“Hey, Sammi,” Vince said through a mask of pain. She could see that his left arm was broken and held awkwardly against his chest. “So you’re a fairy now? I always thought you were more of an Orc.”

And then Grace was there while she was still smiling. It made no difference that Angela and Vince had reached her first. Angela stood close and put an arm around her shoulder, hugging her in, and Vince hugged them both with his good arm. Vince and Lilou swapped a glance, a smile, enough for Sammi to think, Secret histories between those two. She wished she didn’t think that. It would be easier if she couldn’t see so much, but her senses were sharper than they had ever been. Her hands tingled, fingers throbbing. The scars on her arm simmered as if they were rivers of fire coursing through her veins.

“You can’t have her,” Angela said.

Grace came to a gentle halt ten metres from them, taking them all in at a glance. Sammi had been close to her before, when the fairy had come through from the Fold and dragged her across the threshold from this world and into another. Back then, though, Sammi hadn’t known what she really was. She’d been a girl trapped in an adults’ world, brave and resourceful, yet still experiencing a child’s confusion and fear. Now she was older and wiser. Perhaps wiser than almost everyone here.

Almost, because Grace was a vision of age and wisdom, power and grace. She might have been a god. Shorter than them all though she was, slighter in stature, her diminutive build projected only strength. Her limbs were slender and supple, her body clothed in a finely woven one-piece dress. Her long silver hair was braided over one shoulder, and on her feet she wore seamless, laceless boots made of a material Sammi could not identify. If it was leather or hide, it was from a creature she did not know.

The fairy’s face was delicate yet stern, her eyes a rich sparkling blue, deep with the weight of endless memories and ancient times. Sammi could look at Grace and fall in love, though she exuded nothing resembling Lilou’s more basic animal allure.

“You can’t have her,” Angela said again.

“She’s not yours to keep,” Grace said. Her voice was surprisingly low, the words accented and awkward, as if she rarely spoke.

“I’m not yours to take,” Sammi said. She felt some of the strange energy inside surging, and her left arm tingled as the lightning-strike patterns glowed.

Grace smiled. It did not reach her eyes. “Child,” she said, “I take what I want.”