The pod had its own fairytales. They didn't speak of the big bad wolf or glass slippers or spinning wheels. Theirs were stories of the sea which had birthed them and the woman who had breathed life into them and forsaken her own in so doing.

 And now the myth - impossibly - stood before her.

 "But you're dead," Phi breathed in wonder, rising from her chair. "I mean, you were…weren't you?"

 Ryar ap Sangager's smile was terribly sad. "Yes. I died. And I was brought back."

 "How is that even possible?"

 Those sorrowful eyes shifted to Bane, but danced away as if she too was made uneasy by his presence. "It is possible if you are foolish enough and heartless enough to rip open the barriers between life and death. As for why…" Her breath shuddered out. "A man who loved me once could no longer bear his guilt."

 "Fireblade?" she said without thinking.

 Ryar flinched at the name, as if it were a strike at her heart. "Of course you would know. Yes. He brought me back, and I would not be his again. He is gone. And I…" She turned her hands in the light, and a quiet joy rose in her voice. "I am learning to live."

 Bane yawned ostentatiously. "Could we skip the touching moment of self-affirmation? In case you've forgotten, my dear nightingale, I brought you here to repay your debt."

 Debt? What could Ryar ap Sangager possibly owe him?

 "So you did." Ryar reached out and when her fingers brushed Phi's cheek, it might have been the touch of a relative, beloved, familiar. "Delphine Thetis."

On that bewitching voice, her name had the reverence of a prayer.

"Yes."

"You keep all the old traditions, don't you? The Oracle of Delphi was consigned to hell and dust long ago, but still you carry its memory in your name." Her smile was beautiful, fragile and full of bewildering sadness.

 "The Oracle of Delphi?" she asked. The name rang a vague chord, but she could draw nothing to mind.

 "It was a creature, a prophet - the most powerful that ever was. Even more so than me." She sounded as if she pitied it. "It would dole out the future in exchange for memories of happiness - knowing as it did all the ills of the world to come, it had no joy of its own, only what we poor, short-sighted fools could offer it."

 Phi thought of her mother, alone in her sickroom.

 Ryar sighed. "But you didn't come here to hear me talk about the past. Is this what you want, Phi? For me to take back my power?"

 Want? No. But it is the choice before me and I will not balk. I cannot.

 "Yes."

 "It won't be easy," the dragon warned gently.

 "I didn't expect it to be," she said, then hesitated. All those old fairytales resurfaced, one fact salient among them. "All our stories say you were a great healer."

 A touch of pride showed in Ryar's sudden smile. She was radiant, a princess in truth, sure of her worth.

 "I still am. The best there is."

 Hardly daring to hope, she met those gentle eyes. "My mother…my mother is ill. Could you help her?"

"I can try."  

 Phi tried to stamp down on the jubilation that welled up in her. It was a promise, not a cure. But gods knew it was more than she'd had to clutch at before.

 "Make yourself comfortable, then," cut in Bane's voice. "And I will take the first part of my price."

 "Your price?" Ryar stared at him, imperious. "I will not be party to torture-"

 "And the truth?" he enquired sharply. "Will you be party to that?"

 Confusion glimmered in her face. "As always."

 "Then you can do me the courtesy of listening while I speak it. A story, Delphine, the true story of the making of the mer."

 "Hael…" Ryar said, and oddly, she sounded as if she were pleading. To who, Phi did not know or understand.

 "It's all right," she interrupted. "I agreed."

 Ryar made a small unhappy sound, but she laid her hands on either side of Phi's face. For a moment, nothing happened - then Phi realised that her touch was cool and growing colder, cold as ice, cold as crumpling stars, cold as death.

 Pernicious, slow chill spread over her cheeks and lips. The numbness ate away at her until her body seemed a lumpen thing of clay far beyond. Fear welled in her as it crept towards her eyes - she tried to scream but her throat was merely ice and emptiness-

She was nothing but a floating thought in a deathly, graying, vacant world.

And then the voice came.

 ~*~

 It brought back something of herself. She put a name to it: Bane Malefici, and its smooth, bored rhythm was something to cling to as her power streamed away.

 "You were right about some things, mermaid. It was indeed the last days of the Burning Times and all was desperate. Imagine if you will a world that had been afire for nearly ten years, a world parched of any moisture but blood, fed on the ragged bones of the dead and the dying. Imagine beaches turned to volcanic glass and mountains crumbled into pebbles. The corpses bloated the rivers and the seas - a tide of the dead that not even Hades would accept."

