“I’m not sure I can get through the next minute if you do. I should have helped with the burial, the purification of the enemy dead. I knew you would take care of it, so I spared myself.”
“Stop. Damn it. You want to feel sorry for yourself right now, you’re entitled, but I took care of it because I needed to, wanted to. Some of those people died under my command, so just knock off all The One crap. We all did what we had to do, and we all lost friends today.”
It weighed on him, more stone. “Those friends knew what they risked, and took this place back with courage. You demean that by sucking up all the responsibility. You demean them.”
It sliced at her, the truth of it sliced. “That’s harsh, that’s cold.”
“Maybe, but it’s how I see it. Those men and women didn’t die for you, they died for what you represent. They died for their families, their neighbors, their futures.”
“Mick died because Petra wanted to hurt me.”
“Then let’s go get the bitch and her fucking hag of a mother.” He wanted it, could almost taste the bitter tang of their blood. “We go back to Scotland, close the shield, and we take down that dark bastard in the woods. We draw Petra and Allegra out, and finish it.”
She pressed her face to Laoch’s neck. “It’s not time.”
“Screw that, Fallon. If not now, when?”
“I don’t know!” And that sliced, too. “I just know it’s not time. There’s more to come. I can’t—” She whirled on him, stopped. Drew a breath. “There,” she said, and pointed.
And there where Mick had fallen stood a tree of life, blooming full, branches curving upward.
“Is that my solace?” she asked.
Now he whirled on her. “It’s acknowledgment. It’s gratitude and honor.”
Tears burned the backs of her eyes, and she wanted to scream and shed them. “Yes, yes, you’re right. The fact I can’t feel that, just can’t, is another reason I need to leave.”
“Leave? Go where?”
“I need solitude, I need to restore my faith. I need a couple of weeks, Duncan, just some time alone.”
“Alone?”
“Everything you said is right, but I can’t feel it. I need to feel it again, believe it again. And I can’t lean on you until I’m sure I can stand on my own. She broke something in me, Duncan, and I need some time to heal. When she killed Denzel, you needed to leave.”
“Part of that was distance from you, but okay, yeah.”
“A couple of weeks,” she said again, and though she felt his need, stayed behind the wall she’d built. “Will you stand for me tomorrow, at the memorial?”
“You’re leaving now?”
“If I don’t, I won’t, because I want to lean on you, I want my family, my friends. But I know it won’t be time to end this until I take back what she took from me today.”
“We need to—I need to just sit the hell down with you. Take a minute.”
“I can’t. I just can’t. I have to go.”
“Where?” he demanded. “Where the hell are you going?”
“To the quiet.” She felt his hurt, his need for more from her. But couldn’t give it. She mounted Laoch. “After the quiet comes the fury, and with the fury the end. The end of dark, the end of light—this hangs in the balance. Know the fire, the famine, the rivers of blood should dark tip the scales. Know the song of peace a thousand years if the light shines true. Shine true, Duncan of the MacLeods, and you will know when the time has come.”
She dropped out of the vision, looked at him under the streaming moonlight, the sparkle of stars that spread over the freed city.
“I love you,” she said, and vanished.
“You said no,” he murmured. “For the first time you said no.”
* * *
Battles sparked as the Light for Life forces advanced in every direction. Duncan gave himself over to the fighting, joining Flynn’s troops in the green mountains of Georgia, flashing to Meda, the shuttered city of Santa Fe in New Mexico, and on the windswept fields of Nebraska.
He nursed his own wounds when he got them, cleaned his sword, and looked for the next fight.
Fallon might have taken the quiet, but he wanted the fury.
“You need some downtime, brother.”
He drank a beer with Tonia in the community gardens. Shrugged with it. “I’m sitting down right now.”