“Ben!” Alistair yelled as a chunk of tree that was caught in one of the sisters’ wider orbital rings spun toward him. It sliced Ben’s cheek open before he could react, then sped past them, already halfway across the clearing, looping up in an arc around the Morrows.
“It didn’t have to be like this,” Marjory called to Veronica, her voice supernaturally amplified.
Veronica yelled back through the wind, “Of course it did, because you’re too goddamned selfish to let this go! All you’ve ever cared about is how you’ve been hurt. How this has affected you. All I ever wanted to do was protect you.”
“Then stop. We don’t have to fight,” Marjory said. The spinning circles of debris slowing for a moment.
“We do if you think you’re gonna take them,” Veronica answered back.
Ben could see that all a
