She rattled off several names for the detail, including her brother Colin.
“I’ll set it up,” Flynn said. “But Colin took a hit in the op, so—”
“What?” She whirled around to Flynn, grabbed his arm in a vise grip. “I’m just hearing this?”
“You’re The One, but the mother of The One is downright scary, so when she says keep it to myself, I keep it to myself. He’s good,” Flynn added quickly. “Took a bullet in the right shoulder, but it’s out, and he’s healing. Do you think your mom would go with enemy wounded if her son wasn’t okay?”
“No, but—”
“She didn’t want you distracted, and neither did your brother, who’s more pissed off than hurt. Your dad already shoved him in the mobile heading back to New Hope.”
“Okay, all right.” But she pushed her hands through her short crop of hair in frustration. “Damn it.”
“We freed three hundred and thirty-two, and didn’t lose anyone.” Tall and lean, eyes of sharp green, Flynn looked back toward the building. “No one will be tortured in that hellhole again. Take your victory, Fallon, and go home. We’re secure here.”
She nodded, and walked into the woods, breathed in the smell of damp earth, dripping leaves. In this swampy area of what had been Virginia, near the Carolina border, insects hummed and buzzed, and what she knew to be sumac grew thick as walls.
She moved through until she stood within the circle of the shimmering morning sun to call Laoch.
He glided down to land, huge and white, silver wings spread, silver horn gleaming.
For a moment, because despite victory she was bone weary, she pressed her face to his strong throat. For that moment she was just a girl, with bruises aching, with eyes of smoke gray closed, with the blood of the slain on her shirt, her pants, her boots.
Then she mounted, sat tall in the saddle of golden leather. She used no reins or bit on the alicorn.
“Baile,” she murmured to him. Home.
And he rose up in the blue sky of morning to take her.
When she arrived at the big house between the New Hope barracks and the farm where Eddie and Fred raised their kids, their crops, she found her father waiting on the porch, his boots up on the rail, a mug of coffee in his hand.
He’d had a shower, she noted, as his mop of dense brown hair still showed damp. He rose, walked down to her, laid a hand on Laoch’s neck.
“Go on in and check on him. He’s sleeping, but you’ll feel better for it. I’ll see to Laoch, then there’s breakfast for both of us keeping warm in the oven.”
“You knew he’d been hurt.”
“I knew he’d been hurt and I knew he was okay.” Simon paused when she dropped down. “Your mom said not to tell you until you’d finished. She said that’s that, and when your mom says that’s that—”
“That’s that. I’m going to see for myself, grab a shower. I could use that breakfast after. Travis and Ethan?”
“Travis is at the barracks working with some new recruits. Ethan’s over at Eddie’s and Fred’s helping with livestock.”
“Okay then.”
And now that she knew where her other brothers were, she went in to check on Colin.
She went inside, turned for the stairs in the house that served as home, but one she doubted would ever really be one. The farm where she’d been born, had been raised would forever be home. But this place, like the cottage in the woods where she’d been trained by Mallick, served a purpose.
She walked to Colin’s room, where he sprawled over his bed wearing an old, fairly disreputable pair of boxers. He snored heroically.
She moved to him, laid her hand lightly—very lightly—over his right shoulder. Stiff, achy, she noted, but a clean wound already well healed.
Her mother had serious skills, Fallon reminded herself. Still she took another minute, touched his hair—a darker blond than their mother’s and worn these days in what he thought of as a warrior’s braid: short and fat.
He had a warrior’s body—muscular and tough—with a tattoo of a coiled snake on his left shoulder blade. (Done at sixteen without parental permission.)
She stayed a moment in the chaos of his room—he still collected whatever small treasure appealed to him. Odd coins, stones, pieces of glass, wires, old bottles. And had never learned, apparently, to hang, fold, or put away a single article of clothing.
Of her three brothers he was the only one without magicks. And of the three, the one who seemed born to be a soldier.
So she left him sleeping, walked downstairs, down again to her rooms on the lower level.
Unlike Colin’s, her room was scrupulously neat. On the walls she’d pinned maps—hand drawn or printed, old and new. In the chest at the foot of the bed she kept books, novels, biographies, histories, books on science, on magicks. On her desk she kept files on troops, civilians, training, bases, prisons, food supplies, medical supplies, maneuvers, spells, duty schedules, and rotations.
On the stand by her bed sat a white candle, a ball of crystal—gifts from the man who’d trained her.
She shed her clothes, dumped them in the basket for later laundering. And with a heartfelt sigh, stepped in the shower to wash away the blood, the sweat, the grime and stench of battle.
She dressed in jeans, worn at the knees and barely hitting the ankles of long legs, a T-shirt that bagged a bit over her slim frame. She pulled on her second pair of boots until she could clean the ones she’d worn to battle.
She strapped on her sword, then went upstairs to have breakfast with her father.
“Your mom’s back,” he told her as he moved to the oven to pull out plates. “At the clinic, but back.”
“I’m heading over there after breakfast.” She chose juice, as she wanted something cool.
“You need sleep, baby. You’ve been up over twenty-four.”
Eggs, scrambled, bacon, crisp. She dug in like the starving. “You, too,” she pointed out.
“I caught some sleep on the way back—and had a nice porch doze, as my dad used to call it, before you got here.”
She shoveled in more eggs. “I don’t have a scratch on me. Not a single scratch. Soldiers I led bled. Colin bled. I don’t have a scratch.”
“You’ve bled before.” He laid a hand over hers. “You will again.”
“I have to see the wounded, and they should see me. And the rescues. Then I’ll sleep.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She glanced at the ceiling, thought of the soldier who slept. “You should stay with Colin.”
“I’ll pull Ethan back to sit with him. Your mom said he’d likely sleep until afternoon.”
“Okay. Give me a sense of the prisoners,” she said, and he sighed.
“A mix. Some hard-asses with a lot of hate and fear of magickals. They skew older, and it’s not likely we’ll have much luck turning them around. But we may be able to educate a few of the younger ones.”
“They need to see the lab recordings. They need to see people being drugged, strapped down, tortured, experimented on just because they’re different.”
Though what she’d reviewed at the prison turned her stomach, she continued to eat. She needed fuel to function.