She looked up at Darlie. “You love your boys, I know you do. You want to tell me you wouldn’t fight with all you had if those who put that mark on your Charlie came back for him?”

“They won’t.”

“Mom.” Charlie put a hand on her arm. “She’s scared, that’s all. I was nine when they burned this onto me, and that was a year after soldiers—American soldiers—came in and took my mother away. She made me hide, so they didn’t find me when they came and dragged her away.”

He kept that comforting hand on his mother’s arm. “We thought we were safe, too. We weren’t hurting anyone, and we’d made a home, a small community of people who weren’t hurting anyone. But they came.”

“That was before, Charlie,” Darlie insisted. “That was before.”

“It was three years after the Doom, and they came for us. My dad was a marine, and he died in the Doom. He was proud to serve, too, but it was soldiers who dragged my mother away, three years after my dad died. I never saw her again. It was the PWs who caught me when I got away from the soldiers, and beat me and branded me. And would’ve hanged me like they did others if some locked up like me hadn’t fought back. Some of them died fighting so some of us could get free.

“My dad was a marine,” he said again, “and I know you were army, Mr. Swift. Just like I know if my dad was here, he’d say what you’re saying. You’re saying we’ve gotta learn to fight, gotta make an army. Mom.” He squeezed her arm when she let out a little sob. “You’ve gotta understand, my mother likely died protecting me, and I saw others die protecting me. And for ten years now you’ve protected me—eight years you’ve protected Paul.”

He glanced at the young man who’d become his brother, got a nod.

“It’s time we protected ourselves and you, and fight back.” Charlie, an elf with straw-colored hair and a small, jagged scar under his left eye where a ring on a fist had torn the skin, looked now toward Fallon. “Do you have the sword and shield?”

As Fallon nodded, Darlie’s voice cracked out.

“That’s nonsense. I’ve told you and told you—”

“It’s not.” Paul, compact and quiet, a serious seventeen who always weighed his words, spoke. “Charlie and me, we love you a lot, but it’s time you swallowed down what is instead of chewing on what you want.”

“She’s just a girl.”

“She’s my girl.” Simon kept his eyes on Darlie’s. He knew, and Fallon knew, he already had the others. “And I can wish all I want she was just a girl, and your boys were just boys. But that’s not how it is, and it’s never going to be how it is. We can put all that aside for now. It’s a lot to swallow down. But what we can’t put aside is we need to be ready and able and willing to fight for our families, our neighbors, our land, and the world we’re going to make out of what we have.”

“They used to call it boot camp.” Maddie went on with her knitting. “I’d say you’d be a fine drill sergeant, Simon. My sisters and I, and Lana, I’m sure, will be happy to help with magickal training. Why don’t you tell us how you want to set things up, Simon?”

He had a plan. Fallon realized he always had a plan.

Simon talked with the town elders, spoke with several others—former military—over a beer or a piece of pie.

He kept Fallon’s connection minimal with most of the nonmagickals. They had to get things started first, he explained, one step at a time.

He began, with other handpicked instructors, what he thought of as basic training. Ages sixteen and up. Always on a voluntary basis. For the younger children, he began the way he’d begun with his own. Calisthenics, sports, elemental self-defense.

He brought Fallon in, telling her the tactical way would be for her to straddle the line. Working with him, and working with her mother.

It appalled her to learn how many of the younger magickals had no training with their gifts, and how many of the older had either not explored theirs, or had let them go rusty.

Because, she understood, they wanted to believe as Darlie did. That they were and would remain safe, that their world was a kind of bubble that would never be penetrated from outside.

She understood also that her two years with Mallick had served her well. She knew how to train others, knew how to separate bullshit excuses from genuine concerns.

All through the spring, the blacksmith’s anvil rang. It wasn’t plowshares into swords—they needed to plow—but there was plenty of scrap metal, and a witch and alchemist who worked in the blistering heat of the forge to strengthen that metal.

Others melted metal to make bullets, and taught others how it was done.

Through the summer, into the fall, and to the first frost after her sixteenth birthday, Fallon taught and trained, conjured and brewed.

The soldier in her father watched her forge herself, as the smithy forged steel, into a weapon.

Sometimes with her father, sometimes with her mother—neither would let her go alone as yet—she flew on Laoch for supplies. Magickal and military.

But she went alone—what they didn’t know wouldn’t worry them—through the crystal deep at night to study unfamiliar land, to walk places on her maps she considered strategic.

Once she’d slipped through to stand near the rubble of a memorial for a once-great president. Cloaked in darkness she listened to gunfire, explosions, watched a trio of small tornadoes whirl over the city spitting black lightning.

And the Dark Uncanny who winged by like bats.

Why, she wondered, did those who wanted to govern, who surely wanted to rebuild the city that had once held all those traditions and governance, strike and fear the magicks that would help them? It made no sense, it had no strategy.

How many of her kind had they locked away, had they “tested,” tormented? Killed. Because they were different.

How did they justify hunting people down, even children?

And by doing so, they fought two wars—against the dark and the light—so their city, their capital remained a battleground.

While marauders roamed free, while violent cultists tortured and killed the innocent.

“This city is dead,” she said aloud. She could taste it in the smoke. “It won’t ever be what it was, what it might have been. And how much blood will fall because of people like you, people who fear and hate, when we rise up and fight back.

“And we will.” She put a hand on the hilt of her sword. “We will.”

She thought of her family, her neighbors, the sacrifice to come. Of New Hope, what courage and community could build—and lose.

“We will,” she repeated.

She supposed it was because New Hope came formed in her mind that she went there back through the crystal instead of home again.

For the second time she and Duncan drew swords. And for a second time, as dark covered both, steel met steel.

And as it rang, light burst, flooded them both for two heartbeats.

He swore, eased back. “This is getting to be a habit.”

Disoriented, a little dizzy, she struggled for dignity. “Maybe you’re just always in the way. What are you doing out here?”

“Security detail. What are you doing out here?”

She wasn’t entirely sure where here was, so evaded. “Just checking.”

She could smell the woods, and now that her vision adjusted after that burst of light, see them beyond a thin trickle of snow.

The shadow of a building, other structures—greenhouses. And a garden with … winter cabbage, and kale she identified by scent.

Beyond it a cornfield rustling dry with the first winds of winter.

The community garden, she realized. The cornfield where her father died. Murdered.

She took a step toward it.

Duncan grabbed her arm. “Hold on.”

It felt like the light, she thought, that blast when his hand gripped her. She shoved it off.

“I want to see.”

She walked over a dusting of snow.

As she did, she could see it, feel it. High summer, bright sun, music, color, smoking grills, the garden thriving.

Gunfire, screams.

“Someone died here, just here.” She looked down at the ground. “A woman, a witch, shielding a child.”