They paused close to where Vince and the others crouched, hidden by Sammi’s growing fairy powers.

If Grace is with them she’ll know, he thought. Sammi was taking a dangerous risk.

They were all taking risks.

29

29

If she’s with him I’m going to try, Sammi thought. I think I’m ready. I can’t tell them yet, because I’m not sure I can take the weight of their expectation. Everything I’ve learned is too precarious. It’s like a bridge made of glass, or cotton, or dreams, so weak and thin that it’ll break under one false step.

She didn’t like keeping secrets from the people who loved her and were risking their lives to protect her, but she also recognised the reality of this fresh, strange existence. She was building delicate and precious pathways between the new parts of her and the old, and she had to ensure they remained as strong and stable as possible.

I’m sure I’m ready... but she needs to be with him. To break the bridge between the Nephilim and the fairy, I have to be able to see it and touch it.

Mallian was less than twenty metres from them, standing tall and proud and letting the moonlight reveal him like a living statue. He was shameless in his nudity. She would not see him hunched down low again. He was free and ready to ascend, rise to the might he thought he deserved in the eyes of the world, both human and Kin. She couldn’t help but admire that.

She could also hate him for it. That was easier. He had killed her friend Lilou. And even though it was the fairy who had killed her father and ripped her life apart, it was Mallian who sought to keep it torn.

If he had his way, he would take her under his control as well. He would make her his soldier, stand her alongside Grace and force her to slaughter, destroy, paint the grey land red. Sammi would never accept that. She’d die before it happened.

She had no intention of dying.

Grace was not with Mallian. But as he stood there close to them—sniffing the air, suspecting some subterfuge, but not seeing through her small fairy spell—she took in the measure of him. Being so close helped her prepare herself even more for what was to come. The relics wrapped in her jacket grew warm at his nearness, and she fed on that warmth and let it propagate the spell she needed to cast.

I’m ready now, she thought. Definitely now.