blinked at the blood and soot all over her. Such was the world they lived in. She watched Willow fly out of the garden and all but fall over the wolf with hugs—attention Faol Ban seemed fine with.
“Max and Rainbow are training, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” Fred gripped her hands together, looked toward the barracks. “After the attack, they just…”
“This part is nearly over.”
“Is it?” Fred shifted her gaze to her youngest two while her boy tried to convince the wolf to fetch a stick. Such things were well beneath Faol Ban’s dignity.
“An end, a beginning. A chance, a choice. All of those bathed in blood and tears. But its sinews are sacrifice, courage, faith. Its heart is now, then, always love.”
As the vision ran through her, Fallon lifted her face to a sky not of murderous red but aching blue.
“Here is the earth, the air, the water, the fire, and the magicks that join them together. All of that, all, feed the light. Watch the light burn like a thousand suns, Queen Fred, and you’ll know when the sword strikes, the arrow flies, and the blood seals the end of the dark.”
Fallon’s eyes cleared, looked into Fred’s. “You have a new light inside you.”
“Well, wow.” Blowing out a breath, Fred took off her hat, fanned it at her face. “Nobody expects a prophecy, right? And that one was a pow with the wow.”
Fallon pointed to a chair on the patio. “Sit.”
“Maybe for a minute.”
When she did, Fallon poured a glass of the sun tea steeping on a table, chilled it with her hands, offered it.
“I’m sorry if I intruded. It just sort of beamed out at me.”
“That’s okay.” Fred sipped the tea, patted a hand on her belly. “Yeah, one more time. Crazy, right?”
“No. You and Eddie make beautiful children.”
“We really do. He’s such a good dad. The kids are missing him right now. He’s with Poe. They’re proud of him, but they miss him.”
“You, too.”
“I haven’t told him yet. I only felt the spark—felt it often enough to know—after he’d gone.”
“What a great welcome home he’ll have.” She crouched down. “You, from the beginning, Fred, you’ve been a light. You and Eddie. Your children will carry that light. You helped save the world. They’ll help heal it.”
“Is that another prophecy?”
“Not this time. It’s faith.”
* * *
She carried that faith with her into September when it seemed the fire and blood of battle would never end. She carried it with her each time Chuck intercepted another call for help, or the scouts learned of another stronghold.
She carried it to the clinic to keep the spark strong when she visited the wounded. She carried it to grave sites and memorials.
“We’ve got them on the run,” Duncan said.
They’d finished a meeting with commanders, team leaders, and now she sat with Duncan and her father.
She knew what Duncan wanted—he wanted her to signal the time had come to finish it.
“The constant, focused attacks have paid off,” Simon agreed. “We’re still going to see some skirmishes, but we’ve broken the backs. The DUs are the primary problem at this point, like we discussed. We can’t give them the time or opportunity to regroup.”
“We won’t. I don’t know why it’s not time to finish it, I just know it’s not. We’ve had multiple and conflicting reports on Petra, but nothing concrete. She’s part of the circle, and we’ll need to confront her, defeat her, to fuse that circle and end it.”
“Then we draw her to Scotland,” Duncan argued. “It ends there.”
His determination to finish it, his absolute certainty they could, spilled through the gears of her mind like sand.
Irritating. Irritating.
She found it difficult to keep the edge out of her voice. “On our timetable, not hers, on our terms, not hers. And we need to know more about how to finish it, and her. The black dragon. And what they feed in the forest. We can’t afford to fail.”
“We can’t win if we don’t fight.”
And gave up the fight, led with the edge. “A year ago the DU ruled New York, D.C., Los Angeles, and more. The PWs and military hunted us like animals. Now they don’t. We have fought, are fighting. Every day people fight, bleed, die. Do you think I don’t want to end it?”
“Hold on—”
“You hold on,” she snapped back at Duncan. “I’ll know when I know.”
On a flick of temper, she flashed away.
“She’s tired,” Simon said after a humming moment. “And frustrated—that was her tired and frustrated voice.”
“I know it,” Duncan replied.
“I