She realises that it is only the human, skittering away from the portal like a startled deer. He sees her, pauses, then runs in the opposite direction.

She could chase him down and take out his throat in a heartbeat, but he no longer concerns her. She’s glad that he’s gone. He was a taint on her land, something she did not welcome, and now his blood will never again infect her soil.

As the human flees, the fairy stands and turns a slow circle. She sees the portal, like a hazy wound in the air. It is stable for now, but she will reassess its build and strength all the time. She sees a wide, shallow valley where a lake once stood, and senses the remains of a human settlement.

She feels madness on the air. It’s a strange sensation because it is a Kin madness, and it makes her feel uncertain and sick. Three of them, she thinks, driven to distraction by a human-inspired insanity. If she gets a chance, she will put them out of their misery.

And then she finds the girl. Not far away, across the valley floor close to the remains of a ruined building.

She breathes in, tastes the breath of a fairy, and sighs deeply.

Feeling strong once again she begins to move.

* * *

“That’s not her,” Lilou said.

The Kin had started banging inside the cooler room again, louder and more violently than before. Angela guessed it was the appearance of the portal that had them agitated. It had her agitated, too. Her heart beat twice as fast as normal, sweat beaded across her nose and the back of her neck, and she had to fight the urge to run towards the shimmering place out across the valley floor. It looked like heat haze, a dust devil, a place where reality doubted itself. She had seen its like before, and last time it had slammed shut before Vince could escape.

The last time she’d seen him he had been facing up to Mallian.

“What the hell is that?” Bone asked.

Angela laughed. It had an edge of madness. A gateway into another dimension created by a mad fairy, she thought. She could not bring herself to say it, though she had the feeling Bone would believe her.

“That’s not her, Sammi,” Lilou said again. The nymph was standing atop the half-buried cooler room.

“What?” Angela asked.

“Take a look.”

Angela scrambled up the fallen remains of the wall, hoping she would see him, hoping against all the hopelessness she had felt over the past two years. When Lilou reached out for her she took her hand and gripped, pulling herself up, and the two women—human and Kin—kept holding hands as they looked past the scattered ruins of Longford and towards the river.