For a moment, I can only stand, white-faced and silent, as Falkirk sags heavily in my arms, his shimmery-white-haired head lolling on my shoulder. He grits his teeth, breathing fast and shallow. Grips the knife in his hand and yanks it out of himself. Blood spurts, fountain-like, as he flings the blade away. It rings as it bounces on the bloody flagstones. Fal's green-tinged grey eyes roll back in his head as he faints.

With barely a thought, I change form, shifting my body to grow larger, more muscled. A size where I can carry Falkirk comfortably.

Because there is no way I am letting this boy out of my sight again.

I cradle him in my arms, my emotions coming back to crash inside of me in all of their unmuted, desperate fury.

I am angry. Supremely irate. Furious.

And worried that this will be the last time I hold my living brother in my arms. That knife was close to the heart. Too close. There is too much blood. My brother's manna is leaking out with it almost as fast as I can pour my own manna into him. Right now, I'm all that's keeping him alive.

I jog, nearly running, toward the main keep of the palace. Toward somewhere where we will be safe.

Acting only on impulses, I ensconce the keep, the courtyard, the whole palace in the shimmering bubble of a mage-shield. What enemy forces are left outside cannot get in, no matter how hard they try, and what foes are trapped inside are left to my tender mercies as I drain their manna past the dregs, leaving their bodies lifeless husks. Take in as much of their life-force as I can because I am pouring all of my own into my impossibly massive shield and my unconscious, bleeding brother. With an effort, I refrain from draining my brother's forces of their life. I suck in the manna greedily, trying to keep three things alive all at once.

Even so, it's a wonder we make it into the keep and into Falkirk's bedroom. I heave him onto his bed; he lolls limply, blood soaking his shirt, soaking me, soaking the bedsheets much too fast. I press my hands over that awful wound, as I shrink back to my normal size. Press hard.

"Come on, Falkirk." I mutter from between clenched teeth. "Help me out here. Wake up!"

Something kindles inside of me, some magical potential previously untapped. Something clicks into place inside of my mind and I growl out some arcane word.

Silvery light flares from my hands, warm and cold all at once. Beneath my hands I feel Falkirk's skin and muscle writhing as it knits back together. A moment later the blood stops flowing from the wound altogether. I step back, relieved and astonished.

I have never, ever, been particularly skilled at making healing spells work. Neither has Falkirk. It's a weakness of ours. When we try to heal, our magic often backfires.

Falkirk stirs and opens his eyes. They lock with mine, and our twin bond roils with emotion.

Anger and remembered pain from him.

Relief and waves of nearly-nauseating hot-cold fury from me.

My brother opens his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it.

"How could you?" I am shaking with the force of my anger. Take a step toward him. Falkirk's eyes widen in astonishment.

"How could you," I repeat, my hands balled into fists, "do such a fools-cursed, bullheaded thing like that?"

"Thank you for saving my life?" He tries. I shake my head, laugh mirthlessly.

"Oh, no, no, no." I say, turning away, beginning to pace. "You're lucky I got here in time to do that. I nearly lost you, Falkirk!" I spin and hurl the words at him with all my might. "Do you understand that? I have told you not to be reckless time and time again, and what do you do? The second an army crests the horizon to challenge your power, you have the nerve to let them cross those fields. You're a powerful mage, you could have blasted them to oblivion before they ever got close, I've seen you do it before. But noooo. You had the nerve to let them get close to the walls! And then, you let them get inside the gates! You didn't even cast a shield over the palace!"

His face turns sullen. "I thought I could take them."

I bark out a laugh. "'Thought'. 'Thought'!" I wheel on him. "Curse your pride, Falkirk! I'll not be surprised if, one of these days, your fool puffed-up head carries you off into the clouds! And you have to add recklessness on top of that! Unbelievable!"

Falkirk sits up straight. "I'm the reckless one?"

I ignore him, continue ranting. "Are you even listening to a word I'm saying? I feel like I'm serving a child! Do you not know how much I, and every one of your men out there-- who I so thoughtfully spared, by the way-- need you? How much you mean to me? Of course you don't, you selfish fool. You're just going to keep on putting yourself in danger, taking needless risks, and for what? To prove that you're great? You already are! But much more of this, and it's going to get one of us killed one day! Maybe me! Do you really want that? Because that's what you're going to get if I have to keep hauling your sorry butt out of every trouble you get into, which I wouldn't have to be doing if you weren't so drat-blasted reckless, Falkirk!" I shout.

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"I'm the reckless one?" He repeats, his voice dangerously soft. "I'm the restless one?!" He siphons manna from me, which is a gross breach of etiquette and only makes me angrier. Rises and steps over to stand before me, fury radiating from every line in his body. He's nearly spitting mad, but so am I. I stand up to him, chest to chest, matching ire for ire. Our emotions are only amplified by our twin bond, and now we're riding off of those crashing waves. It's only making this worse.

"You're the one who gets to go off on hare-brained adventures, risking your life time and time again!" He yells down at me.

