Book Review: House of Light and Ether

Title: House of Light and Ether
Author: Leia Stone
Genre: Magic, Fantasy, Fiction

What It’s About: Fallon wakes up in a dark space, and remembers that Master Clarke, her professor and her biological father, had come for her and touched her until she passed out. She makes plans to head out with Yanric, her familiar, but Master Clarke wakes up and asks her to give him a chance, because he will do whatever he can to save her. She agrees. One month later, Fallon still feels down, depressed, and slowly going insane—she hears voices inside her heard, though for a while Yanric has been bearing the brunt of this insanity, and Master Clarke believes these may be the voices of her ancestors—those whose powers she holds. Master Clarke yells at her to turn off her magic as a faucet, but she only seems to have gotten more powerful and more out of control, going as far as burning the book in his hands and his hands, before she’s able to snuff out the magic. That night, she leaves with Yanric and Ranger, her horse which had been gifted to her by Ariyon, her boyfriend and the Maven Healer. She rides day and night all the way to Nightling City, where she meets Marissa, her biological mother.

The two of them talk, and Marissa reveals that the voices that Fallon hears are indeed her ancestors, who are guiding her, and explains that the magic is intuitive, so there’s no reason to control it as controlling it tamps down the magical force. Fallon asks her if there is a way to control it and to stop the darkness, and at first Marissa does not answer, but when Fallon asks a second time and makes to get up, Marissa tells her that something could be done about it before telling her to take a nap. So Fallon falls asleep, while Yanric follows Marissa because he does not trust her.

Fallon wakes up to someone holding her down, resulting in immeasurable pain due to her curse, and Marissa feeding off of her. When Marissa finishes, Fallon tries to get up after using her magic to push Marissa away. She calls for Yanric, because she is extremely weakened from Marissa’s feeding, though Marissa does let the Nightlings know that she is back in her body and that she will do what she can to get them back their bodies. Suddenly she falls in pain, and Ariyon shows up telling her that now that she has a body he can hurt her. Ayden, Eden and Hayes also show up, and they all fight off the Nightlings, who disappear. Master Clarke is there too, and Yanric reveals that he overheard Marissa’s plan, then returned to Fallon but they had put her under some kind of sleeping spell so he couldn’t wake her. Instead, he ran for help. Ariyon suggests that she give him her magic, and he will carry the weight for her, but Fallon refuses to do so, and Master Clarke agrees that the problem won’t go away—it will now be Ariyon that they will have to worry about. He asks if it would be possible for them to go half on the magic. Ariyon mentions that it did happen at one point, and ultimately Fallon decides to try it, swapping half of their magic with each other. Immediately she feels lighter.

The group heads back out towards the Gilded City, and they come across Queen Solana, who is using her magic to protect herself. The Queen tells Fallon that she broke her promise, and they have a discussion about her returning to the Gilded City with free rein of the city. Ariyon stands up for Fallon and tells the Queen that he will leave with Fallon because he loves her and that they are a package deal. The Queen begrudgingly agrees to let Fallon back to the City, and they take her all the way to Bane Manor, where Fallon sees her father. He makes them food, and they catch up, before going to bed.

The next day, Fallon wakes up in the afternoon, talks to Daniella, the maid, who informs Fallon that she has a letter from her father, that all the kids had gone to the academy and that Ariyon had told her to let Fallon know to come to see him at his house. Fallon makes a plan, after reading the letter from her dad, who was taught by Ayden to write, and goes down to the basement where she picks up the shell. She goes to meet with Solana, and shares the shell with her—where Marissa could be overheard making plans about things. The two talk, with Fallon explaining some things about the prophecy including her death while saving the Gilded City, and Queen Solana gives her the medal for the Order that Fallon will be a part of, and tells her to wear it so that people will know that she had forgiven Fallon. Fallon then walks over to Avis’s Apothecary, where the two ladies talk some more, and Avis helps her write an apology letter to Blair. Fallon takes it to Blair‘s house, and leaves it there, only to be intercepted by Blair. Blair asks her what she is doing there, so Fallon explains, and Blair uses her magic to bring the letter to herself and read it. Blair also apologizes to her as well for her actions, before inviting Fallon into her home to meet someone.

