Page 177 of Crowning Aaron

Josiah doesn’t answer. His silence is loud enough.

“I don’t know that I can fight two evils at once,” he says instead, and for once there’s something almost human in his face, close to fear. “One, I can do all day. But Henry on one side and Anora on the other, both at full strength...” He shakes his head. “That’s the math where I lose, brother.” He tips his head toward me. “Unless we had an army.”

A grin spreads across my face. “An army, you say?”

He smiles back at me, curious, and I hold out my hand. “Come on. Let me show you what I’ve been cooking up out here while you all thought I was just playing house.”

Josiah takes my hand. I pull the world thin and take us to the field.

It opens up around us, miles of it, the wide flat training ground I carved out past the eastern wall, and whatever Josiah came here to say, he loses it.

Hundreds of them. Thousands, if I’m honest, witches and warlocks ranged across the grass in formation, casting in unison, light cracking off their hands in disciplined waves, the air full of the roar of magic. All those years they spent forgetting how to fight. I gave them a reason to remember.

When they catch sight of me at the edge of the field, the front line goes down. It ripples back from there, rank after rank dropping to a knee, heads bowing, until every soul on that field is kneeling in the grass with their faces turned to the ground.

Josiah stares. “Oh, my.” He looks out over them, then back at me. “You didn’t just bring the Glen back from the dead, Aaron. You forged the whole place into a weapon.”

I bow my head to my people, and they rise as one and turn back to their work.

“When you need me,” I tell Josiah, watching them, “you call on me. That’s all. You, Layla, Wintermoon, everyone Amir’s trying to protect, none of you has a single thing to fear as long as I’m standing. I can promise you that much.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while. He just stands beside me and watches the army move.

And standing there, with Jo on one side and a realm full of saved people on the other, I think about the lost kid I used to be. The one who built his whole life around a beautiful, rotten man who never once wanted him, who would’ve burned down the world for one drop of the wrong kind of love.

I think about how far I had to be dragged to get here, and everyone who did the dragging. My mother, who never stopped fighting for me even when I gave her nothing back. Eric, whotaught me exactly what kind of man I refused to become. Jacob, who was the father I had the whole time, even when I couldn’t see it. Wintermoon, that gave me a place to stand.

And Mara. Always, underneath all of it, Mara. The one who looked at the worst of me and stayed, and kept staying until it made me into someone worth it.

“Tell me,” Josiah says, quiet, his eyes still on the field. “What’s it like? Being a father?”

The question catches me off guard, coming from him.

“It’s a blessing, man. The best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I hold my hand out to him one more time.

“Come on. Would you like to hold him?”

Josiah looks at my hand, then at me, and something old and tired in his face eases.

“It would be an honor, brother.”

He takes my hand, then stops, his grip tightening before we go. “Wait. Does Angie know? Amir? Kade and Damon?” His gaze sweeps back over the army before it returns to me, and I just grin at him. The realization dawns across his face—I came to him first, trusted him with this before any of them.

Then I take us out, gone all at once.

The End.