“What do you fight for?” the leader demanded. “Who do you fight for?”
Duncan muttered, “Shit,” when he felt the vision fall into him. Resigned, he let it take him.
He raised his sword, shot a bolt of light into the sky before his blade flamed.
This time her horse shied, and she controlled it with a murmur, a squeeze of her knees.
“I am Duncan of the MacLeods, child of the Tuatha de Danann. I am the sword that slashes through the dark, brother to the arrow that pierces it. I am blood to blood with The One, and am pledged to her. I fight with her, I fight for her. My light for life. My life for her, and all who stand with her against the dark.”
Lowering the sword, he passed a hand down its length to extinguish the flame. “Got it?”
She dismounted, walked to the low wall of flame. “Then, Duncan of the MacLeods, you’re the one I’ve been looking for.” She held out a hand. “I’m Meda of the First Tribe. We’ll fight with you. We’ll fight with The One.”
Once again he trusted instinct. He let the flames between them die, shook her hand. “Welcome to the war.”
* * *
Fallon had felt him, and it left her unsettled. She felt Duncan’s sorrow for those lost twine with hers. A kind of grieving intimacy she hadn’t been prepared for.
Like him, after the ritual she felt unsettled. She’d hoped, as she’d hoped every year since he’d come to her, her birth father would come to her again. But she knew it wasn’t to be.
Not yet.
She made excuses, slipped away from the festivities in town, the bonfires, the carved pumpkins, the treats made for costumed children, the music in the gardens.
She told herself she needed to go back to her maps, her plans, refine all her battle tactics. But she knew she lied, even to herself.
It was time, she thought, to do more than plan. Time to see, time to be, time to take the next step.
Risky but worth it, she decided. And she’d look into the crystal first, judge if the way was clear.
At home, she lit the candle Mallick had given her when she’d been an infant. In the quiet, with only that light, she laid her hands on the crystal.
“Open now and clear for me. Let me see what I must see.”
Like clouds rolling, then a wind blowing to part them. And now colors, shapes, space.
“More,” she urged, sliding a hand right, watching, watching, before sliding a hand left. Drawing one up, waiting, studying, then drawing it down.
She spent nearly an hour with the crystal, once again sketching a detailed map until, satisfied, she went to her closet.
Inside she kept the Book of Spells, potions, charms, tools. Though on the day she became, every spell in the book lived inside her, she deemed this one important enough to validate.
She passed a hand over the book so that it opened to the spell in her mind. With the care and precision she’d learned from her mother, from Mallick, she gathered what she needed. Floating a small cauldron over her desk, lighting the fire beneath it, she added ingredients, measured others, said the words.
Here the power ran through her, warm and liquid. Here a pouring into as the spell coalesced with a pulsing beat, as a tower of pale blue smoke rose, thin and straight as a needle.
She put out the fire, cooled the cauldron, placed what she’d created inside it into a pouch.
“It’ll work,” she said aloud, tying the pouch to her belt.
Once again, she checked the crystal. Focused, focused.
Time, she thought again. It was time.
“There I go as powers flow, through you, in you, so I pass through the glass. Through you, in you, beyond the shields both dark and light, beyond the locks I take this flight. Take me where you let me see. As I will, so mote it be.”
As she spoke the last words, as she threw out her power, Tonia and Hannah stepped into her room.
Tonia said, “Holy—”
Then the mad pull Fallon unleashed took all three of them.
“Shit,” Tonia finished as the pull released, dropped them. “What—” She broke off, dropped down as Hannah slid bonelessly to the floor.
“Damn it. Be still, be quiet,” Fallon ordered. “I’ll be right back.”
On a snap of wind, she vanished. Ten seconds later, while Tonia tapped Hannah’s pale cheeks, she snapped back again.
“She’s out cold. Jesus. That wasn’t a flash we got caught up in. It