It turns out that the person that Blair wants Fallon to meet is Blair’s mother, Lorraine, who is being kept outside in a guest house under the guise of a recluse by Blair’s own father. She explains that Lorraine is powerful—probably she was the second most powerful person in her year at the academy with the ability to glimpse the future, which is why Ethan Crawford married her after he found out that Solana wouldn’t be able to have children. But this power comes with terrible side-effects: Lorraine slowly loses her ability to see, remember, and more, when she sees the future. Blair believes that it may be because she was abandoned at Moonreach, and may be the offspring of an Eldor Fae and Magicless fae. Lorraine is so pleasant to Fallon, though she forgets that Fallon cannot be touched, and she reveals her own vision—Fallon finds the Shadow Blade at some event where they are canoeing and in the mountains, which she will wield and activate and it will suck in Nightlings at the expense of her own life, and she will be using a portal to move people from the West Side to Bane Manor to save the lives of many. Fallon realizes that this confirms what she was already told by Emmeric, and once Lorraine leaves, she makes Blair promise to not tell anyone that she will die, while simultaneously promising that she will not say anything about Blair’s mother.

She goes to Ayden’s and Aryion’s house, and they’re hanging out when a guard comes up to them telling that someone with tattoos is at the door of the Gilded City talking about Ariyon. So Ariyon, Fallon, Ayden and Eden get on horses and ride for the city gates, where they see Pax, who has now passed the trials in the Realm of Rebirth and is struggling with bloodlust. Ariyon sends Ayden and Eden away to get help from Avis, while he and Fallon take Pax back to Bane Manor. Ariyon explains that Pax is smelling magic, and Fallon’s father being magicless will be the one who will be able to see him through the bloodlust during the month-long period. They explain that to Fallon’s father, and then she goes to stay with Ariyon, where they share the bed together for the first time.

Fallon visits Avis’s ice cream shop and works there for the day, before waiting for Eden to come home. Eden arrives crying about her father and his new baby, then tries to make herself feel better about it. Solana shows up and tells Fallon that Mr. Crawford had requested that Fallon be brought back (at Blair’s request and pestering, which showed that it worked) as long as she doesn’t practice magic in front of other students at the Academy. Once Solana is gone, Fallon tells Eden that she slept with Ariyon and Eden is so excited for her, though she explains that she wants to wait until marriage until she is with a guy in bed because of the situation with her father—just to make sure that he will not leave her when she gets pregnant. Fallon realizes that’s not something she’s worried about because Ariyon doesn’t want to get married or have kids because of how short his life will be…and she, well she’ll be dead before that.

One evening, Fallon and Eden are in the library researching things about the Shadow Blade, when a guard comes in and asks her to come with her. The guard asks her to put on the broach from the Order, and then takes her to the War room, where Solana reveals that she has heard of a series of attacks that will happen around the Gilded City—from the shell that Fallon had given her. Fallon helps her with ideas on how to explain things to the citizens while moving them out of the way of the attacks—she gives the example of the clinic being closed down for refurbishment and they do a cleaning. They talk about logistics of moving people to safety, and when it comes up that the citizens of the West Side would not have any safe space, Fallon offers that they be moved to Bane Manor as there is space there. Ariyon and Ayden are there, and it becomes clear that because Ariyon and Fallon have Fallon’s magic, they are the only two that would actually be able to fight the Nightlings. Once the council walks away, Fallon speaks to Solana, Ariyon and Ayden alone about that magic, and also mentions to Solana that she should not even let her closest advisors know where she is going to be the night of the attack on the castle, in case anyone close to her is feeding information to Marissa.

The night before the attack, Fallon runs into Solana on her way home to Bane Manor, where she has received word from her father that Pax is fully recovered. Solana tells her that she is coming to Bane manor, because it’s the least expected place for her to be, and they walk up to the door together. She eats the sweet potato pie that Fallon’s father has made, while Fallon puts the Queen’s backpack into her own room, and comes down. Solana tells Fallon’s father that he should consider applying for her staff because his food is good. That night, Fallon sleeps in her father’s room.

