up a couple of bruises. They were stupid. Now they’re dead.” She rubbed her cheek against Laoch’s. “I gave them a choice, they chose death.”
“You saved two lives.”
“Yes.” Lives taken, lives saved. She went back to the rubdown. “I saved two lives. They’re in love, those two lives. Her grandmother doesn’t approve of mixed relationships, so they ran off together. I think they’ll be fine now.”
He set a hand on her shoulder. “We need to talk.”
“Is something wrong?” She set the cloth aside. “I wasn’t gone that long.”
“I saw you leave. I was about to come out, happened to see you and Duncan.”
“Oh.” Then it hit her. “Oh,” she repeated. “Dad—”
“Hold on. Just hold on.”
Like Duncan—so like Duncan, she realized in a huh moment—he shoved his hands in his pockets, paced away, paced back.
“You’re a grown-up,” he began, a war clear in those changeable hazel eyes she loved. “More. You’re a warrior, a leader. You’re not an idiot. You’ve never been, I don’t know, flighty or careless, and…”
He stopped, and with his face covered in frustration, stared at her. “You’re still my baby, damn it. You’re still my girl, so I’ve got things to say.”
“You disapprove.” And his disapproval, his more than anything or anyone, would cut her to the bone.
“No. Yes. Shit! Yes, on a general level, because my baby, damn it. Specifically Duncan? No. I’m not an idiot, either.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Why the hell should I have to make sense?” His hands flew out of his pockets, into the air. “Sense, my ass, when I look out and see—and realize—”
“I thought Mom had, you know, prepared you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Hands back in pockets, more pacing. “She reminded me, but I didn’t really … I just figured, okay, a little puppy love. It doesn’t matter I knew better somewhere in my head, it was a nice buffer until I look out and see his hands on you, and the two of you. My baby.
“Buffer?” He took his hands out again, mimed an explosion. “And I get, on some level, why you talked to your mom about it and not me, but you didn’t, so it smacks me in the face, and I’ve got about thirty seconds to adjust before I grill Duncan.”
“You … you grilled Duncan?”
“It’s my fucking job, Fallon. My goddamn job.”
“Yes.” Touched, amused, a little horrified, she got an apple out of the bin, carefully cut it in half for Laoch and Grace. “It is. How’d he do?”
“He did all right,” Simon replied. “He’s not an asshole.”
“Good to know.”
“Maybe I knew this was coming. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, from the time we got here, when you’re not looking. I know that look because I used to look at your mother when she wasn’t looking the same damn way. But—”
“Really?”
“I’m not going there, adding to the damn stars in your eyes. It’s too much for me. I know he’s a good soldier. I know he’s a good son, a good man. I know when he tells me he loves you he believes it.”
“So do I. I love him. I had feelings for him pulling at me since the first time I saw him in a dream. The reality’s stronger. I know he’s loyal to The One, to the light. There’s no question of it. But he sees me, Dad. He sees Fallon Swift, and he loves her.”
She stepped to him. “You were the first one to hold me. You were the first man to love me. To love Fallon, just Fallon. You showed me, all my life, what it was to be a man with strength and heart and courage. I couldn’t love a man who didn’t pass the bar you set. I could want, but I couldn’t love. So I know, with all that’s asked of me, all that’s happened before, all that’s to come, I’ve been blessed. You’re the love of my life, Dad. And now I’ve been given another.”
She put her arms around him, nestled her head on his shoulder. “Two loves of my life.”
He wrapped around her hard. “You’re still my baby.”
“I was born in the lightning, in the storm, as it was foretold, and your hands were there to bring me into the world.”
He eased back to look into her eyes, into the visions.
“You were there for the mother, there for the child, and you loved without demands or restrictions. That is love pure. It is light beyond power. And with the sun of that morning, after the storm, while