Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(88)

“I want to go home,” she repeated. “But I know these two years—almost two now—weren’t just about training me and teaching me. That’s a big part of it, but the other part—the side part of it—was to get me used to being away from them, from home.”

He sat back. “This isn’t knowledge gained from the book, but from good logic.”

“You’re big on logic. I’m not going to be able to stay on the farm, stay with them. I don’t know where I’ll have to go, how far, how long. But I’m going to be away from home, and them. These two years will make it easier. I’ll miss them, but I won’t miss them so I can’t breathe. And the same for them, right? It’ll be easier for them.”

She sat again. “I know I’m not finished here. Not finished, and I need you to help me finish. So I’ll stay, and we’ll work for the rest of the time. But when I go home, I need some time to be home. To be with them. And there are things I need to do there, to start there. Before I have to leave home and them again, I need time with them.”

“It’s for you to say now, not for me.”

“Then that’s what I say. And there are things that need to be done, to protect them, when I have to leave again. When I have that time, and do what needs to be done, it’ll be easier to leave again.”

“Very well. For now, take Faol Ban and Taibhse on a hunt, or ride Laoch. Take your afternoon.”

“I haven’t done the potions.”

“You’ve done other things.”

“I’ll do the potions.” She rose, grinned. “It won’t take me long.”

“Arrogance.”

“Confidence,” she corrected, and got to work.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Summer came and went with hot, bright days filled with study and practice. With fall’s approach, hot days slapped against cool nights until the air went to war. In the distance funnel clouds swirled in skies purple as a bruise and fired stony pebbles of hail to tatter dying leaves.

The faeries murmured the war of wind, of ice and heat, served as a sign, as the time of The One’s training approached its end, and the true battle of light against dark began.

Fallon called it science.

Still, when storms broke over the cottage, they broke with the fury of driving rain and snapping lightning, the bellow of thunder that echoed, echoed through the woods.

Fallon brought one herself, with a snapping fury of her own, when Mallick pushed her through three rounds of conflict, then criticized her form.

She stood on boots caked with mud on ground boggy from the last rain and swiped the illusionary blood of the ghosts she’d defeated from her face.

“I beat them, all of them. Every time.”

“You’re wounded,” Mallick pointed out, “because you were slow, and you were sloppy.”

Her lungs burned, but that was nothing to the temper rising in her. “I’m standing. They’re not.”

As cool as she was hot—another clash and slap—he dismissed results, emphasized process. “Five times you lost your footing. Twice you failed to use your momentum and lost your advantage.”

“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

“Harsh language won’t keep you alive on the battlefield, and only emphasizes your weaknesses.”

“Fuck that, and you.”

Enraged, insulted, she conjured three ghosts, battered at them. Blind to all but the need to strike back, she sliced, hacked, blasted power that erupted in flame while her temper boiled. With the boiling came the wind, and then the thunder.

Kill, she thought, riding her own rage. Kill them all.

And then the lightning, red as the blood spattered over her, slashed across the bubbling gray sky, fired in spears and pitchforks. As she decapitated the last ghost, a strike shot down and cleaved the tree where Taibhse often perched.

It exploded, shooting out sharp darts and daggers of wood and shredded leaves.

Drenched, muddy, stunned, she ran toward the blaze. “Oh God! Taibhse!”

“He was wise enough to keep his distance from your temper and stupidity.”

She searched the sky, looking for the spread of white wings as the boiling clouds folded back into themselves. “He’s all right? He’s okay?”

“You’d know if he wasn’t.”

Trembling, she shoved her dripping hair out of her eyes. “I could’ve … I was so mad, but I didn’t mean to—”

“ ‘Mean to’ is nothing. You endangered others, you destroyed a living thing out of pique. You misused your gift.”

He didn’t shout; she’d have preferred it. Instead his voice dripped with a disgust that crushed her.

Tears swam into her eyes. It hurt her stomach to hold them back, but she held them. She didn’t deserve the comfort of tears.

“I’m sorry. I have no excuse. But—”

“ ‘But’ precedes an excuse.”

She swallowed it, though it went down hard and bitter.

“Clean up your mess,” he said, the words so cold she shivered. He walked away from her, closed the cottage door firmly behind him.

Sickened, shattered, she shut down the rain and walked to the smoldering remains of the tree. She watched smoke rise into the blue sky of summer, cooled the debris.