Labor and delivery. She laid a hand on the door, felt the power simmering. Her mother’s power. Heard Rachel’s calm voice reassuring, and the moans of the woman in labor.

“I do,” she repeated, and because that fate was in their hands, continued to the sprawling cafeteria set up as a ward for patients who needed continued treatment or observation.

Curtains—scavenged or fabricated—separated the beds and made an oddly festive show of color and patterns. The monitors beeped. Not enough, not nearly enough for so many patients. They would rotate them as needed, she knew.

She saw Jonah looking as weary as she felt hanging a fresh IV bag.

“Start on Jonah’s side,” Simon suggested. “I’ll start on Carol’s.”

So she walked to Jonah, and to the stranger with her eyes closed in the hospital bed. Under her eyes circles spread dark and deep. Her skin had a gray cast, and her hair—deep, deep black—had been shorn brutally short, like a skullcap.

“How is she?” she asked Jonah.

He rubbed tired eyes. “Dehydrated, malnourished—that’s common throughout. Burn scars—old and fresh—over about thirty percent of her body. She’s had her fingers broken and left to set on their own. Your mother worked on that, and we think she’ll get the use of her hands back. Her records show she was in there for over seven years, one of the longest in the facility.”

Fallon glanced at the chart. Naomi Rodriguez, age forty-three. Witch.

“The records listed an elf she’d taken into her care.”

“Dimitri,” Jonah told her. “He doesn’t know his last name, or remember it. He’s twelve. He’s okay, if any of them are. He finally agreed to go with a couple of the women we were able to release.”

“Okay. I want to—”

She broke off when the woman opened her eyes, stared at her. Eyes nearly as dark as the shadows dogging them.

“You’re The One.”

“Fallon Swift.”

When the woman groped for her hand, Fallon took it. Not physical pain, she realized—the medicals had taken care of that. But they couldn’t touch the mental anguish.

“My boy.”

“Dimitri. He’s all right. I’m going to go see him soon.”

“We’ll bring him to see you,” Jonah added. “As soon as we can. He’s safe now, and so are you.”

“They held a gun to his head, so I had to go with them. They said they’d let him go if I did, but they lied. Full of lies. They drugged me, and my boy. He was just a boy. They wouldn’t let me see him, but I could feel him, hear him. They kept us drugged so we couldn’t find our power. Sometimes they kept us gagged and blindfolded and shackled for hours, maybe days. They’d take us to that jackal and his devils to torture us. Some looked ashamed, but they took us to him. And they knew what he did to us.”

She closed her eyes again. Tears leaked out, trailed down her cheeks. “I lost faith.”

“There’s no shame in it.”

“I wanted to kill, at first I lived by imagining killing them all. Then I only wanted to die, just end it.”

“No shame,” Fallon repeated, and those anguished eyes opened again.

“But you came, even though I had no faith.”

Fallon leaned in. “Do you see me? Do you see the light in me?”

“It’s like the sun.”

“I see you, Naomi. I see the light in you.” When Naomi shook her head, Fallon laid her free hand on the woman’s cheek, let some of that light flow in. “They dimmed it, but I see your light. I see the light that shined, that took in a frightened boy, a small, confused, grieving boy, and gave him a home. I see the light that was willing to sacrifice herself for the boy. I see you, Naomi.”

Fallon straightened. “Now rest and heal. We’ll bring Dimitri to you.”

“I’ll fight with you.”

“When you’re well,” Fallon told her, and moved to the next bed.

It took nearly two hours. She joked with a soldier who claimed being shot, then kicked and stomped on was just a day in the life. She comforted the distraught, reassured the confused.

Before she left she saw the boy, the bone-thin boy with dark skin, sitting on the side of Naomi’s bed. Haltingly, he read to her in a voice rusty with disuse from one of the children’s books in the waiting area.

She slipped outside for some air, saw her father had done the same and was currently kissing her mother.

“You know, you guys don’t need to get a room. You’ve got a whole house.”

Lana turned bluebell eyes on Fallon, and smiled. “There’s my girl.” She moved quickly, gathered Fallon up tight. “You’re so tired.”

“I’m not alone.”

“No, you’re not.” She drew back. “We didn’t lose anyone. Thank the goddess.”

“Including the premature baby?”