"Yeah, well, you're the one who sends me off on those 'hare-brained adventures'!" I shout back, up into his face.

"Don't you dare do that to me!" He lifts a finger at me.

"You're the one who wanted to rule!" I shoot back. "So deal with it! This is the life that you chose! You are our king, and we need you! I need you. Safe and alive and whole and well, Falkirk." I quiet down, and my voice breaks as I say, "Because you are everything I have left, Falkirk. You are half of me. I am nothing without you. And if I lose you--" A sob hiccups in my chest as my anger rushes from me as fast as the sea retreats before a tidal wave. Bone-liquifying relief is all that's left. That, and grief at the 'almost-happened-what-could-have-been'.

I drop my head as tears slide down my cheeks. Falkirk's anger ebbs as well, as he feels my emotions and responds. He sighs. Wraps his arms around me. I lean into him. I can count on one hand the number of times my brother and I have fought over the years. Now I have one more to add to the tally. It sours my stomach.

"I can't lose you." I whisper against his chest. I hear his heart beating, strong and healthy beneath his rent shirt, and my breath hitches again. More tears slide from beneath my eyelids.

Falkirk's hand rubs circles on my back.

"And I can't lose you." He replies. "How about this: you don't take unnecessary risks, and I won't either."

I pull away and look up into his face. He smiles sadly.

"Deal." I say. Then I crush him into an embrace. "I love you so much, Falkirk D'Adrian. Don't you ever forget it."

"I won't." He says, hugging me back. "I love you too, Blackbird. More than life."

It's with foot-rooting reluctance that I step back from his embrace.

"I left a fool paladin and his friends in the forest." I say, dropping my eyes, wishing I didn't have to leave. Not again. Not so soon. I press my hands to my face and take a deep breath.

"Then go." Falkirk says gently. He cups my face, lifts it to meet his gaze. "And forgive me for my anger. I should not have shouted at you."

"Forgive me." I reply.

"I do." He presses a kiss to my forehead. "Don't forget our deal."

"I won't." I promise. I lock eyes with him, pleading with him with my gaze, willing him to uphold his side of our bargain. Curse it all, I do not want to go.

But I do, digging my marble from my pocket and whispering to it, "Daniel."

I watch my brother until he is lost from my sight in the white mists of the in-between.

Daniel's waiting for me when I get back, standing there with his hands on his hips, facing me as if he knew exactly where I would appear.

My cells are pushed through the inter-dimensional barrier, and then I'm standing there in the forest, on grass, face stone, feeling still and empty. Drained.

Listless is a good description.

A second after I appear, Daniel rushes forward, placing his hands on my shoulders, bracing me.

"Are you alright? Avalon, are you alright?" He peers down into my expressionless face, worried and just a bit stern, as, behind him, his friends watch us from around a fire.

"What's happened?" Daniel presses.

I twist myself loose from his grip and walk away toward the trees.

"I don't want to talk about it." I say, my head still not on quite straight after my brother's brush with death and the fight that followed.

He follows me, and my anger kindles once more as I stalk away from him.

"Tell me," he says, "please. I want to help."

"I said I don't want to talk about it!" I shout at him over my shoulder.

"I just want to help." He stops and says helplessly. Spreads his hands, wide and empty. "What happened?"

I turn, all fire and anger.

"You can't help me! It doesn't concern you anyway!" I hurl the words at him with all the force I can muster, which is a lot.

And then, to my horror, I burst into tears. Sob into my hands like a child. In this moment, there is nothing more I want than to be near my brother. But he's half a continent away. And he can't come anyway. I feel his concern for me as he feels my swelling emotions at the same time that I feel his giddy rush as he absorbs a whole lot of manna at once.

Well, there go the rest of the challenging army. But at least Falkirk is safe. At that thought, I sob harder.

Daniel's strong arms wrap around me and he holds me close.

"Hush," he soothes. "Hush, my girl."

I want to push him away, but I can't muster the strength. All my ire is gone as fast as it'd come. Like wind spilling out of slit sails.

I am once again drained, empty of emotion.

"Now," the paladin says gently, "what happened? We were so worried when you disappeared on us like that, without an explanation. We didn't know where you had gone, or what had happened to you. All I knew is that you were not in danger, as your marble did not alert me."

I so desperately need someone, outside of my brother, to talk to, so I hiccup out a vague version of the story, leaving out names and details. Tell him only that my brother had been grievously hurt and when I berated him for his recklessness, my lecture had blown up into a big fight between us. How we had made up in the end, forgiven, but how I was still dealing with the emotions.

And I realize something as I pour out the surface of my heart to Daniel. I realize that it feels good to talk to someone about these types of things. Hard, but good nonetheless. I have always bottled up my emotions inside of myself, not daring to make friends with anyone but my brother, lest they be my next target. Fal always knows what I'm feeling, and I can always talk to him, and he understands me. But it's just not the same as an outside friend.

It's a pity that our friendship is built on eighty percent lies.

I suddenly wish it weren't. But it can't be helped. My brother comes first; this is what he wants.

So it is what I will do.