 Her vision seemed filled with smoke that swirled tantalizingly, twitching apart like the veils of a dancer to reveal flashes of the past.

  She saw a world battered to the point of destruction. Cities decayed under a blood-blister of a sun, immense stone towers stabbing at the sky, others toppled to dust. Great swathes of cracked, burned land spread out beyond them and alone on the road out of the ruined city, a madwoman sat, rocking her dead child in her arms as she sang lullabies of a better world.

 This was Ryar's life as it had truly been.

 "The witches teetered on the brink of annihilation. A few villages survived in the farthest reaches of the world, but those who remained were drained of power and hope. Families had been reforged and shattered countless times until those children who could survive the plagues, the famines, the endless assaults were less than twenty."

 Thin faces. Horrific wounds; all hope fading in their eyes.

 "She was their heroine, the first to speak for them: the first to fight for them. When Ryar ap Sangager came to them, I imagine she seemed like a goddess." His scorn was palpable. "I doubt they knew what she had done in their name, and if she knew what they had done in hers, she justified it to herself."

 "They begged for my help." The new voice was soft, full of emotion. "They tried to get on their knees in front of me, as if I was still a princess in the Soulless Court. Oh, the fools, my people, how could I refuse them? I gave as much power as I could spare to the children, knowing that what I did would kill most, maybe all. Two lived, less than dragons, more than witches, and I knew they could not stay there."

  "And did you make the mer from starlight and water and the last of your hope?"

 There was no mistaking the acidity of his voice: it cut through the fog that swirled around Phi.

 No answer came. Suspended, she drifted, not understanding why the story had paused in its telling of her making as she endured her unmaking.

 "No." Ryar's voice was leaden. "You know I didn't."

 "Tell your mermaid what she is, then."

 A terrible image flashed before her; still forms bobbing upon a swollen sea.

 "I called in the dolphins from the deep waters..." Her voice withered, and then came in a choked rush. "But they were still only animals, and I knew I could not trust them alone."

 There was a long silence, and then Ryar spoke again.

 "We all belong to Hades, but water has always been mine, and so have the drowned. I told them what I could do, what it would cost, and having gone so far already, what else could they do but offer up themselves? I drowned the last of those witches there, under the starlight, in the waters, and the last of my hope too, and then I cast their spirits into the dolphins and sent them away, hung in limbo between life and death until they gave themselves to Hades once more. I gave them my gift of prophecy so they could protect the children. I did not understand what it would do to them. I wish…"

 Ryar broke off and laughed. It was a terrible sound, brittle, rattling, like dice in a cup

 "I wish war had never come. I wish that he had not loved me," she said softly.

 Phi did not trouble to think who she spoke of: her mind dwelled, unbelieving, on the horrors of her ancestors.

 "This is how the mer began," Bane Malefici stated. "The choked, clogged dead returned to animals, half-mad, trawling through the future."

 No…

 "You found your idyll, Delphine Thetis - and destroyed it, searching through the future to win every war in your new and glorious land, and to enslave all the people. The mer made a great civilization, and drowned a slave each day in the name of Ryar ap Sangager, in self-commemoration."

 "Not in my name!" said Ryar fiercely.

 "Not by your choice, siren, but in your name. Oh, they kept their word to you - to keep those precious children safe. They were so very safe shut up in dark rooms, kept from the world. No danger could ever intrude upon them, knowing as they did only stone and shadows and the drip of water."

 "I didn't know..."

 "Or did you choose not to look?" The cruelty there was as fine, as delicate as a needle. "You gave away your gift of prophecy, Ryar. And they honoured you for it, you know. Their seers plucked out their eyes in remembrance, to see the future more clearly. What a mighty kingdom was Atlantis!"

 His tart tone was gleeful in the shadowy world. Phi shuddered at it, at these strange, abominable truths she had not fathomed.

 "A drowned king ruled in a drowning land. For a hundred years, he sacrificed to a dead woman until bodies rimmed the island, washing up bloated on the shore."

 The images flashed before her, grotesque. Cadavers blanketed the ocean, their fingers rippling like seaweed, their mouth slack, sloughing caverns invaded by the salt water.

 "One day, inevitably of course, someone escaped across the ragged ocean and they came to a world rebuilding itself, a world which no longer had any patience for murderous kings. A group came to topple the mer, and they called themselves K'Shaia - in mercy. It was a terrible battle."

 K'Shaia was created to destroy us, and we survived. Her mother's voice was calm, triumphant.  

"Those with sense fled: those maddened even beyond the urge to survive fought without reason or hope, and they lost. How that mer king screamed when they came to drown him for the second and last time - he thrashed and kicked and squirmed beneath the waves, knowing exactly what lay before him."

