With the cheers of victory ringing hollow in her head, she made her way back to her headquarters, and to her quarters. She found her father waiting for her.
Simon opened a bottle of whiskey, poured two glasses.
“Thanks, but I need a shower more than a drink.”
“Have the drink first.” He handed her the glass. “I want to say first I’m sorry about Mick. He was a good man, a good friend to you, a good soldier. He deserves us lifting a glass to him.”
Her eyes stayed as cold as fog over a frozen lake. “He deserves more.”
“Start here. I’ve spent more time than I like to think about in combat, and plenty of that time commanding others. I know what it is to lose men, as a soldier, as an officer, and what it is to lose a friend.”
Not the same, Fallon thought. Not the same. Not the same. “I didn’t feel her, didn’t see her coming, didn’t anticipate. If I had—”
“That’s bullshit. It’s understandable bullshit, but still bullshit.”
“She killed him because he mattered to me, because he loved me. I know what she is, but I didn’t see this. I wrapped my power into the spell to lock down the DUs who would slaughter us, every one of us, so I didn’t feel her coming.”
“She didn’t fight,” Simon pointed out. “Didn’t risk herself. Ask yourself why. Instead of asking yourself why Mick, ask why she didn’t strike at you, or me, your mom, your brothers, Duncan.”
“I don’t know.”
“Because you’re not thinking straight yet. It was of the moment, Fallon. It was convenient and low risk. He was with you. It was the easiest way to hurt you without putting herself on the line. She wants your pain, wants you to question yourself, blame yourself. Don’t give her what she wants.”
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t think past finding her, ending her.”
“If that takes front and center, you give her an advantage. That’s how she thinks, Fallon, and you’re smarter. Where was Allegra?”
She looked up, stunned she hadn’t asked herself the question. “I didn’t think past Petra, the dragon. I’ve seen the dragon fly over New York, over the shield in Scotland—but not Allegra. I didn’t think about Allegra.”
“Is she dead? Is she alive but too weak or damaged to join an attack? Is she alive and well and on other business somewhere else? Can’t know,” Simon added. “But you can know she wasn’t part of this. Petra did this on her own.”
“Yes, it matters. The answers matter. Petra said she didn’t care about losing New York, but of course she did. Of course she did,” Fallon repeated as she paced.
Now she’s thinking, Simon decided, and waited for the rest.
“She waited. She’s no soldier. She’s a killer, but not a warrior, so she waited. She must have been furious when we drove them out. She’s waiting to take a victory lap, and instead watches defeat. Of the moment, you said, and yeah, yeah, that was blind fury. Mick’s dead because she’s a killer, because, like Denzel was to Duncan, Mick was important to me. She probably stayed close all these weeks. Not close enough for me to feel her, to risk her own skin, but close enough.”
“She fears you, even though she thinks you’re weak.”
Fallon stopped. “Does she?”
“What would she have done in your place today? With the enemy trapped, defeated, helpless?”
“She’d have destroyed them all.”
“You didn’t, and she sees that as a weakness. You love, and that’s a weakness to her. She struck down someone you love to exploit that weakness.”
“She miscalculated.”
“I know it.”
“I can’t think, Dad.” Broken, she thought as she covered her face with her hands. Something broken in her. “I can’t feel past the grief and the fury under it, bubbling under it. I know what has to be done, but—”
“You need a little time.”
“I don’t have time for time. But—”
“Not all wounds are physical, Fallon. If you don’t take time, you’ll go into the next weakened. Take a couple of weeks, because love and grief aren’t weaknesses, baby. Every good commander knows when a soldier needs a couple of weeks to recoup. That includes you.”
“We need to rotate in fresh troops, leave a security force here, bring in people to help the resistance repair some of the infrastructure, others to plant in the green spaces. The Beach needs a commander, and one who can start leading some of its troops south. We need—”
“It’ll be a long list,” Simon interrupted. “Get your shower, we’ll get some other brains in on that list, get some food, and work it out. But first.”
He held up his glass, waited.
“Okay.” She let out a long breath, steadied herself. Then lifted her glass. “To Mick.”
* * *
Duncan headed the burial detail. Some would be transported back to their homes, but so many had no home other than the bases they’d migrated to. For those, he claimed a section of the park, one where the ground rose, where the trees grew thick.
It was heartbreaking, soul-searing work, and so he’d asked for volunteers rather than issuing orders for the detail. It revived him, his flagging spirit, that he had more than were needed. He split them up into groups assigned to separate the enemy dead, others to dig graves, others to make markers.
He spotted Tonia, worked his way to her. “Give yourself a break.”
“I will when you will,” she said, and kept shoveling.
“There are easier ways to dig a grave.”
“Sometimes you need to do something this way. We lost Clarence.”
“Shit.” Duncan felt his heart drop again as he thought of the boy they’d rescued from a cult, and the women who’d taken him as a son.
“And Keisha, Morris, Liah. Mick.” Tonia swiped at her face, leaned on the shovel. “Have you seen Fallon?”
“Not since … No. Colin said she’s holding, and they’re meeting now to work on reconstruction, cleanup, expansion.”
“Why aren’t you in on that?”
“I need to do this.”
“Me, too.”
With a nod, he picked up a shovel, helped her dig.
After friends, loved ones, comrades had been laid to rest, Duncan supervised the purification and burning of the enemy dead. Dusk crept in by the time he went back to the graves.
This he’d wanted to do alone.
Pulling up power, he brought the green springing through the mud, a hopeful sea of it over what he thought of as sacred ground. There would be a ceremony in the morning—even now Tonia worked on those arrangements. Words would be said, tears shed. But tonight, he’d pay his own respects.
He’d chosen this spot for the rise of land, the trees, and the rough rocks pushing tall out of the ground. Some formed wide steps, others peaks.
He’d already sketched what he wanted in his mind, and now used his magick to bring it to be.
He smoothed some of the rough. He sketched a great deal better than he sculpted, so worried a little he’d muck it up.
But he smoothed, formed, carved, etched, polished, let the image flow from him into the rock.