan headed the burial detail. Some would be transported back to their homes, but so many had no home other than the bases they’d migrated to. For those, he claimed a section of the park, one where the ground rose, where the trees grew thick.

It was heartbreaking, soul-searing work, and so he’d asked for volunteers rather than issuing orders for the detail. It revived him, his flagging spirit, that he had more than were needed. He split them up into groups assigned to separate the enemy dead, others to dig graves, others to make markers.

He spotted Tonia, worked his way to her. “Give yourself a break.”

“I will when you will,” she said, and kept shoveling.

“There are easier ways to dig a grave.”

“Sometimes you need to do something this way. We lost Clarence.”

“Shit.” Duncan felt his heart drop again as he thought of the boy they’d rescued from a cult, and the women who’d taken him as a son.

“And Keisha, Morris, Liah. Mick.” Tonia swiped at her face, leaned on the shovel. “Have you seen Fallon?”

“Not since … No. Colin said she’s holding, and they’re meeting now to work on reconstruction, cleanup, expansion.”

“Why aren’t you in on that?”

“I need to do this.”

“Me, too.”

With a nod, he picked up a shovel, helped her dig.

After friends, loved ones, comrades had been laid to rest, Duncan supervised the purification and burning of the enemy dead. Dusk crept in by the time he went back to the graves.

This he’d wanted to do alone.

Pulling up power, he brought the green springing through the mud, a hopeful sea of it over what he thought of as sacred ground. There would be a ceremony in the morning—even now Tonia worked on those arrangements. Words would be said, tears shed. But tonight, he’d pay his own respects.

He’d chosen this spot for the rise of land, the trees, and the rough rocks pushing tall out of the ground. Some formed wide steps, others peaks.

He’d already sketched what he wanted in his mind, and now used his magick to bring it to be.

He smoothed some of the rough. He sketched a great deal better than he sculpted, so worried a little he’d muck it up.

But he smoothed, formed, carved, etched, polished, let the image flow from him into the rock.

He chose the form of a faerie for the grace, with wings spread, hands held out to those who lay beneath her.

He drew up more, still more, until water broke through the rock, to spill gently down the steps of stone, and formed a stone pool below for it to feed. Above the pool, he carved the fivefold symbol.

Finally, he stepped back, studied his work. “Best I can do.”

He turned to leave, saw Fallon, the alicorn and wolf beside her, the owl on her arm.

“It’s beautiful.”

“I couldn’t think of any words.”

“It doesn’t need any. Look, the faeries are lighting it.”

He looked back, saw the dance of lights.

“You used Fred’s face.”

“I guess I did.” He saw it now. “I didn’t realize.”

“It’s beautiful,” she repeated, and again felt tears pushing up into her throat. “It’s right. Tonia told me you might still be here, and that she and some others have the details for a ceremony in the morning. I need to walk.”

He fell into step with her, but didn’t touch her. The barrier he felt was as real as the stone he’d carved.

“You didn’t come to the meeting.”

“I needed to do this.”

“Understood. Flynn’s going to take command of The Beach, and start moving troops south.”

“You couldn’t ask for better.”

“No. He’ll be gone for weeks, maybe months. I nearly asked you to take that post, but … I wasn’t sure I could get through those weeks or months if you went away again.”

“Then why don’t you want me to touch you now?”

“I’m not sure I can get through the next minute if you do. I should have helped with the burial, the purification of the enemy dead. I knew you would take care of it, so I spared myself.”

“Stop. Damn it. You want to feel sorry for yourself right now, you’re entitled, but I took care of it because I needed to, wanted to. Some of those people died under my command, so just knock off all The One crap. We all did what we had to do, and we all lost friends today.”

It weighed on him, more stone. “Those friends knew what they risked, and took this place back with courage. You demean that by sucking up all the responsibility. You demean them.”

It sliced at her, the truth of it sliced. “That’s harsh, that’s cold.”

“Maybe, but it’s how I see it. Those men and women didn’t die for you, they died for what you represent. They died for their families, their neighbors, their futures.”