They are woken by booms, and Fallon and Solana race towards the castle, where they fight their way. Fallon uses her undying fire to light Nightlings on fire, but one Nightling gets a hold of her and puts a metal bracelet on her that immediately seals around her wrist and hurts her. She finds her way to Ariyon who is also fighting, and they make their way to the castle. Once the Nightlings had been killed off, Solana demands to know how the Nightlings didn’t trigger the protective barriers, and the soldier lets her know that the barrier was turned off after he was knocked out but before he came to, which gives credence to the fact that it may be someone in Solana’s inner circle that would do this, but it’s shocking nonetheless. Solana notices the bracelet on Fallon’s wrist, and asks about it, to which Fallon tells her that she cannot remove it at all and it hurts her. She tells Solana that the Nightling who put it on her told her that Marissa thanks her for the blood donation, which leads Solana to believe that this is a bloodletting bracelet meant to take her blood and give to Marissa, with only Marissa being the one able to remove them. She does try to remove it, but is unable to do so—and Fallon decides to just let it be, as she will kill Marissa herself anyway, regardless of what Lorraine saw. Now she has six days to figure out how to portal everyone from the West Side into Bane Manor.

Fallon begins to learn how to work the Portal, and Eden demonstrates. Fallon is able to see the tears in the space, but she isn’t able to feed any of her magic to it, so Master Knight suggests that Eden creates the portal, and Fallon feeds her healing magic to the portal, which does actually work by making the portal bigger and stabilizing it. Eden and Fallon begin to practice the magic together. One night, they are practicing, when Ariyon asks Eden to create a portal to go see his brother, Ayden, so Eden opens a portal into the living room and Ariyon scares Ayden. Ayden then jumps in through the portal into Bane Manor. Suddenly, the shields start wailing over West Side, indicating that Marissa and the Nightlings have shown up. Fallon convinces Eden to open up the portal, and feeds her magic, while Ariyon, Ayden and Fallon jump into the West Side. Ayden gets people to safety, calling them to go through the portal, and leading them out from the clinic which is now on flames. Ariyon fights the Nightlings using his half of the Undying flame. Marissa shows up as Fallon’s father carries Mable, Eden’s mother, from the rubble of her own home, unconscious. Marissa is about to stab them both, when Fallon calls out to her father to drop, and then uses her magic to thwart Marissa’s attack. The Royal Guards arrive, and the three of them make a decision to head back through the Portal because there’s nothing else they could do to save the Guards. Fallon holds the portal open, lets Ariyon and Ayden through and then collapses it in front of him. She goes on to fight Marissa, who tells her that if anyone kills Marissa, it would mean that Fallon also dies as long as she has the cuff on her. At one point Fallon uses her magic to burn Marissa, who yells at her if she’s out of her mind, and Fallon asks her a rhetorical question—who said that I’m afraid to die?—which makes Marissa blanche at what that could mean. Fallon lights up the clothes of the Nightlings with her undying flames and then Marissa is gone. She heads back through the portal to Bane Manor, as Eden had kept it slightly opened. Eden warns her that Ariyon is pissed at her, but needs her help in healing.

Fallon tries to help him heal, and they get into a spat, at which point he tells her to go find her own patient. Once everyone has been healed though, Fallon follows him out to the stables as he goes for his horse, and asks him to tell her what she did. Ariyon explains that he heard her talking about her death through the portal and how nonchalant she was about it to stoke the fire —he loves her so much and he asks her if she thought what that would do to him, Yanric, her father, and her friends? He tells her that she always told him that he was the one that gave her some normalcy but in reality she was the first woman to see him, to hear him, and he’s not sure he can continue being in love with someone who has a death wish; that he needs time to think about things. He then gets on his horse and rides away, while Fallon finds herself face to face with Queen Solana who had heard every single word of that conversation. Fallon cries into her shoulder, and Queen Solana consoles her, telling her that she will do everything she can to make sure that Fallon stays alive for as long as the Queen herself lives. That night, she sleeps with Eden in her room, and they talk about Ariyon. Eden tells her that it sounds like she’s accepted that she will die, though Fallon lies to her and tells her it is because she’s fighting Marissa and it’s highly likely she will die. Eden tells her that any one of them could die.

Fallon returns to school with all of the other students, but Ariyon is nowhere to be seen. They are told that day that they will be having a tournament in Meadowbrook Mountains, at which point Blair yells that they have canoes, and Fallon realizes that this is where they will be finding the Shadow Blade. As Fallon heads home that day, Ariyon stops her, and pulls her to the side. He tells her that he misses her desperately; that he cannot see himself living a day without her, and when she explains that her fighting Marissa results in a real possibility that she will die, Ariyon tells her that it’s possible any one of them could die too. He then takes her into his painting studio, and shows her a portrait that he had made of the two of them aged by several decades—they are now wrinkly and have silver hair. Fallon cherishes this knowing that this is not likely even if she didn’t have the dark powers, because Ariyon’s Maven Healer powers would take him too soon, but she cherishes that this is what Ariyon sees in his future. She turns around with the truth burning a hole in her tongue, but tells Ariyon that she loves him.

