Dastion looked suspicious, then his expression softened. His more relaxed face crinkled, and streams of rainwater ran down into his massive beard. The water collected and dripped off like falling diamonds.

“Good for her,” he said. “No one should go through what Grace has put us through. So, how did you and the girl get back in?”

“A portal cast by Grace,” Vince said. “But we’re blind until we go through, and I’m worried Mallian will see us. We’ll walk straight into him, and Grace, and that’ll be the end of it. When we do go back we need an element of surprise, and something to fight him with.”

“Sammi needs time,” Angela said. “Mallian used arcane magic, a glamour maybe only he knew. Sammi thinks she might be able to break it, but...”

“But she’s young, and is still finding her Kin way,” Shashahanna said. Her voice was low but loud.

“What is she?” Dastion asked.

“She’s not sure,” Angela said.

The three Kin fell silent, and Vince sensed their distrust. He almost told them. Honesty would be the best answer, surely? But if he told these tortured, angry Kin that Sammi was a fairy, they might trust her as little as they trusted Grace. And they might hate her as much.

“We think she’s a nymph,” Angela said. “We knew one, a friend of ours, and Mallian just murdered her.”

“He did?”

“She was his oldest friend and she went against him.”

Dastion looked past Vince and Angela towards the trees where they’d left Sammi poring over the relics.

“So she needs time,” Dastion said. “How do we give her that?”

“Somehow we have to slow Mallian down,” Vince said. “Do something that’ll upset his plans, if only for a while. He’ll have called other Kin to him—he has a cohort that has always believed in Ascent, and I’m sure they’d have been waiting for his return—and once they’re there...”

“He’ll go out into the world,” Shashahanna said.

“Yeah, and with a fairy at the head of his army,” Dastion said. He looked around him at the Fold slowly descending into chaos. “All I want to do is dig.”

“And you will again,” Vince said. “That’s what we’re fighting for. Your freedom to do what you want. And humanity’s freedom to co-exist with the Kin, even if it doesn’t know of your existence.”

“Most of it doesn’t know,” Shashahanna said.

Vince smiled. “Some of us who do have given up our lives to fight for you.” He looked at Angela and his smile fell when he saw the sadness in her eyes. We’ve lost our old life forever, he thought.

“We’re still together,” she whispered, and her tentative smile revived his.