He considered taking his own life. It was an awful, shameful thought, but one which lingered. It had crossed his mind before during the time he’d been in the Fold, but had vanished again, like a bird flying into his view and then disappearing once more. Since stealing the rucksack back from Mallian, the idea had returned once again and settled on his mind. He never believed he was serious—never found himself on the edge of a long fall or with a sharp rock pressed to his wrist—but considering the most efficient methods to leave the place that was no longer his world played on his mind. If he knew more about plants perhaps he could find something poisonous. There were fungi growing in the forests, but he worried about picking something that would cause him intense pain and a long, lingering death. The hills were very high in places, and there were a couple of locations where steep cliffs would provide him a long enough fall to almost certainly kill himself. But almost was not enough. He had no wish to lie broken and bleeding into the soil at the bottom of a cliff, watching the uneven days and nights pass him by with painful indifference.

Most of all, he thought about the river. He was a good swimmer, but if he weighed himself down with rocks he’d sink and drown. The problem with that was the nature of the river. He thought perhaps his corpse would wash against one end of the Fold and enter at the other, swept down the same stretch of river again and again over weeks and months while rot and impact against the riverbed slowly broke him down. He would become part of the Fold.

But he never got any further than thinking about it. He was too strong for that. And somewhere out there, a wrinkle in time or a universe away, was Angela. His love for her meant the idea of making any of his life-ending speculations real made him feel sick.

By the time the second burst of lightning sheeted across the sky he was deep in his cave, a heavy sharpened stick in his hand. The night outside lit up and he expected to see an unknown-shaped silhouette in the cave entrance. Something with hooves or wings, long teeth and fur. Vince loved the Kin, but he had never feared them more than he did right then.

The lightning could have been Grace in combat with Mallian, the great Nephilim somehow having broken his bonds. Even after two years or so in the Fold, Vince knew little more about Grace than he had when he entered, other than that her power was degrees more advanced than any other Kin he had ever met. Her power was magic.