Page 80 of Premonition of Peace

She smiled sadly. “You can’t have peace without war. Rage is war, but she’s alsoneeded.” My kinder, softer self scootched across the floor to take my hands. “We’re two sides of the same coin. You can’t have me without her.”

“It’s time,” Bad Nat said. “Put on your big girl panties and woman the fuck up. Open the door, Prime.”

I swallowed hard, my throat dry as a desert. “What if she tells me to go fuck myself?”

“What if she doesn’t?” Peace countered.

“Oh, she totally will,” Bad Nat chuckled.

“I—” The words halted on my lips. Excuses. It was all excuses, and we didn’t have any more time for them.

I had to make a choice.

Admit my mistake. Ask Rage to rejoin us. To fight with us.

Or die.

The six of us could fight Morgan Le Fay, but I had this feeling, this premonition, that we wouldn’t win. Not as six. Even with Rage, nothing was guaranteed.

But it was something.

More than the hopeless crushing feeling in my chest that we would fail. That I would never make it back to August, Marcel, or Lucifer. That all of the suffering we’d been through was for nothing.

I couldn’t accept that.

No one liked to be told they were wrong. Fewer would admit it. I promised myself then and there that if we came out of this on the other end, I wouldn’t stop there. I would learn from it.

And I would stop shutting them out and keeping secrets from them.

“I grow tired of the hide and seek, Nathalie,” The Morrigan’s haunting voice trilled. Another explosion sounded from in the house that I knew to be the dining room.

“I need to talk to Rage,” I said. “Can you buy me time?”

Bad Nat summoned a baseball bat out of thin air. She twirled it in a circle with her wrist and slapped the blunt end against her palm. I arched an eyebrow. “What are you going to do with that?”

Bad Nat rolled her eyes. “What do you think? Swing it at her. Duh. If we can bleed, so can she.”

Beside her, The Warden summoned a short sword. Something I saw years ago when I went through a phase where I was obsessed with human weapons. I learned everything I could about them and how to wield them.

In the real world, I probably wouldn’t stand a chance at being successful with these weapons. But here, in my domain?

I was going to fucking slay.

Me and my others.

As if on cue, Ann called up a utility belt filled with different colored vials. I’d bet the whole loci that those chemicals, when combined, exploded. It was a fitting weapon for my least emotional self.

“Alrighty then, you guys ready to do this?”

Ann, The Warden, and Bad Nat shared a look then nodded once. They disappeared a second later, leaving me with Caretaker and Peace.

“Where do you need us?” Caretaker asked hesitantly.

“Not with me.” I shook my head. “Join the others. I need to take of this myself.”

Peace gave me a slight encouraging smile and Caretaker’s eyes softened. “Speak from the heart,” the latter said.

I nodded once and they disappeared too.

---