“Mick died because Petra wanted to hurt me.”

“Then let’s go get the bitch and her fucking hag of a mother.” He wanted it, could almost taste the bitter tang of their blood. “We go back to Scotland, close the shield, and we take down that dark bastard in the woods. We draw Petra and Allegra out, and finish it.”

She pressed her face to Laoch’s neck. “It’s not time.”

“Screw that, Fallon. If not now, when?”

“I don’t know!” And that sliced, too. “I just know it’s not time. There’s more to come. I can’t—” She whirled on him, stopped. Drew a breath. “There,” she said, and pointed.

And there where Mick had fallen stood a tree of life, blooming full, branches curving upward.

“Is that my solace?” she asked.

Now he whirled on her. “It’s acknowledgment. It’s gratitude and honor.”

Tears burned the backs of her eyes, and she wanted to scream and shed them. “Yes, yes, you’re right. The fact I can’t feel that, just can’t, is another reason I need to leave.”

“Leave? Go where?”

“I need solitude, I need to restore my faith. I need a couple of weeks, Duncan, just some time alone.”

“Alone?”

“Everything you said is right, but I can’t feel it. I need to feel it again, believe it again. And I can’t lean on you until I’m sure I can stand on my own. She broke something in me, Duncan, and I need some time to heal. When she killed Denzel, you needed to leave.”

“Part of that was distance from you, but okay, yeah.”

“A couple of weeks,” she said again, and though she felt his need, stayed behind the wall she’d built. “Will you stand for me tomorrow, at the memorial?”

“You’re leaving now?”

“If I don’t, I won’t, because I want to lean on you, I want my family, my friends. But I know it won’t be time to end this until I take back what she took from me today.”

“We need to—I need to just sit the hell down with you. Take a minute.”

“I can’t. I just can’t. I have to go.”

“Where?” he demanded. “Where the hell are you going?”

“To the quiet.” She felt his hurt, his need for more from her. But couldn’t give it. She mounted Laoch. “After the quiet comes the fury, and with the fury the end. The end of dark, the end of light—this hangs in the balance. Know the fire, the famine, the rivers of blood should dark tip the scales. Know the song of peace a thousand years if the light shines true. Shine true, Duncan of the MacLeods, and you will know when the time has come.”

She dropped out of the vision, looked at him under the streaming moonlight, the sparkle of stars that spread over the freed city.

“I love you,” she said, and vanished.

“You said no,” he murmured. “For the first time you said no.”

* * *

Battles sparked as the Light for Life forces advanced in every direction. Duncan gave himself over to the fighting, joining Flynn’s troops in the green mountains of Georgia, flashing to Meda, the shuttered city of Santa Fe in New Mexico, and on the windswept fields of Nebraska.

He nursed his own wounds when he got them, cleaned his sword, and looked for the next fight.

Fallon might have taken the quiet, but he wanted the fury.

“You need some downtime, brother.”

He drank a beer with Tonia in the community gardens. Shrugged with it. “I’m sitting down right now.”

“You know what I mean. You only came back today to placate Mom. I know you’ve already grilled Chuck on where to find some action next. Maine, right? Vivienne’s troops and ours about to face off on the coast.”

“I’m needed there. I’m not here.”

He heard Eddie’s harmonica join in with someone’s guitar riff. And Rainbow, now a leggy teenager, danced in the air with some faerie friends.

Spring, he thought. Plenty of those signs of spring around him with the greening trees, the young crops, the burst of flowers, the balm of the air as it neared May Day.

Spring bloomed everywhere in New Hope. He wondered if it bloomed wherever Fallon was.

He shoved that thought away, turned his head to look at Tonia. “Anyway, seems to me you were into it with me when we took on those combined forces in Georgia.”

“I was needed. There’s also plenty of need here. We’re barely keeping up with training. And we’re losing Colin again. He’s taken Pennsylvania and going back to Arlington tomorrow. It’s spring, and that takes Eddie and some of the other serious farmers off rotation for scouting. They broke ground on the clinic expansion.”