Sammi was on her knees and bent almost double over the relics. She was shivering, and Vince was sure there was a gentle glow emanating from her head and hair. Either that or his vision was damaged, his eyes shaken by the violence inflicted upon him.

He looked for Angela and saw her twisted and motionless at the base of the tree. Oh God, he thought. If she was dead then so was he.

* * *

Sammi shoved and felt the glass bridges beginning to break. It hurt her to push, but she could also now sense the agonies being endured by Grace, and they were far, far worse.

As links began to fracture, she saw the great shadow of Mallian towering above her. Coming for her, not Grace. Knowing that she was the danger.

She took in a deep breath and pushed one last time.

* * *

Angela, barely conscious, saw her niece become the centre of things, and felt the power thrumming out from her. They all did. Even Mallian, standing over her with hands raised and Vince’s broken spear still sticking from his side.

She blinked, and an eternity seemed to pass before she opened her eyes again. Her senses were distant and vague. Pain bit in from everywhere, so intense that it became one raging fire.

Her pain did not matter. The moment when everything changed was all that mattered. She saw that moment, when Grace came back to herself. The fairy stood taller, shook like a dog shedding itself of water droplets, then glared at her surroundings as if seeing them for the first time.

Her gaze fell on Mallian. Her expression changed from one of confusion, to utter, outright fury.

“Be with me,” Mallian said to the fairy. The first time it sounded like an order, but when he spoke the words a second time they were a plea, and they might have come from the mouth of a child. “Be with me.”

Sammi slumped over the relics, and Vince grabbed her by one arm and dragged her away. He groaned with each step. Angela could hear him above the gunfire and shouting coming from further away, and in his voice she heard her own pain also. We’re losing each other here and now, she thought, and though she tried with all her strength to hang on, darkness came and took her away.

The last thing she heard was the fairy, speaking furious words she did not know in a voice she hoped she would never hear again.

* * *

“We’ll rise ascendant,” Mallian says. “We’ll be special again! I was going to release you, soon, when you realised that standing against the humans alongside me is the way. The only way.”