She felt its breath.

“I make my choice, now hear my voice. In light and fire I make this vow, accepting what the gods endow. I am your daughter, child of wind and fire, of earth and water. With magicks bright I take up the fight. With this sword, with this shield, I will strike on battlefield.”

She reached through the flames, gripped hilt, gripped strap, lifted the sword and the shield.

“They’re mine,” she voiced. “As the book is mine, as the owl, the wolf, the horse are mine. And I’m theirs.”

She hefted the shield with its crest of the fivefold symbol, uniting the five elements with magicks. She thrust high the sword with the same symbol on its hilt.

It flashed, silver as Laoch’s wings, and the flame that ran from hilt to point burned white.

In light and fire rose The One.

Mallick waited for her. He knew the moment she’d reached into the flame by the strike of lighting, the flaming candles.

And from the change within him. Now, his clock would tick again, his life cycle would begin again. He would know age. And for that alone, he blessed her.

He fetched the sheath he’d made for her long before her birth, laid it beside the book.

When she stepped out, the light dimmed behind her. But it blazed on her face, he thought, in her eyes.

He dropped to one knee.

“What? Don’t!”

“I’ve waited hundreds of years for this moment. I will acknowledge it, so be quiet! I pledge my magicks, my sword, my life to you, Fallon Swift. I swear my allegiance to you, to The One.”

“Okay, but get up. It makes me feel weird.”

“Some things don’t change.” He got to his feet.

“You don’t have to pledge what I already know.” She glanced back at the cupboard, the softened light.

“The well, it’s amazing. The light, it’s really bright, but at the same time it’s soft—like water. I guess that’s why it’s the Well of Light. And the fire—I could see the sword and shield in the flames, shining gold in them. But silver when I took them out. And they felt like mine.”

“Because they are.”

“It’s just … Have you ever been there? In the Well of Light.”

“Once, long ago, to place the sword and shield for you.”

“You put them there,” she whispered.

“I kept this scabbard for you.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Will you name your sword? It’s a tradition,” he said, “and one that adds power.”

“Solas. Light.”

“A good name. Will you let me mark it on the blade?”

She held it out to him and, touched by her faith, he laid a finger on the blade, engraved it with its name.

“Will you sit?”

“I feel like I could run ten miles.” She paced around the room, turning the sword so the blade caught the sun. “And then another ten.”

“Sit. Please.”

She sat, seemed to vibrate.

“There is no more I can teach you.”

She stopped admiring the sword to gape at him. “What?”

“You know more than I now. The knowledge is in you, and the power far beyond my own.”

“But … What do we do now?”

“The last part of your time here I’ll help you focus and hone what you have. We’ll sort out all you’ve been given today.”

“From the book, from the well.”

“Yes. But you’ve opened the book, you’ve taken the sword and shield. I can’t make you stay. I’m asking you to trust that I know you need the time we have left.”

It struck her like an arrow from a bow. “You’re saying I could go home now?”

“Yes. You’ve completed the quests, accepted your duties. You have the knowledge. You have skill.”

“But you’re saying, too, we still have work to do.”

“Yes.”

She rose again, wandered. “I want to go home. Sometimes I miss my family so much I can hardly breathe. I’ll conjure up the smell of my mom’s hair, or the way my dad’s hand feels when he takes mine, my brothers’ voices. Just to get through until I can breathe again. I want to go home so bad.”

“It is your choice now.”

“I want to go home,” she repeated. “But I know these two years—almost two now—weren’t just about training me and teaching me. That’s a big part of it, but the other part—the side part of it—was to get me used to being away from them, from home.”

He sat back. “This isn’t knowledge gained from the book, but from good logic.”

“You’re big on logic. I’m not going to be able to stay on the farm, stay with them. I don’t know where I’ll have to go, how far, how long. But I’m going to be away from home, and them. These two years will make it easier. I’ll miss them, but I won’t miss them so I can’t breathe. And the same for them, right? It’ll be easier for them.”

She sat again. “I know I’m not finished here. Not finished, and I need you to help me finish. So I’ll stay, and we’ll work for the rest of the time. But when I go home, I need some time to be home. To be with them. And there are things I need to do there, to start there. Before I have to leave home and them again, I need time with them.”

“It’s for you to say now, not for me.”

“Then that’s what I say. And there are things that need to be done, to protect them, when I have to leave again. When I have that time, and do what needs to be done, it’ll be easier to leave again.”

“Very well. For now, take Faol Ban and Taibhse on a hunt, or ride Laoch. Take your afternoon.”

“I haven’t done the potions.”

“You’ve done other things.”

“I’ll do the potions.” She rose, grinned. “It won’t take me long.”

“Arrogance.”

“Confidence,” she corrected, and got to work.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Summer came and went with hot, bright days filled with study and practice. With fall’s approach, hot days slapped against cool nights until the air went to war. In the distance funnel clouds swirled in skies purple as a bruise and fired stony pebbles of hail to tatter dying leaves.

The faeries murmured the war of wind, of ice and heat, served as a sign, as the time of The One’s training approached its end, and the true battle of light against dark began.

Fallon called it science.

Still, when storms broke over the cottage, they broke with the fury of driving rain and snapping lightning, the bellow of thunder that echoed, echoed through the woods.

Fallon brought one herself, with a snapping fury of her own, when Mallick pushed her through three rounds of conflict, then criticized her form.

She stood on boots caked with mud on ground boggy from the last rain and swiped the illusionary blood of the ghosts she’d defeated from her face.

“I beat them, all of them. Every time.”

“You’re wounded,” Mallick pointed out, “because you were slow, and you were sloppy.”

Her lungs burned, but that was nothing to the temper rising in her. “I’m standing. They’re not.”

As cool as she was hot—another clash and slap—he dismissed results, emphasized process. “Five times you lost your footing. Twice you failed to use your momentum and lost your advantage.”

“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

“Harsh language won’t keep you alive on the battlefield, and only emphasizes your weaknesses.”

“Fuck that, and you.”

Enraged, insulted, she conjured three ghosts, battered at them. Blind to all but the need to strike back, she sliced, hacked, blasted power that erupted in flame while her temper boiled. With the boiling came the wind, and then the thunder.

Kill, she thought, riding her own rage. Kill them all.

And then the lightning, red as the blood spattered over her, slashed across the bubbling gray sky, fired in spears and pitchforks. As she decapitated the last ghost, a strike shot down and cleaved the tree where Taibhse often perched.

It exploded, shooting out sharp darts and daggers of wood and shredded leaves.