Hynri sat with her in the shuttered office of the abandoned textile mill that rested above the organization’s central operations. He was a slim young man, just twenty-five, but he held himself like a man much older, cynical of the world.

“They call us terrorists,” he said.

“Of course they do. It’s why we must stay away from civilian targets. We are already feared and hated. People must see the good we do,” Inaya said.

“We have tried that for generations,” he said. “People see what shifters have to contribute. They choose to murder and enslave us all for it. You asked us to act out violently and now you want to rein us in? I don’t understand.”

“You will. We have gained their attention. Now we must hold it. Twist it. We must rewrite our story from one of fear to one of celebration. When you discovered you were a shifter, what did you do?”

“I wanted to kill myself, to be honest.”

“And you never told anyone what you were.”

He shook his head. “I joined the Fourré just a few months later. My family never found out.”

Inaya leaned toward him. “We have a narrative in this country that shifters are in the minority. That we are some statistical anomaly. But my mother and I, we lived for many years without anyone knowing what we were. If we all admitted to what we are, how many shifters do you think would be revealed? I don’t believe men and women want to kill their children. I believe we want what is best for them. When the priests come for children, and not just those who are not careful, I think we will see a change.”

“You propose to turn over the nation’s children to the priests?”

“No. There is something more than violence that Nasheenians taught me, and that is the awful brutality of speaking absolute truth. I propose that we begin to unmask ourselves. We speak the truth of ourselves. We tell them just how many of us there are.”

“They will see us as an even bigger threat.”

“Will they? Or will they simply see that they are condemning their own sons and daughters, mothers and fathers? We can show them another future.”

“What future? Us? Our lives? Our lives are not glamorous, Madame.”

“Aren’t they? I know many shifters, not just those in the movement. They have families. Husbands and wives. Sons and daughters. They live respectably.”

“And covertly.”

“It is our obligation to convince them to live otherwise.”

“They’ll be killed. I have seen it happen, Madame.”

“Some may die,” Inaya conceded. “But many are dying already.”

“Blood will run through the streets. I see genocide, Madame. I see it as plainly as I see you.”