I backed time up and did it a couple more times, because why not? Throwing things using the Pythian power was the latest skill that Gertie had taught me, and I needed the practice. Plus, I wanted to get a better look at him. The slamming motion blurred things a little, but it was a him, and I suspected I knew which one. But I wasn’t sure, so when he finally staggered off the wall and into the path of a nearby sapling, I sped things up—

And the tiny tree abruptly became a mighty oak.

Very abruptly.

Limbs speared his flesh as they shot skyward, ripping great gouges into his body—a very familiar, overly elongated body, with a head of flowing, silver-white hair and a mouth screaming what were probably profanities in whatever language the fey spoke. Because he was a fey and, unless I was very much mistaken, was named Aeslinn. And what the hell?

“Who is that?” Agnes demanded, catching up.

“A king of the light fey.”

“What is he doing here?”

“Beats the shit out of me.”

Her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed, as they usually did when I uttered some strange, futuristic vulgarity. But then she surprised me. “I’d rather do it to him.”

And that’s how I ended up tag-teaming an ancient fey warrior with the biggest badass I knew. Except for one. “Where’s Gertie?” I asked, while Aeslinn writhed and twisted as the tree did its best to rip him apart.

“Keeping us in phase. He can’t be allowed to enter real time, or everything he does becomes history.”

“And it doesn’t now?”

Agnes looked annoyed. “Didn’t you listen to anything Lady Herophile said? We’re in transition. We’re all just potentials at this point. Nothing is real until we land.”

“We take him here, then.”

“Agreed. We need—”

But I didn’t find out what we needed. Because Aeslinn suddenly tore himself off of the still growing tree, ripping through flesh, cracking through bone, and essentially doing our job for us. While raining enough blood and gore and viscera onto the ground that there were literal puddles in the dirt.

I wasn’t nearly as squeamish as I’d been when first starting this job, but I still had to swallow hard. And then do it again for an entirely different reason a few seconds later. Because the hunk of torn flesh and busted sinew that fell into the blood puddles didn’t stay there—and didn’t stay mangled.

I stared, because while I knew that the fey healed fast, even they don’t close gaping wounds in seconds. But Aeslinn did, fixing a gash in his thigh that ran from groin to knee as easily as zipping up a jacket. And then tearing a tree branch, complete with a profusion of bright green leaves, out of the middle of his torso, which immediately closed up, too.