Can’t, won’t, don’t, she thought. For every yes she worked out of him, she got twenty no’s.
“New York and D.C. are still at war, within. They still hold the largest population of Dark Uncannys. We’ll have to take them back. How can I know, unless I see? Look, you always say, look and see.”
“It’s not yet time.”
“Something else you always say,” she argued.
“Because both are true. You will look, and you will see, when it’s time.”
She’d expected just this, and had her alternate ready. “It’ll take me to before, like it did so I could see the Purity Warriors’ plan to ambush the New Hope people. Let me go in, see the New York my mother knew and loved. Where she and my birth father found each other, lived.”
“This is strategy. Ask for what you know will be denied, then ask for less in hopes it won’t be.”
“No, not exactly.” Mostly, she had to admit, but not exactly. “I want to see the now. I want to go to New York, to D.C., to other places and see the now. But I figured I had a better shot at the before.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s the same thing.”
“It’s a well-worn strategy because it often works.”
Hope bloomed. “Did it?”
“You’ll find out after you’ve done the potions. Go. I’d like to work in the garden for this hour. In quiet.”
“I’m going to take a shower. A long one.”
It felt glorious, even if the pipes knocked and the water spat more than poured. The light beat of it eased remaining aches and twinges, and the faerie soap smelled like the glade—green, soft, quiet.
As she dressed she planned the rest of her day. She’d read for the rest of her remaining hour, she’d do the potion assignment. She wanted to work on one that created a mist, one that blinded the enemy to an approach.
Then, finally, she’d go into the crystal and see her mother’s great city, as it had been. She’d see her parents together—surely Mallick knew that was her true goal. She wanted to see the people who’d made her together, to see the place where they’d lived together.
A lot to see in an hour, she thought. Mallick never allowed more than an hour. She’d make it enough.
Then, biding her time, she’d ask for another hour in another place. Until she asked to go to the first shield. The place she’d dreamed of with fields and woods and hills, and the circle of stones.
She glanced toward the globe. She wouldn’t betray Mallick’s trust. She wouldn’t go in without his knowledge. But he’d never forbidden her from looking.
Walking to the globe, she laid a hand on it.
“Let me see, and only see. Here my mind, body, spirit stay while you with visions guide my way.”
The crystal sparked clear and showed her in watery daylight what she’d seen under the light of a moon.
Green and gold the fields, overgrown now, and brambles grew thick. Dark-hided deer grazed. As it was now, she thought. The hills rolled up to the sky, thin light shimmered through the trees, but the land lay untended.
And the stones, gray in the gloom, circled blackened earth.
Even through the crystal she sensed a battle of powers, a push and pull, light against dark.
She heard the chatter of birds, the rush of wind through rough grass, and the echo of empty places.
Then the burned ground moved, pulsed, beat like a black heart. And the birds silenced under the stark cry of crows circling over the stones.
The woods went dark with the dark that came into it. It sent a fog snaking along the ground to slither around the stones.
From the dark, from the fog, she heard a voice murmur, “Mine.”
It tugged at her, like a clawed hand. A grip that bit.
The voice, in the crystal, in her head, said, “Come.”
Fear iced her blood. Talons pierced her skin, sharp pain, dark pleasure. She swayed a moment because something beat inside her now, hot, slippery. She shuddered with it, against it, confused, frightened. Excited.
If she went in, she’d know more, feel more, see more.
The ground beat faster, like her own blood. The call of the crows reached up to shrieks. And the light grew dimmer, dimmer, moving toward the dark.
Shocked, she yanked back, felt the pain as talons scored the back of her hand.
“No.” She caught her breath. “No. I won’t come to you. You won’t keep what you’ve taken. Go back to hell.”
Instinct, the same that had flung a blade of fire, had her washing light through the globe. The crows dropped lifeless to the ground; the dark rolled back with a hiss.
Fallon stepped back slowly, and saw Mallick, sword in hand, in her doorway.
“I didn’t mean—”
“What did you do?” he demanded. “Did you go in?”
“No! No, I swear. I wanted to look, to see the place of the first shield. I dreamed of it, and I wanted to see it. It’s deserted, but not dead. I felt the light and dark pushing at each other, the dark’s stronger there now. And it came. I …”
She looked down at her hand, unmarked. “It spoke. And it had claws in my hand. And I felt …” She thought she knew, and the shame rolled through her. “It made me feel …”
“Yes, I understand.” He sheathed his sword. “Seduction can be another weapon. You refused it, rebuked it. And destroyed its harbingers. Are you certain you didn’t go in—not purposely, Fallon. Did it draw you in, even for a moment?”
“No. It’s strong, but the crystal is mine. It can’t take me where I don’t want to go. I almost did, for a minute, want to. But I didn’t. How did you know to come?”
“You called me, mind to mind. I’ll always come when you call me.”
“Can you call me?”
“I can.”
“I’ll always come when you do.”
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “You did well. We’ll have some food before we work.”
“I could eat. And I’m ready to spend some time with potions instead of … Do you hear that?”
“What do you hear?”
“It’s like … singing. Maybe the faeries are coming to see us, but—”
“It’s not the faeries.”
“No, it’s not like that, exactly.” It sang around her, sang inside her. “But it’s beautiful.”
She stepped out, and saying nothing, Mallick followed her across the small cottage, up to the workshop.
Like a thousand voices calling to her, but quiet and lovely, more welcome than demand.
The locked cupboard stood open, and light pulsed as the dark had pulsed from the defiled ground.
“Did you open it?” she asked him.
“No. You opened it.”
“How?”
“By refuting the dark, by honor and by acceptance. Take what’s yours, girl.”
Heart fluttering, she stepped to the cupboard. Inside the light sat a thick book, its cover deeply carved with magickal symbols. The book sang, in harps and bells and voices that stirred her soul.
“It’s mine?”
“It and all it holds, if you choose. Another turn on the path, Fallon Swift. It remains your choice.”
Inside her, around her, through her, the song.
She stepped forward, flooded in light, and lifted the book.
“It should be heavy, but it’s not.”
It has weight, Mallick thought. So much weight.
“A girl will open the Book of Spells, the oracles say. And all within will be within the girl. She will know, and knowing will enter the Well of Light. There she will take up her sword and her shield, forged in the light, tempered by the fire. And so The One will rise.”
Fallon opened the book.
The singing rang out, a thunderous chorus. A wind blew, warm and wild and tasting of earth and sea, flower and flesh as flames burned across the pages.
And wrote her name.
The force of power stole her breath. In her, around her, through her, of her.
Her head fell back, her eyes rolled up white as it flooded her. And still, she flung out her arms to take more.
She stood, tall and slim, legs braced, and drank in what was hers. As on the night of her birth, lightning slashed across the sky, and the wind howled and whipped the trees.
The singing swelled, rose up ringing in the warm, whirling air. In the window overhead, the sky burst with light.
When the storm passed, when the voices stilled, she closed the book.