Juneau’s smile widens. I’m glad to give her a light moment before she reads Tallie’s note, I think. Reading my mind, she tears her gaze from me, unfolds the note, and takes in the words that I saw back at the clan’s encampment.
Juneau. I read the bones one last time before setting out to pick up your people. The battle that I saw coming? It’s a physical one. And it will be bloody: Some will die. I’m sorry to tell you that, but once again, I saw that the outcome rests on you. Remember the concept Beauregard gave you: invoke. When it’s all over you will have some decisions to make. Know that my house is open to you. My goddesses and I will welcome you, sister in the Sight.
Juneau’s jaw clenches as she reads. She does her grow-up-a-decade-in-seconds trick, as all of the problems of the world settle onto her shoulders. I can almost see her sink in her chair as it weighs her down.
She sticks the note in her back pocket with the opal.
I raise an eyebrow. “So?”
“A bloody battle. With deaths.”
“And what about the last part?” I ask.
“It’s nice to know I have an option,” she says carefully.
“You have all the options in the world,” I say, and can’t wait any longer. I take her in my arms and kiss her. Now that I’ve met her family and her clan, all the separate brushstrokes of Juneau’s life are meeting up and taking form. I see the whole picture. And it’s a picture that I love. That I want to be a part of.
Juneau takes my face in her hands and kisses me fiercely, like she knows it might be the last time. Land mines explode through my body as the same powerful energy ricochets between the two of us. I don’t want to stop kissing her. I want to stay here, connected to Juneau, generating enough power to light up a city as my lips press her face, her mouth, her neck. But finally she pulls back from me. Taking my hand, she says, “I’m sorry I left you.”
“Don’t even start,” I say. “No explanation needed. I totally get it.”
“But I abandoned you,” she says with regret.
“You were trying to protect me.” She nods, acknowledging. “Just don’t do it again,” I say. “I don’t need protecting.”
Juneau presses her lips together.
“What?” I ask.
“You don’t have to be a part of this, Miles. Tallie says it will be bloody.”
“Are you kidding me?” I say, and catch her up in a my arms. “I’m with you in this,” I whisper into her ear, the fuzz of her hair tickling my face. “In everything. Besides, as you might have noticed, you can’t stop me. You can only slow me down.”
Juneau gives me a wistful smile and grabs my hand. “Let’s go then,” she says.
We step outside onto the porch and a second later Whit and the doctor crowd out behind us. Everyone is frozen in place, watching the guards who had gone out to patrol the woods and are now heading back toward the house at full speed.
Behind them, Juneau’s people are coming, chasing Avery’s army out of the forest. The battle has begun.
51
JUNEAU
MY PEOPLE BEGIN THE BATTLE BY FIGHTING CLEAN—SHOOTING TO debilitate. Aiming for limbs. And they are fast enough to avoid the shots of the guards, using trees, bushes, anything they can to shield themselves while they wait for the best possible shot. They have been preparing for a fight against armed brigands for decades. They know what they’re doing.
I can tell by their formation—their spread across the yard—what they’re trying to do: clear an escape route for my dad and Holly to get Badger out. After that, they too will leave.
If they can, I think, and my heart lurches as, in the glare of the yard’s spotlights, I see bullets fly and one of my people fall. It is Sterling. She presses her hand to her leg and crawls behind one of the boulders used in the ranch’s landscaping. I breathe a sigh of relief. She’s not dead. Yet.
But that one shot changes everything. The time has come—it is a true fight, as Tallie warned. Her words to me weren’t just an empty warning. They were a call to action. She was given a message for me, from her own version of the Yara. Or maybe, since all things are indeed connected, from the Yara itself. “Don’t Read, don’t Conjure,” she said. “Invoke.”
As the battle rages before me, I feel like time has stopped. I force my mind to clear and immerse myself in the question Tallie’s prophecy posed for me. Invoke what?
What do you believe in? asks a voice inside. I think of my experience in the last eight weeks. The crumbling of my entire belief system, and my rebuilding of it, stone by solid stone. “Doubt everything,” Tallie had told me. “What you decide to keep, you’ll be able to be sure of. And what you decide to ditch, you’ll replace with what your instincts tell you is true.”
My instincts told me that I had a direct link to the Yara—one that is stronger than I ever imagined. That doesn’t necessitate the use of totems . . . props. The Yara—the force that flows through all things—flows directly in and out of me.