The students from the Academy head out to Meadowbrook Mountain, and Fallon sees the canoes—Lorraine was right about everything so far, so that means that she will be right about this. Considering that the location wasn’t used in a decade as it was owned by someone with no heirs and passed onto the Crown upon the man’s death, the students are made to clean the spaces. Fallon goes through the work quickly, having cleaned a tavern, while Ariyon is still cleaning one table. He tells her that he finds that sexy, and that elicits a gagging response from Blair. Later, once everything has been cleaned, they sit around the fire, and Fallon asks about the students from Helmsdale Institution. Ariyon and Blair explain that these are powerful Fae with magic, but that the institution deals with troubled students—those that got into trouble with the law for stealing food as a minor infraction, and even selling body parts in the black market—and they explain that the Lord seems to have an issue with money. This upsets Pax because he grew up having to fight to survive, so Fallon follows him when he walks away, and they talk—her sharing her story as well, and telling him that she’s glad that their friends do not have the knowledge of what it is like to grow up starving and poor, because she believes that is how it should be for everyone. Later on, they are listening to ghost stories, and one girl in particular tells the story of her Grandmother who had been the keeper at this same camp. The grandmother told her that one year they had a student who created the Shadow Blade, and then hid it in one of the caves over there. The girl had died the following year, so no one could find the location of this Shadow Blade. Blair and Fallon were already attuned to this story as if instinctually knowing that it would be important, while Ariyon, Ayden, Eden, and Hayes had perked up when they heard the mention of the Shadow Blade. They make a plan to wake up early and split up in two groups—one checks out the shed, while the other hikes to look at the mountains.

They check the caves, but do not find anything, and returning back to camp in the canoe, Ariyon flips it over, after which the boys race back to the land. When Fallon returns to camp, Ariyon had just gotten pushed by a guy from Helmsdale Institution, and Ayden had stepped up in his place, telling the dude to not push him, while Pax was standing protectively in front of Ariyon. Fallon uses her magic and pushes everyone apart, which causes one of the girls from Helmsdale to tell them that in her school, she’s allowed to retaliate when someone uses magic on her. Fallon tells her to go ahead and try, before pulling her magic together and making herself look threatening enough that the girl was forced to drop her magic. Master Clarke comes and tells them all to break it up, before pulling Fallon aside to his room, where they find Master Hart bumbling around. Master Clarke points out that Master Hart’s place is next door, and the man leaves. Master Clarke talks to Fallon, and tells her about learning how to use mind control magic, because Marissa is familiar with it and can use to control her or her friends, including getting her to stab Ariyon. Fallon agrees that this would help her. Master Clarke then shows her to a different cabin, and she finds her father, Hipsie, Sorrel, and Mabel there. Her father tells her that Queen Solana had needed someone to cook for all the students here because they’re short staffed, and he and Mabel will have a permanent job with the Queen now.

Fallon starts to practice mind control with Matilda Storm, a woman who is one tenth from the House of Ash and Shadow, and learns to protect against mind control—how to tell when someone is entering her mind, then ejecting them. In the meantime, they have their trials—the first of which they have to get to a boat at 4am, get across the lake using only paddling, pick up the crystal from the other end, and then make it by any means necessary. Fallon and her group of friends decide to do the Portal, and everyone gets through including Ayden who is holding the crystal. Unfortunately, Fallon gets pulled back by the girlfriend of the guy who started the fight with Ariyon, whose name is Garrison. At one point, Garrison even accidentally touches her, and Ariyon almost wants to kill him, but Fallon tells him not to, and Blair yells at Garrison that Fallon is cursed and can’t be touched at all. The last trial in the tournament is a version of capture the flag, except it’s with crystal. Ayden and Fallon run ahead, while the rest of the team take the canoe, and one of the other girls tries to grab Fallon by the hair, but Fallon kicks her behind. From there, they make it to the caves, and Fallon picks up one of the crystals, putting that team out of contention. She lets the other teams duke it out, as they seem to be quickly taking care of each other, while her whole team is protecting their crystal. She heads to Garrison’s team cave, and then hides in a nearby cave, communicating with Yanric. Garrison comes by and checks out the cave, causing her to use her shadows to hide herself against him. Then she sags against the wall of the cave, and in doing so, opens a hidden door to a cavern. She tells Yanric to communicate with the team that she’s out, and Ariyon goes in her place to try to capture the crystal of the other team, while Fallon heads down all the way to the cavern and finds the box containing the shadow blade as well as a letter from the woman, Lana Hollow, who had created the blade at the expense of her own death. It tells her that the blade can only be activated by someone from the House of Ash and Shadow, but one that is not a Nightling, and it will result in her death.

