Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(10)

“He chose,” Fallon murmured. After another breath, she squared her shoulders. “You need to tell me all of it. You can’t leave anything out. Will you tell me?”

“Yes.” Lana pressed her fingers to her eyes. She already knew, looking into those familiar gray eyes, what choice her child would make. “Yes, I’ll tell you everything.”





CHAPTER TWO


Fallon apologized. Colin shrugged it off, but since she knew from experience he held a grudge, she prepared for retaliation. With her birthday—and the choice—only weeks away, she preferred thinking about her brother’s revenge.

That was normal, that was family.

And she preferred the calculation in his eyes to the worry she often saw in her mother’s, her father’s.

She helped cut hay and wheat, harvest fruit and vegetables. Daily chores helped keep her steady. She didn’t complain about the kitchen work—or only muttered about it in her head. The end of summer and the coming of fall meant hours of making jams and jellies, canning that fruit and those vegetables for the winter to come.

A winter she dreaded.

When she could, she escaped, using her free time to ride the fields and the woods on her beloved horse, Grace. Named for the pirate queen Fallon had long admired.

She might ride to the stream just to sit and think—her baited hook in the water was an afterthought. If she brought home fish to eat or to barter, so much the better. But the hour or two of solitude fed her young, anxious soul.

She might practice little magicks there—calling the butterflies, making the fish jump, spinning little funnels of air with her fingers.

On a hot day of bold sun and stingy breezes that seemed to claim summer would never end, she sat in her favorite spot. Because she wanted to read, her fishing pole hung magickally suspended over the stream.

She could make the fish bite the bait, but such powers—she’d been taught—were only to be used to feed real hunger.

Birds called now and again. She heard an occasional rustle in the understory. If she hadn’t been deep in her book, she would have tested herself to identify the sounds. Deer, rabbit, squirrel, fox, bear. And more rarely, man.

But she enjoyed letting herself slide into a story—a really scary one—about a young boy with a gift, with a shining (a light), trapped in an old hotel with evil.

She didn’t pay attention to the plop of the water, even when it repeated. Not when the bushes shaped like animals outside the evil hotel moved, not when they threatened the boy.

But the gurgling voice got her attention.

Her heart, already racing from the story, gave one hard thud as she heard her name whispered in that watery voice. And the water in the stream rippled.

Cautiously, she set the book aside and rose, one hand on the knife in her belt.

“What magick is this?” she murmured.

Was it a sign? Was it something dark come to call?

Her name came again, and the water seemed to shudder, to writhe. Butterflies that had danced along the water’s edge swarmed away in a buttercup-colored cloud.

And the air went silent as a grave.

Well, she wasn’t a little boy in a book, she reminded herself, stepping closer to the edge of the stream.

“I’m Fallon Swift,” she called out over the beat of blood in her ears. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I have no name. I am all names.”

“What do you want?”

A single finger of water rose up from the rippling stream. It only took her a second to recognize which finger, and the meaning. But it was a second too late.

They hit her from behind, three against one. She face-planted in the water, then surfaced to the sounds of her brothers’ hilarity.

After she swiped her dripping hair out of her eyes, she found the bottom with her feet, stood.

“It took three of you, and an ambush.”

“ ‘Who are you?’ ” Colin repeated in a quaking voice. “ ‘What do you want?’ You should’ve seen your face!”

“Nice to see how you accept apologies.”

“You deserved it. Now we’re even.”

Maybe she had deserved it, and she had to give him credit for biding his time, enlisting his brothers. Even more, she had to admire the complexity and creativity of the trick.

But.

She considered her options, the humiliation if she failed, and decided to take the risk.

She’d been practicing.

While her brothers laughed and did their victory dance, she spoke to her horse, mind to mind. Moving forward, Grace head-butted Colin into the water.

“Hey!” Shorter than Fallon, he tread water, managed to find his footing. “No fair.”

“Neither is three against one.”

Mad with laughter, Ethan jumped in. “I wanna swim, too.”

“What the heck.” Travis toed off his shoes, cannonballed in.

While the boys splashed and dunked each other, Fallon rolled over to float. This time she spoke mind to mind with Travis.

This was your work.

Yeah.

I apologized.

Yeah, but he needed this. And it was fun.

He turned his head, smiled at her.

Plus, it’s a hot day.

The middle finger was rude.

But funny.

She couldn’t hold back her own smirk. But funny. I need a few minutes alone with Colin.