what was in the cauldron began to bubble and smoke. In it she slid the leather, and the third stone.
She sheathed her knife, drew her sword, one taken from fire, one lifted in faith.
“We are three and family, this healing spell we seal.”
She held out a hand for Ethan’s, and without hesitation he offered it, kept his eyes on hers when she scored his palm so his blood dripped into the cauldron. “Here, in a brother’s blood, is kindness.” She scored Lana’s. “Here, in a mother’s blood, is selfless love.” Then her own. “Here, in a sister’s blood, is faith. We are three. We are family. This spell we seal, this wound to heal.
“Unwrap the wound,” she told her mother. “Coat it with the balm. Then take his right hand, push all you have into him when I say. Ethan,” she continued as she took the arm from the ice bath, “at his shoulders. Hold him down, give him all you have.”
She unwrapped the arm, pushed away the doubt and fear that wanted to creep under the shield of power.
“He’s going into shock again,” Hannah called out. “Let me—”
Fallon merely flicked a hand, shoved Hannah back two steps. Then drew the leather, now slick as skin and shimmering, from the cauldron.
Her eyes, dark, lit with power, met Colin’s. “Your will,” she told him, “your courage. Let them see your power, your heart.”
Holding out her hand, she caught three of Lana’s tears in her palm, let them fall on the wounds as she pressed them together.
“Hold him down. Push!”
When she laid the leather over his arm, the sudden, searing pain ripped a cry out of him. His body arched against it, his eyes went wide and glazed.
“Will it,” Fallon snapped at him. “Want it. Take it. I call upon the power of light,” she shouted as she ruthlessly coated his arm, from fingertip to elbow, with the shimmering, smoking leather. “Restore your warrior for the fight. Knit and join to heal, skin to skin now merge to seal. By the power you granted me, as I will, so mote it be.”
Light flashed from her hands, streaked over his arm.
She heard the crows, ignored them. The lightning that flashed at the circle others deflected. She kept her hands clamped on Colin even as his pain cut through her and the wind snapped with keen teeth.
Then it died, like a switch flipped, and the pain, the terrible burning of it, fell to a pulsing ache. His pulse, she thought, one she felt through his arm.
“Do you see me?” She leaned in close. When he nodded, pale, breathless, she laid a hand on his sweat-slicked face. “I see you, brother. The light in you is mortal and human and stronger than any dark. Give him the healing potion, Mom.”
Weeping, Lana lifted his head, brought the vial to his lips. “Drink now, my baby. My boy.”
“Am I moving my fingers? I can’t tell.”
“You have to will it,” Fallon told him. “Retrain your mind to work with your arm. It’ll take time, and it may not function as easily or as completely as it used to.”
“I’ll make it work.” He stared down, obviously puzzled by the leather that covered him from fingertip to elbow like skin. “Is it like a cast?”
“No.”
He looked at Fallon with eyes going a little goofy from the potion. “I got a leather arm now? Cool.”
“Yeah, cool. Sleep now.” Fallon put him under. “We close the circle, then—”
Lana, eyes still streaming, reached out across her sleeping son to grip her daughter’s hand. “I’ve never seen such power. In all I’ve seen, all I’ve known, I’ve never seen anything like what you were able to do. You were hurting him, hurting yourself, and I tried to stop you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. The lack of faith, even just for that second, could have cost him. It won’t ever happen again. I need to stay with him.”
“We’ll move him into the HQ. You can help him work on getting movement back. He’ll get pissy about it, so better you than me.”
“I’m staying, too,” Ethan said. “I can help with the animals, with Colin.”
They closed the circle, gathered the tools. When Hannah as medical, Starr as guard, helped take him to the HQ, Fallon sat on the ramp of the mobile.
“It’s clear as day now,” Jonah said. “It got clearer and clearer during the spell. Life. I think it depended on you, and Colin, on all of you being able to do what you did, so