She returned Colin’s appraising look. “You, either.”
“I hereby declare today a Swift Family Holiday,” Simon announced. The boys cheered. “Guys, let’s get Fallon’s things inside, see to the horses. And where did you get that magnificent stallion? That’s one hell of a horse.”
“He’s not exactly a horse.” Ethan walked right up to Laoch. “He’s more.”
“He’s more,” Fallon agreed. “Do you want to see?”
She met Laoch’s eyes. He tossed back his head. Revealed his horn, spread his wings.
“Son of a bitch,” Simon managed, grinning as the boys moved in to touch.
“He won’t hurt them.” Anticipating her mother, Fallon took Lana’s hand. “He’d never hurt what’s mine. He’s Laoch,” she told her brothers.
“Where did you get him?” Ethan rubbed his cheek against Laoch’s.
“It’s a story.”
“Does it include how you came by that white wolf and owl?” Simon wondered.
“Yeah.”
“I sure want to hear it.”
“You must be hungry. You can tell us your stories while you eat. Pancakes.”
She didn’t have the heart to tell her mother she wasn’t hungry. Plus, her mother’s pancakes could stir anyone’s appetite.
“The men will take care of all this.” Lana slipped an arm around Fallon’s waist. As she led Fallon toward the house, Colin started to object.
Simon cut him off with a look. “Your mom needs a little time with her. You’ll get plenty. Plus, it’s not every day you get to handle a flying unicorn.”
“Alicorn,” Ethan told him. “He’s an alicorn.”
“Is that so? Well, let’s unpack Fallon’s alicorn, get him and Grace into the paddock—though a fence seems useless. Then we’ll eat some pancakes.”
Inside, Fallon wandered around the kitchen. She smelled yeast from the dough already rising in her mother’s big white bowl, and the herbs in the pots on the windowsill.
“I was going to make a feast for your homecoming, and we were going to decorate—” Lana’s voice broke. “Was he kind to you? Was Mallick kind to you?”
“Yes. Strict, and he could be hard, but he was kind, too. He taught me so much. He let me see you, all of you, in the fire once. He wasn’t supposed to, but I was so homesick.”
“I felt you, and it lifted my heart. The sword.”
Laying a hand on its hilt, Fallon nodded.
“You opened the Book of Spells, went into the Well of Light.” Turning away, Lana began to gather what she needed for pancakes.
“We’ll talk about it, all of it, but I think for now, over pancakes, we’ll talk of other things. Of your white triad, and—”
She broke off again when Fallon’s arms came around her. “Don’t worry. I’m home now.”
For how long? Lana wondered, but closed her hand over her daughter’s. “Yes, you’re home now.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
She ate pancakes and realized just how much she’d missed her mother’s cooking. She entertained her brothers with stories of quests and faerie glades. She told them about Mick and learning how to scale a tree like an elf.
For this time, this reunion around the kitchen table, she made two years of training sound like an adventure.
And fooled no one.
In the spirit of holiday, chores waited for later. She let her brothers take turns petting Faol Ban, who tolerated the gang of boys stoically. When she lifted her arm, the owl glided from the branch of the apple tree, came to her.
“He’s Taibhse.”
“Why’d you give him such a weird name? Why’d you give them all weird names?” Colin demanded.
“It means ghost, like Faol Ban means white wolf and Laoch means hero. It’s Irish, and they came to me with their names.”
“Why didn’t you give them other names in English?” Colin challenged. “The only one around here who talks Irish is the old lady at Sisters Farm.”
“I do, too,” she stated matter-of-factly, and Colin didn’t respond.
She’d missed her mother’s cooking, Fallon thought, and weird as it was, she’d missed that suspicious, challenging look on Colin’s face.
Travis touched his fingers lightly to the tip of the owl’s wing.
“Would—Say his name again?” he asked.
“Taibhse.”
“Would Taibhse come to me?”
“He might, but you’d need a falconer’s glove. His talons.”
“Fallon doesn’t need a glove because he’s hers.” Ethan looked up at his sister. “Can we ride Laoch?”
“You want to fly?”
Lana, who’d been simply drinking in watching her kids, jerked, stepped forward. “I don’t think so.”
“I’d take them one at a time,” Fallon told her. “Up with me. They’ll be safe. I promise.”
“Come on, babe.” Simon gave Lana a wink. “I know I want a spin. I bet you do, too.”
“Me first! I’m the oldest,” Colin claimed.
“Ethan first,” Fallon corrected. “He asked first.” She whistled.
Laoch didn’t need wings to fly over the paddock fence. He took it in one fluid leap.
Maybe Lana held her breath when her daughter launched into the golden saddle—and muttered a little prayer when Simon gave Ethan a boost up behind her—but she knew when she was outnumbered.
“Hold on to me,” Fallon told Ethan.
Wings spread out; forelegs lifted. And Lana watched her girl and her youngest take to the air with Ethan’s gut-deep laugh rolling.
Magnificent, she thought. Spellbinding. A sister giving her brother the thrill of his life, yes, but more. A warrior on her warhorse.
“She’s the same,” she told Simon. “But not the same.”
“She’s still ours. That’ll never change.”
They took the day for fun, for love. Accepting Colin’s other challenges, Fallon scaled trees, dived from branches, executed flips.
With Travis she walked to the apple tree and the dogs’ graves.
“It hurt Dad most,” he told her. “They were his mom’s. Ethan told Dad they had to go, the night they died. You know how he knows with animals and stuff.”
“Yeah.”
“Dad sat with them, even when they went to sleep, and sat when they went away, you know. It hurt him the most.”
She put her arm around Travis’s shoulders. “They were family, and his family first.”
“They need to know the other stuff. The stuff you’re not saying. I don’t know what it all is. I can see more than before you left, but you can block better.”
“And you know trying to see is rude.”
He only shrugged. “Sometimes you gotta be rude. I know some’s about the sword. Can I see it?”
She took it out of the sheath, and after only a brief hesitation let him hold it. “What’s the word on it? Is it like … the sun?”
“Close. Light. Its name is Light. And none who would use the light for dark will lift it. As I took it from the fire, so will I raise it in battle, and the blood that stains it will be the blood of the beast and all who follow. And though it bring death, its blade shines clean. Light for life.”
Travis handed her back the sword as she breathed out again. “You got spookier.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Do we need to learn how to use swords?”
“Yeah. I’ll teach you.”
“Cool.”
She’d hoped to put it off at least for a few days. To set aside the hard things and just be home. But Travis was right. Her parents needed to know. All she had to do was figure out how to tell them.
She stayed in the kitchen with Lana when the boys went out with Simon to feed the stock. And with the scent of the ham baking—her favorite—she helped prepare potatoes for roasting.
Surprise return notwithstanding, Lana would put on a feast.
“I did most of the cooking at the cottage. Mallick’s a really terrible cook. It only took a couple of meals to realize you’d done me a big favor teaching me to cook. I got pretty good at it. Not as good as you, but pretty good.”
“You were always pretty good at it.”
“One of the faeries was a baker. She showed me how to make what she called Rainbow Cake. It’s really good.”
“You’ll teach me the recipe?”
“We need a sprinkle of faerie dust—from the little ones. It’s what adds the rainbow. I met Max Fallon.”
“I never thought of using … What?”
Lana, chopping herbs, looked up. “Max? You had a vision?”
“No, Mom, not a vision. I met him. I talked to him, like I’m talking to you.”