Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(68)

She’d looked into the Midsummer balefire, and the pipes and drums of the feasting turned to beats of war. She’d looked, seen her future.

She went into the empty cottage and, for the first time in months, locked herself in her room. Curled on her bed, she cried herself dry. Before dawn broke, she—a girl still shy of her fourteenth birthday—made her third vow of the night.

That those would be the last tears she shed over what was to come.

She didn’t see a sign of Mick for a week, which was fine with her. Determined, she pushed Mallick to teach her more, give her more, test her more. By week’s end she could make those demands in Spanish and Portuguese.

He knew something troubled her, but when he tried—perhaps clumsily, he admitted—to learn the trouble, she’d snapped shut. A locked box.

He could also admit her sudden, insatiable hunger for knowledge and skill exhausted him. So when she rode out on Grace or Laoch, he sighed with relief. And took a nap.

Because in the evenings, she peppered him with questions about battles he’d fought, battles he knew. Tugging, pulling, digging for every detail, debating until his mind blurred on why a battle was lost or won.

He knew she did the same with Minh, Thomas, the faerie warrior Yasmin. Not just of battles, but locations. Camps and settlements, numbers, containment facilities, internment camps.

He suspected she’d had an argument with Mick, as he hadn’t seen the boy around the cottage, and a casual query about him had a heated Fallon snapping back with: Why should I know?

But Mick came around again, and Fallon’s initial coolness toward him appeared to wear off. Though she rarely ran the woods with him as she had now that she spent more time with Mallick himself, or the elders from the clans and packs.

As summer slid away, he no longer held back during sword practice. And still she bested him nearly half the time.

She grew taller, her muscles sharper, leaner. She laughed rarely, and he found he missed the sound of it. And regretted, as they came to the close of their first year together, seeing the cool-eyed warrior consume the girl.

On her birthday, knowing his own lack of skill, he asked one of the elves who baked for a spice cake. He gifted Fallon with a wand he’d created himself from a branch of a rowan tree found on a long-ago journey to the Himalayas. He’d tipped it with a crystal of pure, clear quartz, carved into it symbols of power, then used three strikes of lightning to strengthen, imbue, and consecrate.

He’d made it for her a century before her birth.

“Mallick, it’s beautiful.” She lifted it, turned it in her hand to test it. “And strong. Thank you.”

“It will serve you. You can practice with it by creating a cloaking spell. When we return.”

“Return? Where are we going?”

“As it’s the anniversary of your birth, I will take you to the rise over your farm so you can see your family.”

Her face shuttered. “There’s no need. They’re safe, that’s what matters. If you’d take me somewhere for my birthday?”

She rose, got one of the maps, spread it out. “Take me here.”

Frowning, Mallick looked where she’d slapped her finger. “Cape Hatteras. This is North Carolina. Why?”

“Hatteras Village on the cape, specifically. Maybe I want to see the ocean. I never have. Maybe I want to walk on the beach.”

“But this isn’t why.” Disappointed, he stared into her eyes. “You don’t give me truth.”

“It’s not a lie.” She shrugged. “I’d like to see the ocean and walk on the beach because I’ve never done either. But I want to go because this is one of the containment centers Minh knows of. It was, anyway. I want to see if it still is, see what the setup is, the security, the numbers.”

He could refuse her. But he couldn’t think of a reason to do so—and he knew that before long she wouldn’t need him to astral project.

“Very well.”

“Now?”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Now.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


She stood on a beach—golden sand—and saw the ocean.

Vast, powerful, its greens melted into blues, waves rose, fell, spewing white froth like liquid lace. The sun, glorious in a cloudless bowl of sky, rained down on it to drop dancing points of light.

It took her breath.

She’d seen it in pictures, in books, on DVDs, but the reality of it swept all that aside. The sheer wonder of it blew through her. The sound of it, its booming, booming heartbeat, that throaty roar of constant movement, echoed inside her.

Overhead, seabirds winged and rode the current of air over water and sand.

She drew in its scent—one she’d never experienced—and let the sheer life of it wash over her in the quick wind that whipped at her shirt.

Unable to resist, she stepped forward. Water lapped over her boots as she crouched down to dip her fingers into the Atlantic. “Cool.” Then touched a finger to her tongue. “Salty. We could find ways to extract salt.”

Even as her mind worked that problem, she picked up a little white shell. Then two more. She thought of Colin, and how he’d enjoy them for his treasure box.

Standing, she slipped them into her pocket. As she did, she caught the flash, a shimmer, a splash.

“A fish that big would feed the camps and packs altogether.”