 She caught a dizzying glimpse of a man's face distorted by water. His black, gaping mouth and wild eyes were still visible through his bedraggled hair. He rose, gasping in precious air only to screech in wordless horror, but hands forced him back under.

 "Legend says that although they sent him into death, Hades would not take him. And so he lay within his drowned body as it putrefied until his spirit dissolved into the ocean, left to relive his drowning pain time and again as he existed evermore within the water - brought back upon the crest of every wave, Delphine, taken to the ocean's deepest heart."

The funeral rite...was that what it meant? Not a blessing, but a curse. Unable to ask, she could only listen to his cool, scornful voice.

 "Others escaped and fearing K'Shaia, who hunted them still, they lived a gentler life. Their children were not told their true history and followed other paths. None knew that they were born of death, that they had once ruled a monstrous kingdom, and so your tales became soft things of starlight and hope, as you yourselves became soft. You forgot the fear of drowning, and remembered only Ryar's kindness, not her cruelty. You became as you are."

 Slowly, surely, Phi felt her body again. The numbness receded - and left only a profound, aching absence, as if some essential part of herself had been scooped out. She hunched in on herself, shivering. She felt sick to her stomach.

At last she gained enough control to meet Bane Malefici's cruel, hooded eyes.

  "And you, Delphine Thetis," he said, her name a silky caress. "Alone of all the mer in all the world, you chose to give back Ryar's power and be only a girl, bereft of all that once you were and might be again."

 Bereft. Yes. That was the right word for what she felt as she sat there, her power yielded, her world wildly askew.

 This is what I am. Daughter of a people drowning, daughter of a woman who has blinded herself, a people who betrayed themselves.

 Oh, we have not changed at all.

~*~

  The headstone was stark as ever in the grove. Jess drew in a sharp breath at the sight of it; Iry made no sound, but strode forward and then halted abruptly, as if he could not bring himself to go any closer.

 "That's her, then," the dolphin said, barely a question. "How did you get by the guards?"

 Avy cast her net wide that night. She was afraid of what Aurora might become: she remembered too well the Burning Times and Fireblade's deadliest weapons. She could not risk them burning the body, so she toppled your guards into slumber and sent me to bury Aurora in the damp earth, far from any spark.

 But he could speak none of it; the geas bound him, and in truth, those times of war hovered too close, an ever-present threat.

 "A spell," he answered.

 Iry snorted. "Bought with no questions asked, I s'pose. I know the type." A dark, awful malice glittered in his eyes.

 Zeke was afraid as he had not been since the Burning Times. No matter what Avy might do to him, ultimately, she needed him alive. Everything in the werewolf's eyes said he wanted him dead.

 "Why did you put up a headstone?" Jess sounded dreamy, curious.

 Off-guard, he tried to read her expression. Nothing. "It…it seemed right. I thought one day someone could know. She wouldn't have wanted to be forgotten."

 Her gaze was piercing. "You knew her too, didn't you? Better than us in some ways."

 "The wrong ways," he admitted. This wasn't going as he had expected. "She was…"

 And Zeke saw the truth of it, what he had known then but never really acknowledged.

 "She was very unhappy."

 "She was alive," Iry said sharply. "Until you came along."

Zeke opened his mouth, knowing that this was the opportunity, and he sought the right words, the ones that would provoke Iry beyond all rationality-

 He started at a thump. Jess had drawn his battered luggage out from the foliage - his scant possessions, packed away, the clothes he had scavenged, the mildewed books he'd gathered over the years, the few things Avy would let him have of his own.

 Jess ran a hand over the suitcase, faded, foxed leather. It clicked open at her careful touch and she picked carefully through the contents. "Yours, boy?"

 "Yes..." Zeke said guardedly. Here was a tone in her voice he didn't understand, almost gentle.

 "Don't you have a home to go to?"

 He shrugged. "This is my home. It's not as though I could get a job, is it? Too many people might remember me." And Avy would never let him have such freedom. For him to walk under the warm sun, to enjoy the company of others while she decayed in her dank, forgotten cave? No. Never. "And I don't need much else. It's quiet and it's off the beaten track."

 Was that shock in her eyes? Strange. "You live here? Where do you sleep?"

 He gestured to the grassy earth.

 Her mouth twisted. "Just like the Pack," she muttered.

 "Those damn vagrants ain't Pack," snapped Iry. "They're rags an' tags. Homeless kids."

