Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(94)

“I’d take them one at a time,” Fallon told her. “Up with me. They’ll be safe. I promise.”

“Come on, babe.” Simon gave Lana a wink. “I know I want a spin. I bet you do, too.”

“Me first! I’m the oldest,” Colin claimed.

“Ethan first,” Fallon corrected. “He asked first.” She whistled.

Laoch didn’t need wings to fly over the paddock fence. He took it in one fluid leap.

Maybe Lana held her breath when her daughter launched into the golden saddle—and muttered a little prayer when Simon gave Ethan a boost up behind her—but she knew when she was outnumbered.

“Hold on to me,” Fallon told Ethan.

Wings spread out; forelegs lifted. And Lana watched her girl and her youngest take to the air with Ethan’s gut-deep laugh rolling.

Magnificent, she thought. Spellbinding. A sister giving her brother the thrill of his life, yes, but more. A warrior on her warhorse.

“She’s the same,” she told Simon. “But not the same.”

“She’s still ours. That’ll never change.”

They took the day for fun, for love. Accepting Colin’s other challenges, Fallon scaled trees, dived from branches, executed flips.

With Travis she walked to the apple tree and the dogs’ graves.

“It hurt Dad most,” he told her. “They were his mom’s. Ethan told Dad they had to go, the night they died. You know how he knows with animals and stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“Dad sat with them, even when they went to sleep, and sat when they went away, you know. It hurt him the most.”

She put her arm around Travis’s shoulders. “They were family, and his family first.”

“They need to know the other stuff. The stuff you’re not saying. I don’t know what it all is. I can see more than before you left, but you can block better.”

“And you know trying to see is rude.”

He only shrugged. “Sometimes you gotta be rude. I know some’s about the sword. Can I see it?”

She took it out of the sheath, and after only a brief hesitation let him hold it. “What’s the word on it? Is it like … the sun?”

“Close. Light. Its name is Light. And none who would use the light for dark will lift it. As I took it from the fire, so will I raise it in battle, and the blood that stains it will be the blood of the beast and all who follow. And though it bring death, its blade shines clean. Light for life.”

Travis handed her back the sword as she breathed out again. “You got spookier.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Do we need to learn how to use swords?”

“Yeah. I’ll teach you.”

“Cool.”

She’d hoped to put it off at least for a few days. To set aside the hard things and just be home. But Travis was right. Her parents needed to know. All she had to do was figure out how to tell them.

She stayed in the kitchen with Lana when the boys went out with Simon to feed the stock. And with the scent of the ham baking—her favorite—she helped prepare potatoes for roasting.

Surprise return notwithstanding, Lana would put on a feast.

“I did most of the cooking at the cottage. Mallick’s a really terrible cook. It only took a couple of meals to realize you’d done me a big favor teaching me to cook. I got pretty good at it. Not as good as you, but pretty good.”

“You were always pretty good at it.”

“One of the faeries was a baker. She showed me how to make what she called Rainbow Cake. It’s really good.”

“You’ll teach me the recipe?”

“We need a sprinkle of faerie dust—from the little ones. It’s what adds the rainbow. I met Max Fallon.”

“I never thought of using … What?”

Lana, chopping herbs, looked up. “Max? You had a vision?”

“No, Mom, not a vision. I met him. I talked to him, like I’m talking to you.”

“He died, Fallon.”

“I know. It was the first Samhain I was gone. It was, during the ritual, the first … rushing in of power, real power in me. I called him, I guess. I didn’t realize it, not really. And that night, I snuck out to try to track the wolf, and I met him. My sire.”

“Max.” Carefully, Lana set the knife down, walked over to sit. “On Samhain, when the veil thins.”

How her mother would feel, Fallon couldn’t know. But it had to be said.

“He came to me. He loved you, Mom, and me. He’s proud of you, and me. We walked together in the woods, and I took him to the faerie glade. We had the whole night to talk, for me to really know him.”

Fallon went to Lana, knelt down, took her hands. “You need to know what he told me. You need to know he’s happy, and he’s grateful you found Simon.”

“Oh, Fallon.”

As tears fell on their joined hands, Fallon squeezed tighter. “He’s grateful you found someone so good, so strong, someone you love and who loves you, and me. He’s happy you—we—built a life and family.”

“You had that time with him, and that—I can’t even tell you what that means to me. You both got back something that was stolen. I loved him, Fallon. I see him when I look at you and love him. But—”