She squeezed his hand, looked straight into his eyes. “I saw you kill a man who gave you no choice, though you’d given him one. He wasn’t your first, or your last. I come from warriors, my mother, my fathers. And from power and strength. From kindness. When I’m afraid I won’t be good enough, brave enough, smart enough, I think of you, what you’ve taught me, and what I’ve seen through the crystal.”
She rubbed her eyes and looked all at once like a young girl up far too late. “I wish none of what’s outside the farm, what’s coming, would touch the boys. But it will. You know more, the soldier knows more than you’ve told us—or told Mom—or taught us. I … watched the soldier, too, in the before, through the crystal.”
It tore at him, more than a little, to know he looked into his daughter’s eyes, and looked soldier to soldier. “You’re going to take a few days,” Simon told her. “Call it R and R. Then we’ll start training them.”
“You’ve had a long day,” Lana said. “You should get some sleep now.”
“I’m really tired.”
“Yes, I see that. Go on to bed.”
Nodding, half-asleep already, she hugged Lana, then Simon. “I’m so glad to be home.”
Lana watched her go, listened to her feet on the stairs.
“Simon.”
“We’ll talk. We’ll think, and we’ll talk. But right now somebody else needs sleep. You’re worn-out, babe, and I’m not far behind you.”
“I’ve known. I’ve known since she was inside me, and I still keep running up against the wall of no. No, this is my baby.”
“Join the club.”
He got up, took her hand. “We’re going to do what parents do.”
“What’s that?”
“Worry our asses off and do everything we know how to help her.” They started for the stairs. “You think you can learn that flash deal? Because, hey, you could bring me a cold beer like that.”
He snapped his fingers, making her laugh after a very long day.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She took a week, helped with the harvest, taught her mother how to make a Rainbow Cake. She went fishing with her brothers, hunting with Taibhse and Faol Ban.
At night she flew over the fields and hills on Laoch.
And though she was happy to be home, she missed Mallick, and the routine of work, training, practice, study. She missed Mick and all the others, and quiet times alone in the faerie glade.
But she spent her fifteenth birthday at home, with her family, and treasured every moment.
When the week ended, her brothers took to training like a game. It annoyed her down to the bone, but she took her cues from her father. After all, she told herself, he’d trained soldiers before, and raised children.
“It starts as a game,” he told her. “They’re kids.”
“Colin’s the same age I was when I went with Mallick. He sure as hell didn’t let me treat it like a game.”
“Colin isn’t you. They’ll learn, and more, they’ll compete. With each other, and with you. Then they’ll get better, then they’ll get serious.”
So through the fall and into the winter, it remained, for the most part, a game. She left Travis’s and Ethan’s magickal training to her mother, for now, and tolerated the complaints and malingering when she pushed them through assignments.
Reading, math, mapping.
They liked plotting battle strategies, and Travis particularly shined there.
When it came to the katas, the gymnastics, and sheer endurance, Ethan outpaced his older brothers as if born doing handsprings.
But when, during the wild and windy days of March, she introduced swords, Colin proved fierce, fast, and deadly.
Enough it irritated her a little when he mastered in days forms and techniques that had taken her weeks.
She took to working with him one-on-one, and though she killed him routinely, he made her work for it.
Her father proved a different matter. He’d spar with her, under strict rules. Blows would not land. He had his line in the sand, no matter how she argued.
He wouldn’t hit his children.
She compromised with a quick shock for any strike, punch, kick. Even under the rules, she couldn’t beat him without using magicks, and learned more and more.
The first time they used knives for combat—much to her brothers’ delight—Simon did what he did whenever a blade was introduced.
He tested them on himself. “They won’t cut cloth, break flesh, or draw blood,” she told him, as she did before every sword practice.
“Better safe than really, really sorry.” He swiped his knife, then hers, over the back of his arm. “Okay.” He handed her a knife, hilt first.
As they circled each other, the boys called out insults or encouragements. And Lana came outside. It gave her a jolt, as it always did, to see her husband, her child, facing off. Eyes flat and cold, bodies coiled.
Her heart leaped into her throat and stayed lodged there from the first swipe.
Simon lunged in, pivoting away as Fallon did the same so her vicious kick, her follow-up slice missed their marks.
A terrible dance that seemed to go on and on.
By tacit agreement, Fallon and Simon straightened, stepped back.
“Looks like a draw,” Lana called out as the boys moaned and booed.
“You’re good.” Simon swiped sweat from his face.
“You, too.”
Now he grinned. “I was holding back.”
“Oh yeah? So was I.”
“Okay then.” He rolled his shoulders, moved into a fighting stance. “Don’t.”
“You, either.”
They charged each other.
Horrible, horrible, Lana thought, the blows, the hacking, the swipes of blades. The jerks of their body as the shocks ran through at the illusionary strikes and cuts.
Then, with a speed that made the boys cheer, Simon swung around, caught Fallon from behind, and slit her throat.
“Better than good.” Breath in rags, Fallon lowered to brace her hands on her thighs.
“You, too.”
“Show me that move.”
“Sure, but here’s the thing. If these knives cut, I’d probably have been weak and woozy from blood loss. Adrenaline might’ve pushed me through, but you came damn close to severing a couple arteries. That’s where you should focus if you can. Go for the brachial, the femoral, the jugular, and it’s going to be over fast.”
“I know, but the only way I could’ve gotten to them was to—”
She flicked her hand, jerked him back with a punch of power, then sliced a long line down his forearm. “Do that.”
“Why didn’t you do that?”
“First, I need the training. And more, I might be going up against someone with power, so I’d be pushing or blocking that while trying to get a debilitating or killing strike in. If the opponent didn’t have power, magicks should be used only to save lives. If you have to take a life with magicks, you can’t do it for convenience. You just—you just have to know.”
He shook his head, and looked at her—warrior to warrior. “Here’s what I know. You do what it takes to stay alive. Use what you need to use. Because if you’re dead, the fight’s over, and not just for you. For others under your command, others you won’t be able to protect. Innocent lives shouldn’t be lost because you played fair. Nothing’s fair in a war.”
He sheathed his knife, then caught her face in his hands, kissed her. “You wore me out, baby.”
As he spoke, Lana appeared at his side, offered him a cold beer.
“Hey. Nice, thanks.”
“We’ve been working on it. I think it’s time for a break. And, Fallon, I could really use your help with something,” Lana urged as she led her to the house and closed the door behind them.
“Your father doesn’t understand,” Lana began. “He knows using magicks to cause harm, and worse, is against what we are, but he also knows what it’s like to fight for your life and for others.”
“I get it. I do.”
“It was hard for me and Max to use our gifts to harm. It should be hard. But, Fallon, your dad’s right. He’s right. If you, any of us, need to use our gift as a weapon, we use it. Not lightly, not for—as you said—convenience—but we use it. Whether or not it’s power against power.”
“I’ve already used it. I don’t know how many lives I might have taken when I blew up those fuel tanks, and used magick to do it.”
“How many did you save? Good soldiers, and innocents? You did what you had to do, and I know, I’m afraid, you’ll have to do the same again and again.”
“You can slip into the dark,” Fallon said quietly.