 "If the Pack hadn't fallen apart in anger and fear, they would have homes," she said quietly. "The wolves I knew once would never have left their own to live a life like this. They would have done their duty."

 "As you did your duty?" the werewolf demanded.

 Zeke had the uneasy feeling he was in the midst of an old argument, and he had no idea of its source or its conclusion. He hovered like a ghost, unseen in their intensity.

 "I did mine," replied Jess with calm dignity. "You did not. Both of us were wrong."

 Iry gave a savage crack of laughter. "Ain't you wise in your old age?"

 "No. Just old."

 There was no mistaking her regret, and it visibly quenched all the wolf's irritation.

 "Not to me," he said fondly. "Damn pod girls. Love 'em, hate 'em, you can't help y'self. All the same."

 "Except her." Jess glanced at the grave.

 "Aye. There was no one like her. You could only love her, couldn't you? She wouldn't stand for less."

 "Your one and only," Jess murmured. Zeke didn't understand the odd, wistful tone of her voice.

 "No," answered Iry. "There was another I could'a loved. But she was married to her duty an' that meant she wouldn't ever marry an old outcast like me."

  She was silent. Then she said very quietly, "You still could have asked."

 Oh. Zeke had a sudden, strange sense of the lives that had carried on without him, without Aurora: the pair of them had shot through these people's lives like comets, in fire and ice, and though their mark had been irrefutable, the world had not ended in their absence. The broken hearts had healed, the grief been enacted with grace and put aside with equal fortitude.

 Life, in its way, had gone on.

 "An' been refused? Nah. When you pod girls break a heart, you do a thorough job. Didn't think I'd survive it twice."

 The regret on Jess's face was painful to see - it eroded her dignity, and Zeke felt terribly sorry for her, for the barrenness of the life he had not known he'd left her to without Aurora and all she represented.

 "I am so tired of silence," she said. "All the things I didn't say, everything I put aside... Everyone," she amended, not looking at Iry. "And now...it's too late for any of it."

 "Meaning what?" Iry asked, his tone soft, dangerous. Both of them turned to Zeke, and he was aware of the dual impact of their eyes, of these two people he had damaged so badly, who he owed so much.

 "It's too late for revenge as well," she replied. "Let it go, Iry. We know where she is now."

 "Let it go?" Disbelief etched every line of his face. "He murdered Aurora, he murdered our girl. Just look at him!"

  She stood slim as a silver birch, unfazed by his rage. Her grey hair fluttered in the breeze. The girl Zeke had known would have met the werewolf with equal temper, with blazing words, not this stillness and poise.

 "I am," she said. "Maybe you should a look little closer."

 "I don't need to. I know what he is. A thief. A murderer. What the hell are you seein', Jess?"

"I see a boy who calls this home. I see him stood alone, so desperate for company he came to us. I see an empty wood, no future but death and that's little use in a cold, bitter night. Do you see a life worth ending?"

 He stared at her. "Are you asking for mercy? Asking me?"

 "Oh no." The gaze she shifted to Zeke was thoughtful and quite passionless. "I am asking you to let him live. Do you truly think that's mercy, Iry?"

 What Zeke saw in her eyes chilled him. This, he understood, was a woman who had been shaped by her life like a sword in a forge. He'd been a fool to think her unaltered from that girl he had known years ago merely because he himself was changeless as the constellations. Jessica Arryn had looked at him and seen the loneliness and despair he had thought he'd hidden so well, and now she would leave him to it.

 "You can't leave me here!" he blurted, his mind on Phi, on Avy, on the things he needed them to know but could not tell them.

 He realized when Iry gave a satisfied nod that it was the wrong thing to have said.

 "How did you learn to be so cruel?" the werewolf said to Jess.

 "I did my duty," she answered flatly. "And this is the last time I shall do it."

 Zeke opened his mouth - and what about your duty to Phi, he was going to yell, but his throat closed over and suddenly he was doubled up, straining for air, pain knifing him in the stomach.

 "Weep all you want," Iry drawled, mistaking his agony. "That's justice for you. It hurts."

 No. This isn't justice. This is Avy's injustice.

 But he couldn't say anything to them, he could only wait out the pain as the crunch of their footsteps receded, as they left him and Aurora behind - as they had done many years ago, he saw now, they had left it all behind, not understanding that it was not yet finished.  

~*~

 The lake was busy in the afternoon. It was what she wanted - it was what she feared. Phi felt a ghost, as if she were too small for the vast limits of her own flesh, no matter what she told herself.

 Surely she was more than her power? Surely being mer had not been such a huge part of her?

