Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(137)

She took her deep. “Get my mother, or another powerful healer. Tell her the burns are infected. She’ll know what to bring. Where’s Rachel?”

“Surgery.”

“Get my mother if you can, and have someone tend to you.”

“After Starr. I’ll get your mother.”

She began, and the pain turned her legs to water. She had to stop and start again, stop and start. She had the power, Fallon thought, but her experience remained limited.

Pale, drenched in sweat, she looked over as her mother came in with a tray of magickal supplies.

“Too much,” Lana said sharply. “Ease back, right now.”

“I think she’s dying.”

“It won’t help you to die with her. Slowly, Fallon. Layer by layer.”

Lana set the tray down, glided hands, light as clouds, over Starr. “We have to let the poison out. We need the athame, the cup, the healing powder. Watch.”

She drew the knife Fallon gave her over a seeping burn, caught the drainage in the cup. Then another, and another.

“Salt it, pour it out, wash and purify the cup. Next, we heal slowly, layer by layer, use the healing powder, and do it all again, and again, until she’s cleared of infection.”

They worked for more than two hours, and most of it under Flynn’s watchful eye.

Finally Lana mopped her face, laid a hand on Starr’s forehead. “She’s cool again.”

“She won’t die?”

Lana turned to Flynn. “She should have died. Anyone without her iron will would have died. She’ll have scars, inside and out. We can only heal so much. But she’ll live, and she’ll need someone she trusts to coat the burns we couldn’t heal through with a balm I’ll give you. Twice a day. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, she’ll let me. She might let Fred. She’ll let you now,” he said to Fallon. “She ran straight into a fireball. It would’ve taken out at least six, but she ran straight into it.”

“Do you know how many dead, how many wounded?” Fallon asked him.

“Nine dead on the field, another two touch and go. Wounded? Fifty, sixty. It would’ve been worse if it hadn’t been for you, Duncan, Tonia. You,” he said to Lana, “and your man. It would’ve been worse if the recruits you brought in hadn’t come swarming to fight.”

Flynn looked over at Lana, smiled a little. “Your son rallied them. Colin. That’s the word anyway. I’ll stay with her until she wakes up.”

“She won’t wake till morning,” Lana told him, and he shrugged.

“I’ve got nothing else to do.”

Fallon left the clinic, walked back to the field. The faeries had done their work, greening the grass, healing the trees. She imagined the non-magickals would do theirs as well, rebuilding the gazebo, the playground.

Symbols, she thought. They would not stop building, surviving, fighting, living.

She walked to Eric’s body and the two guards. “I’ll deal with this now.”

“Your father and Will, they said we should help you with him.”

“I need to do it alone.”

She waited until they left her. “The choices you made brought you here. I swear on my life over your death, your woman and what you made between you will end as you did. Not for vengeance. For justice.”

From where he sat in the shadows with his grief, Duncan watched her call the fire, spread it over the body at her feet. He heard the words she spoke, but only understood some of the Irish.

Fire of light. Body and soul.

She took handfuls of salt from a pouch, spread it over the ashes, drizzled liquid over it that squirmed, then stilled. With fingers curling through the air, she brought what remained of Eric Fallon up and into a box. She sealed it with a finger, with a line of light.

Slipping the box into the pouch, she called her horse, her wolf, her owl. Then lifting her sword toward the moon, vanished.

He thought he saw, as he sat in the shadows, light streak across the sky, send a shower of stars like rain.

The One rides to honor her blood, to protect the light, he thought as he got to his feet.

And so, until the end, would he.





EPILOGUE


Exhausted from the battle, from the healing, from the travel and the ritual, Fallon tended her horse, and freed her owl and wolf to hunt.

She wanted her bed, and nothing else. No questions, no comfort. No dreams.

Tomorrow, she’d speak to Colin, tell him her pride in his quick thinking, in his willingness to stay back with Travis and Ethan and protect the children.

Tomorrow she’d talk to the recruits, visit the wounded, speak to the loved ones of the dead.

Tomorrow she would plan and plot, but tonight, she only wanted sleep.

She went in the side entrance, forced herself into the shower to wash away the blood, the grime, the stench of battle, the smoke of spells.

She came out of the bath, intending on falling into bed. Duncan sat sprawled in the single chair she’d put in her sitting area. That was jolt enough, but the second was remembering she wore nothing but skin.

She hurled a curse at him, and embarrassed herself only more by the instinctive move to cover herself with arms and hands.

“Get out.”

“I didn’t come to catch you naked. It’s a nice bonus, but it’s not on me you’re not wearing anything. I need to talk to you.”