Fallon takes the box back to her cabin, while everyone celebrates—Garrison’s team won the tournament, and Fallon’s team came in second. During the celebration, Yanric tells Fallon that something is off because usually nightlife is loud, but it’s been quiet. She calls out that the Nightlings are coming, and the whole camp gets into formation. This time she tells Eden that she has to create the portal on her own, as Fallon will not be able to help her—she knows that Eden can do it, but that she needs to have faith in herself to do it. In the meantime, Fallon puts out a protective barrier. They get as many students and staff out as they can—only the advance students and the professors staying behind until everyone is safe. Fallon is attacked mentally by Marissa, and then uses her teaching from Matilda to surprise Marissa and cast her out of her mind. The group of professors and then Fallon’s team go through the portal, and Pax is the second to last person to go through, holding the oar that he wanted to use to defend himself. They watch as Marissa’s familiar comes up behind him and bites him, resulting in Pax’s death. Ariyon is distraught and Pax tells him to let it go because he’s earned his place in the Realm of Eternity. While talking to Ariyon, Fallon makes a connection and calls over to Master Clarke. They talk and she asks him if Master Hart has been stuttering always—Master Clarke tells her that no, he only started to stutter after Marissa’s control of him years ago. Fallon explains that when Marissa controlled her, she also stuttered so Master Hart must be the one who provided that inside information. They call over Master Hart, and he does ultimately admit that he’s under Marissa’s control, so they place him in protective hold.

Fallon and her friends take things easy, trying to prepare for the final battle. One day, Fallon is hanging out with Eden in her room, when Eden brings up Fallon’s oncoming demise—turns out that she had read the inscription on the box containing the Shadow Blade, though Fallon had damaged it after finding it, by seeing its indentation elsewhere in the wood, and figured it out. Fallon doesn’t want to talk about it, and a guard comes knocking to tell her that the Queen had sent for Fallon. Fallon goes with him and finds Queen Solana in the War Room, where the Queen tells her that Lorraine had come and told her that she is the one that kills Marissa. She also tells Fallon that she had been listening to the shell, and Marissa had amassed 10,000 Nightlings. They make a plan to meet at midnight with the Shadow Blade and go end it before it even began. Queen Solana tells her that she will need to have her full powers, before sending her off to spend time with her family.

Fallon decides to have a hug party with everyone at Ariyon’s and Ayden’s house—she takes the tincture she received from Emmeric, and has five minutes to hug everyone. Ayden, Avis, Hayes, Eden, Hipsie, Sorrel, Master Clarke, and even her father give her a hug. Master Clarke’s hug is the most healing for her as it fills a spot within her about how someone could abandon a baby who wanted to be wanted, and she realized that he did the best he could with what he had. The hug with her father is the last one of the night, and it’s been the one that she wanted for the longest time; he makes a comment that they are out of time, speaking in respect to the five minutes being up, not realizing that Fallon is quite literally running out of time. She hangs out with her friends, and they go to bed past midnight, which means she does not meet the appointment with Solana, though she sends Yanric ahead. After everyone falls asleep, Fallon gets the box and goes to Ariyon’s room, and switches her powers with him before telling him she loves him. She then leaves, meets with Solana and they ride —after Solana says goodbye to her lover—to Marissa’s Nightling CIty.

When they’re close enough, Fallon activates the Blade, and the Nightlings start being pulled into the blade, which turns colors throughout. Solana has to put up a barrier in front of them both, because Fallon’s goes down. Eventually Marissa removes the cuff from Fallon, most likely realizing that she is dying, and Solana weeps at the sight of Fallon, who by this point looks like a weathered and aged corpse. Solana battles with Marissa, and at one point Solana falls back from a blow from Marissa. Fallon watches as Marissa’s familiar, a snake, heads for Solana and wants to scream no, only to notice Ariyon jumping out of the shadow and decapitating Marissa. Her eyes focus on Eden before she passes out.

