Your dad talked to me about it so I understood. I truly did. And everything you said here?” She sighed. “What mother doesn’t want her child to see the world, and all its wonders?”
“I want to take you. I want everyone I love to pick a spot so I can take you where you most want to go.”
“Won’t that be an adventure?” Brows arched, she ran a hand over Fallon’s hair. “Combat knife trim?”
Fallon brushed a hand through it in turn. “Is it that bad?”
“Hmm” was Lana’s answer before she laughed. “So … instead of an apology, I’m hoping you’ll tell me about the ring you’re wearing. I’d always imagined you’d be full of excitement when you told me you were engaged.”
“I didn’t want to say anything until it was just you and me.”
“Now it is.”
“It’s really more of a promise. I think, in some ways, we’ve been engaged since before either of us was born. But this is the promise, and the choice for both of us. And I am excited.” She thrust out her hand, and for a moment, a precious one to Lana, was just a young woman in love. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It is beautiful, and it’s perfect.”
“Don’t cry, Mom.”
“Just a little. He’s exactly what I’d wish for you. Just exactly,” she said and opened her arms.
* * *
Within three weeks, Lana joined Simon and the newly formed special forces team on a strike at a PW base in Arkansas. They moved on to Louisiana, across Mississippi, through Alabama.
Near the ruined, flooded city of Mobile, troops from The Beach pushed in from the east to help drive the enemy to the barrier of the Gulf of Mexico.
In what would become known as the Summer of Light, Poe and his team mobilized to cut off Raider attacks in the Midwest, the Southwest. Troy and Starr with their band of magickals uprooted confinement centers.
Fallon, in steady rotation, joined each group in turn as they worked their way east and west, north and south.
Over three scorching days in August, where lightning strikes turned forests to blazing tinder, where the ground quaked and split like eggshells, she fought side by side with Duncan.
In the Dark Uncanny stronghold of Los Angeles, mansions had become palaces and prisons. Canyons jagged through the broken streets of Beverly Hills, and served as killing pits for those unfortunate enough to be captured. The stench from a decade of blood sacrifices on the black marble altar erected on Rodeo Drive stung the air.
In the flaming hills, faeries and elves fought to suppress the fires, worked to rescue any who’d managed to escape the city to hide in caves and canyons. And there, above the city where magicks clashed and slashed, the sky turned red.
Even as she fought, Fallon searched for the black dragon and its rider. But as they cut through the enemy’s numbers, drove them to the beaches, to the wild waves of the Pacific, she saw no sign of Petra.
When she rode Laoch through that red sky, over the hills where fires still sparked, where blackened trees rose like skeletons through the smoke, she scanned the city.
Not dead like D.C., but deeply wounded, with its bleeding not yet completely stanched. Its broken bones might heal over time, its raw scars might begin to blend into the landscape in another generation. This land, this city would become what those who settled on it worked to make it.
But never again, never again would innocent blood be spilled there in the name of the dark.
Duncan, Tonia, and their handpicked team would transport the surviving enemy to D.C. Dead City, she thought. There, with their magicks bound, they would remain.
She flew down for Faol Ban, called to Taibhse, and with them, flashed home.
It surprised her to find Fred and her three youngest working in her mother’s garden.
Fred pushed back her floppy yellow hat with its trailing ribbons and flowers around the crown, waved a hand. She wore pink-lensed sunglasses in the shape of hearts.
“Hi! Welcome home. We thought we’d give your mom a hand with the garden, since she’s so busy this summer.”
“She’ll appreciate it. We all do.”
The instant Fallon dismounted, Angel, her hair as sunny as her mother’s hat, ran over. “Can I brush Laoch, water him?”
“Sure. He’s earned a carrot, too.” And knowing the girl’s love affair with all things equine, Fallon stepped back.
“That made her day. You could use some brushing and watering yourself.”
“I guess so.” It struck Fallon that the kids hadn’t so much as