“Including. It was rough, but I finally got the baby to turn. Rachel wanted to avoid a C-section unless he stayed breech.”

“He.”

“Brennan. Four pounds, three ounces, sixteen inches. Rachel’s still monitoring, but she’s pleased with him, and his mother. She’s one tough lady.”

“So are you. Now go home, check on Colin, then get some sleep.”

“I’m going to. We’re about to rotate here. Let’s all go home.”

“I need to talk to the people in the auditorium, then I’ll be home.”

With a nod, Lana ran her fingers through Fallon’s hair. “You’re going to find some of them need more time to acclimate. Katie’s working on housing—there are so many, and many of those shouldn’t be left on their own yet.”

“We’ve got volunteers who’ll take some in,” Simon pointed out. “Those who seem steadier can take some of the housing we prepped before the rescue. But some may just want to go.”

“They shouldn’t, not yet, but—”

“I’ll talk to them,” Fallon assured her, and guided her mother to the horses. “Wanna flash?”

“Actually, a ride would be good.” Lana waited until Simon mounted, held up a hand and swung up behind him, as if she—once an urbanite, a New York native—had been riding all of her life. “Come home soon,” she said, and nuzzled into Simon’s back, wrapped her arms around him.

Love, Fallon thought as they rode off. Maybe that was the biggest miracle. Feeling it, giving it, knowing it.

She swung onto Grace and rode toward the school hoping to convince the tortured, the exhausted, the sick at heart to believe.

CHAPTER TWO

When Fallon arrived home, she spotted Ethan coming out of the stables, the dogs Scout and Jem trotting at his heels, as usual. His recent growth spurt still gave her a little jolt. She remembered, clearly, the day he’d been born, at home, in the same big bed where she, Colin, and Travis had come into the world.

He’d let out a cry that had sounded to her ears like a laugh. When she’d been allowed to hold him the first time, he’d looked at her with those deep, deep newborn eyes, and she swore—still swore—he’d grinned at her.

As the baby of the family, his sunny nature revealed itself in that first laughing cry and every day since. But he was, Fallon admitted with some reluctance, no longer a baby.

Though he remained slight of build, he’d put on some muscle. He had their mother’s butterscotch hair and lovely blue eyes, but it looked as if he’d inherited their father’s height, as he’d sprung up inches in what seemed to be five minutes.

She smelled the stables on him—he’d been mucking them out, no doubt—as she dismounted.

“How’s Colin?”

“Mom says good. He slept the whole time she and Dad were gone. Probably still is.” As he eyed her, Ethan took Grace’s reins while the dogs leaped, leaned, and looked for attention. “You should sleep, too.”

“I will. Travis?”

“He came home for a few minutes, just to check in. He’s taking Colin’s schedule with the recruits, so he had to get back.”

Her middle brother may not have lost his penchant for a good prank, but he stood up. Travis always stood up.

“Grace is happy you took her for a ride,” Ethan said as he managed to nuzzle the dogs and the horse at the same time. When it came to animals, Ethan understood their thoughts, feelings, needs. That was his gift. “Now she’s hoping for a carrot.”

“Is that so?”

Fallon imagined the garden, the rows of carrots, the orange spears in the ground, the springy green tops. Choosing one, she let the words form in her head, flicked out a hand.

And held a carrot, fresh from the ground. Beside her, Ethan laughed.

“That’s a good one.”

“I’ve been working on it.” Fallon swiped the dirt off the carrot on the thigh of her jeans, fed it to her sweet, loyal mare.

“I’ll cool her down, get her settled,” Ethan said. “Go get some sleep. Mom said to tell you there’s leftover pasta if you’re hungry. They’re conked, too.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ethan.”

He started to lead Grace away, paused. “When Eddie got back—when I was over helping Fred with the farm, and he got back—he said what they did to the people you rescued was an abomination. That’s his word for it.”

“It was. It’s exactly the right word for it.”

“He said there were little kids locked up there.”

“There were. Now they’re safe, and they’re free, and nobody will hurt them.”

Those lovely blue eyes, so like their mother’s, clouded. “It never makes any sense, you know? Being mean never makes any sense.”

For Ethan, she thought as she walked to the house, the first choice and the last would always be kindness. She hated knowing he trained every day for war.

She considered the pasta, decided she was more tired than hungry, so went straight downstairs.