Eden had known that there was something off with Fallon from the moment she did the Hugging Party, and even more so when Fallon started to act sleepy and hurried while they were all hanging out. So they went to sleep, and Eden watched in Horror as Fallon grabbed the box with the Shade Blade, and then headed out. Eden awoke Ariyon and Ayden, and the three of them followed Fallon, even more shocked when Fallon met with with Queen Solana, who seemed to be in the know about this suicide mission. They follow them, losing them a couple of times, but the magic and the light guides them to the battle. Ariyon makes it in time to kill Marissa, while Eden starts screaming about Fallon, who looks like a desiccated corpse. She calls to Ariyon, and he comes running trying to get his Maven marks to work so that he can meet the Grim and fight for Fallon’s soul, but they fail him. Solana urges Eden to create a portal to the Realm of Rebirth, but Fallon isn’t there and isn’t answering. Suddenly Ariyon’s Maven marks work and he is frozen, so Solana urges Eden to create a portal to the world with the Grim.

Fallon finds herself on a bridge, and below it is the Bottomless Pit. She sees Yanric and they say their goodbyes, while he tells her that she did the right thing. Things shake and sway to get her to fall off the bridge, but Fallon manages to hold on, sad that she won’t be able to see Ariyon. Suddenly, several voices—the voices of the Quorom boom out, telling her that she has been judged and found worthy. She then swirls through the Realms and finds herself in front of the Grim, with the gates to the Realm of Eternity open before her. He tells her that she can go through, so she walks forward, and Pax runs up to her, hugging her before she is able to warn him about her curse. He tells her that there are no curses here, so she is freely able to hug anyone she wants.

She hears Ariyon’s voice behind her, calling out to her, and she turns to see him beyond the gate, getting ready to fight the Grim. Ariyon uses a band of energy to grab her and pull her back into the arena, and then goes to fight off the Grim, who is pissed off at him, telling him that he has no rights to take her out as she had already passed the Gates to the Realm of Eternity. Fallon had tried to tell him that it’s okay, but Ariyon is not having it, and fights the Grim. Eden counts the hits the Grim and Ariyon get on each other, and when Fallon slides between them to stop the fight, Ariyon gets the third hit in, winning the battle. The Grim tells him to take her and get the hell out with her, but that he’s no longer welcome in this realm until he dies, and he will not be able to fight for the soul of anyone anymore. Ariyon is fine with that.

Fallon wakes up in Eden’s lap, surrounded by Ariyon, Ayden and Queen Solana; luckily Yanric is alive too. Ariyon has her switch half her powers, and they head back to the Gilded City.

Sorrel, Hipsie, and Fallon surprise Fallon’s dad with his favorite cake for his birthday. Everyone—Ariyon, Ayden, Eden and her mom—are at Bane Manor to celebrate his birthday. The queen had approved of the match between Ayden and Eden. During the celebration, Fallon’s dad calls her and Eden into a separate room, where he and Mabel reveal that they are now engaged, having been dating for several months. Eden and Fallon are ecstatic for their parents, to have a mother and a father each, and to be sisters as family, though not by blood. Fallon is happy as this is all that she could have asked for, and she knows that she will have a good many years with Ariyon by her side, courtesy of Ariyon writing to Emmeric, who told him the future in a letter that Fallon had come across by accident.

My Thoughts: Oh my light! This is such a sad book—it’s covering the topic of depression in so many ways, and how it may even feel oppressive to some; like there are no other choices than to self destruct. While I can’t really picture myself in that kind of state, though I’ve had moments or bouts of sadness in my life, my heart hurt for Fallon so much. It was so hard watching her go through all of that, but what really stuck out for me was how Ariyon put his hand out to her to help her—quite literally by asking her to switch powers; he wanted to carry her burden, and then settled to help her carry it by splitting up half his magic and half hers. I think this goes to show that sometimes a helping hand can be extremely healing to those who are in depths of despair, though they have to be willing and wanting to stand back up. Fallon herself wanted to get help, but didn’t want to impose and felt like it was her burden to worry. But when you truly love and care for someone, you will happily help them carry that burden. Overall, I feel that the ending to this series was pretty amazing, and befitting Fallon’s and Ariyon’s journey. I only hope that they have found their peace and joy throughout the remainder of their lives. And of course, Marissa got what was coming to her, thank goodness.