She pushed up from the table, paced the kitchen, their usual meeting place. “It’s man’s magick—the atomic, the nuclear, the remote killing. And it’s just as dark as a strike of black lightning or the shearing of wings, the hanging of children.”

“Logistically, realistically, what you’re talking about may be impossible.”

“Did anyone believe, logistically, realistically, that it was possible for billions of people to die within weeks across the planet? That a shield broken in a circle of stones in a field in Scotland would kill so many and, because of the killings, change the world?”

“No. We weren’t prepared.”

Now we have to be, she thought. We have to be prepared. “You and Mom insisted we study history, and we did. Wars, so many of them useless, waged for greed or twisted faith, and rebuilding from the rubble only to war again. But it changed, Dad, from spears and swords and arrows to guns, explosives to bombs. To weapons capable of wiping everything away. Oppenheimer was right: ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ We didn’t survive the Doom to let the rest fall. It’s easier to destroy than to build. We’ll find a way to make it harder, to take away the ability to kill masses.”

“So if we, I don’t know, turn bombs into flowers, we save the world with spears, arrows, and swords?”

“And tactics and courage and light.” Idly, she rubbed a hand on the cuff she’d made from the tree. “You’re thinking if we manage that, they’ll build bombs again. They’ll rebuild the cities, plant crops, make communities. And some will build bombs and weapons to kill masses again, and some of the some will do it believing it’s for defense, for protection, a deterrent.”

“Yeah. Still, it’ll take a while.”

She chewed over it, studied and considered methods from every angle she could devise. Every night now she went through the crystal. She stood on the tarmac of what had been O’Hare in Chicago. The tower that had guided the planes, gone. Planes in hangars, at gates, on runways, burned to husks. And the remains of bodies inside the husks, inside terminals, hangars, offices. No one had taken them out, buried, or burned them.

She walked the hallways of a small, rural hospital in Kansas, an empty school in Louisiana. She watched mustangs and elk, buffalo, red-tail deer run the plains in Montana.

She saw settlements as well, and farms, noted that most had regrouped, rebuilt in remote places.

Once she stood in a bunker deep inside a mountain. All the computers, the monitors, the controls lay dead and quiet. Her first instinct urged her to make certain they stayed that way because she recognized the place as not just for defense, but also capable of launching an attack.

But she’d learned, from her parents, from Mallick, from what lived inside her, to weigh instinct against cool blood. She didn’t know enough, she decided as she wandered the counters, the buttons and switches and keyboards. What if by trying to eliminate she awakened?

Instead, she searched through, impressed that men could build so much so deep.

And as she had with every other place she’d traveled to, she marked the site on a map.

That night she dreamed.

She stood in the moonlight and fog at the circle of stones, studied the scorched and cracked ground within. A weight lay on her, in her, like lead.

“So many lost, so much death.” Her voice flowed out across the empty fields to be whisked away by the wind. “Was it sacrifice so I could be? It’s my blood that opened the door to the light and the dark.”

“Our blood.” Duncan stood beside her. Older, as he had been in that long-ago dream. “We’re cousins, after all, if you go back a few centuries. Are you going to stand here and blame a young boy or the old man he became?”

“Your grandfather isn’t to blame. What used him is. Why was it allowed? Why wasn’t it stopped?”

“Why do you think questions always have answers?”

“Because they do.”

“Answer this: Are we really standing here now, or is it another dream?”

“Both.”

He grinned at her, took her hand. So much of the weight, so much, just fell away from her. “I’d rather be in bed with you than standing in the damn field debating the whys and philosophies.”

“You kissed me in the snow.”

“You didn’t say no.”

He kissed her now, under the moon, just as fierce and rough as he had in the thin snowfall.

White, she thought as she moved into him. White snow, white moon.

Then the crows screamed, a black circle overhead. And in the trees, in the rising fog, something dark as death stirred.

“It’s time,” Duncan said to her.

She nodded, drew her sword and, lifting it, burned the crows to ash. With him, she turned toward the trees and what waited.

“It’s time,” she agreed, and charged with him.

She woke, the candle she’d lit in sleep burning, the crystal shimmering clear. She picked up the teddy bear Ethan had kept for her faithfully, stroked it.

“It’s time,” she whispered, and rose to tell her family.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Fallon waited—animals had to be fed, eggs gathered, cows milked, stalls mucked and rebedded.

She helped with breakfast, and said nothing, as she realized she needed to speak to her parents first. Alone.

Knowing Travis, she kept her mind and her feelings shut down even as she took moments to study each of her brothers in turn.

Colin, tall and tough, shoveling in his food as he talked about sword practice. Not long before—yesterday, it seemed to her—he’d have been talking about going fishing or shooting baskets after lessons and work was done.

Travis, wily and wiry, taking his time with the meal, not planning a prank as he once would’ve been, but more likely thinking about shooting his bow or learning a new spell.

And Ethan, kind and wise, sneaking bacon into his pocket that he’d divide in two for the dogs. And nagging his father to let him ride a bigger, faster horse.

Not children anymore, Fallon thought. Potential soldiers, warriors in the making. Her making.

But still brothers who’d argue, interrupt, and show their hurt when she told them she had to go.

She exchanged a look with her mother, then her father—one she’d perfected that said she needed to talk without her brothers.

She waited. The table needed clearing, dishes needed washing. Being relieved of chores would cause suspicion, so the normal routine had to run. The normality bringing her both pain and comfort.

“I’ve got a couple of things I need to do around here before I go into the village,” Simon announced. “You boys go ahead, saddle your horses, and ride in—straight there. No detours or screwing around,” he added with a meaningful look at Colin. “I’ll drop Fallon and your mom over at the Sisters and head in.”

“Can I ride Thunder?”

“No,” Simon told Ethan firmly. “You’re on Pixie.”

“Aw! Thunder wants me to ride him.”

“Then he’s going to be disappointed, too. You’re not riding a stallion. Not yet. Argue and I can find chores around here for you, no problem.”

“Jeez.” But since both his brothers had already raced out, he gave up and ran after them.

“Can we sit down?”

Lana walked back to the table. When Simon sat with her, they gripped hands under the table.

“I have to go.” She said it fast, shoving out the words she knew would hurt in hopes of lessening the pain.

“Are you sure?” Lana asked.

“I am. I’m sure. I’m sorry.”

“When?”

She looked at Simon. “There are things I need, things I need to do before I leave.”

“A week? Can you wait a week, two at the most?”

“I … Yeah.” She’d expected more distress, and some argument about waiting months, not days. “I need to put together some supplies, and I want to plot out a route, and I thought you could both help me with that. I’ll need to enlist more people on the way, start more training camps. I know the route I took with Mallick, and I’ll start there. But I’ll need to veer off to reach New Hope. And I want to hit as many places as I can on the way where I’ll find people willing to fight.”