her heart pour into his.
And you’re my light.
They rose up, joined, cushioned on the sweet air, bathed in the soft, green light, with their own, united, shimmering like the stars.
When, once more, they lay together on the carpet of grass, their light quieted to a glow, she pressed a kiss to his heart. “I’m forgiven?”
“Probably.” He trailed a finger down her spine, up again. “I wasn’t mad. Well, off and on. I was worried, everybody was. Where did you go?”
“Everywhere.” Now she rested her head on his heart. “At first I just needed to be alone, to be gone. The grief, it was so huge, and still only part of it. There’s so much empty in the world, Duncan. It’s not hard to find places to be alone. I’ve known what would be asked of me all my life, and I carried that. I’ve carried more since I turned thirteen. So I told myself everybody else would just have to handle it all for a while because I couldn’t. And I knew you would. You, my parents, my brothers, Tonia, Arlys, Jonah, everyone. I knew you would. If it was selfish, well, the gods would just have to deal with that. Because I couldn’t lead troops into battle when my heart was bleeding or ask anyone to follow me when I couldn’t see where to go.”
She pushed herself to sitting, looked through the mists rising over the pond. “When I saw what you’d done, the memorial you’d created, everything in me shook. I couldn’t say all I wanted to say to you, or I’d have fallen completely apart. Then, the tree over where Mick fell. I wanted to feel comfort from it, but I didn’t. It was anger, and the anger, the hunger for revenge blocked everything. I wanted to bring the lightning and burn that tree to the ground.”
She paused, trailed her fingers over the cuff she wore, fashioned from another tree she’d destroyed with temper.
“I wanted to leave everything and hunt Petra, only Petra, until I could cut her to pieces with my sword. A sword of light and justice. How could I stay? How could I lead?”
“You could have told me.”
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t even tell myself. I could only feel grief, anger, despair. Why, when I’ve done what they asked, when I’ve done all I know how to do, do they demand such payments? Max to Mick, with so many between. Why, why, why? How could I be the light when I couldn’t feel or find it?”
She looked over at him when he sat up with her. “It wasn’t just who Mick was to me, or what he was to me, how much I loved him. Though, God, as much as I did, it’s not what I feel for you. What if it had been you?”
“It wasn’t.”
She shook her head. “But that question kept circling in my head. You, or my parents. Colin lost his arm—what if he lost his life? Travis, Ethan, Tonia, Hannah, Mallick, so many I love. What if one of you is the next payment?”
“I’d say you can’t think that way, but you already knew that.” He didn’t have to like it, he decided, to begin to understand it. “And that’s why you left.”
“It’s a big part of it. What grew in the grief, the doubts was worse. That hunger, that thirst to destroy what destroyed. Eric and Allegra killed Max because they wanted to kill me, inside my mother. They came back because they wanted to kill me, and destroy everything, everyone in New Hope. Petra killed to hurt you, and for the joy of it. And Mick.”
She shut her eyes a moment. “She killed him to strike at me. I think, I feel, if we’d lost him in battle, I could have taken it. Grieved, yes, but it wouldn’t have shaken me to the core. But she chose the moment of victory. She chose to strike him down in his moment of joy. In a moment the two of us shared. It took me some time to understand that, to get through that hunger and understand.”
“She won’t win, Fallon.”
“I know it, but I didn’t know it then. I stopped believing in what we are. I went to mountaintops and deserts, to forests and to cities even the ghosts have abandoned, and wondered why we bother. Didn’t people just find another reason to kill, or scar the land? Hadn’t they driven magicks away out of fear?”
He tugged the ends of her