 They were everywhere, old, young, in between. Families sat on the ground digging into a picnic, kids in the water, play-fighting and screeching, her father moving from group to group in quiet, amiable discourse. And Don.

 He was a gleam of gold, ankle-deep in the water and laughing with his friends. His head turned - she saw the victorious curve of his smile when he saw her, saw the other boys nudge him.

 It had to be done.

 Each step felt like she moved further from reality, into some strange, dream-thick world. Face after face turned to her, and their greetings died on their lips - they felt it, the void inside her, as if they had sounded her out and found only her absence.  

 She didn't know how she looked to them - how white she was, how carefully she trod, as if she was unsure of her footing.

 "Baby, are you all…" Her father's voice died as he approached her. "Phi…?"

 "It's me, Dad," she said huskily.

 He reached out and took her hand, as if he didn't believe her. The incredulity in his face was astounding. "But…" He took a deep breath. "Where are you?" he asked, pitiful. "Baby, I can't sense you at all."

 She stood in front of him, and for the first time she realized that he had always been on the edge of her radar, a warm, protective presence, and only now that it was all gone did she understand the magnitude of what she had done. She had stripped herself of every supernatural sense she possessed; she had made a cage of her own body, unable to reach beyond it.

 She was, for the first time in her life, wholly alone.

 It was devastating.

 "Dad…"

 She could not stop the tears that sprang to her eyes in hot pricks.  The barrier between them was immense and impenetrable and worse, she had chosen to do it. She took a deep breath. Now. No more delay.
 
 "I'm not mer anymore," she croaked.

 He gazed at her uncomprehendingly. "What do you mean?"

 "You know what I mean," she said. She was shaking, she realized dimly, and she pressed her hands together to try and stop it. "You can feel it."

  "How?" he whispered. "Surely that can't be done..."

 She swallowed down her tears. "The Furies."

 He gasped - he spun away, hands pressed to his face. "No…oh Phi, you didn't..."

 "I couldn't marry him," she said in a thin high voice, praying he would understand. "And…and now I won't have to."

 He turned back, drawing in huge, ragged breaths. Everyone nearby knew something was happening, and all the chatter and babble had stilled to a watchful hush.
 
 She saw the denial in his eyes even before he spoke. "That can't be right. You can't just stop being mer, Phi…"

 She didn't wait for him to finish - her heart was tearing itself apart in her chest, she needed it to be over, for him to accept it, for all these curious, familiar eyes to be off her. She strode over to the lake, right up to where Don stood, his eyes narrowed-

 He reached for her languidly, and she heard him hiss when she dodged around him, not caring anymore.

 Past him, the water already gripping her skin. Further in - up to her knees, gritting her teeth against a cold she had never felt when she had her innate power to shield her from it just as blubber shielded dolphins out in the ocean. To her thighs, to her waist, to her chest, gasping at the ice of it, fed by mountain streams-

 Cramp struck in her leg, and she stumbled - sputtering, into the water, flailing…

 She struck out, expecting her instincts to save her - but there were no instincts left, not even the first, most base instinct she had ever known.

 She couldn't swim.

 Phi struggled to keep her head above the surface, as wavelets washed over her. She thrashed wildly and succeeded only in tiring herself, and suddenly she knew the primal fear that her grandparents must have felt; she was slipping under, the sun still bright above…

 Underneath was murkier and colder than she could have imagined; light wavered above her, but her cramping limbs would not reach for it. The cavity inside her was matched by the ice beyond her; the two would meet surely, and then...

 Her last gasp of air burned in her lungs, fiercer, seconds left, oh god, surely they'd realize-

  Hands seized her. She was hurled unceremoniously over someone's shoulder, coughing and shivering. The world heaved with their footsteps before she was dumped onto the ground with a force that left her in little doubt as to who had hauled her out. She lay shuddering, and new, pitiful fright struck her when his shadow blotted out the light.

 She opened her eyes. Don was bent over her in a show of concern, but rage distorted his features into a carnival mask.

 What did she have left to lose? Nothing.

 "Marry me?" she managed to croak.

 The fury in his eyes was almost worth it.

 And then he spat on her.  She heard gasps around them.

 "Outsider," he said flatly. "You aren't mer."

 He was gone. People crowded in on her, faces bright with shock, with anger, but with belief.

 "You got what you wanted then," accused Cassie Atlantis, her face ugly. She clutched her son tight to her, as if Phi might corrupt him. "You never wanted to be one of us - now you aren't. Get out of here."

 Other voices echoed her - she saw hostility beginning to grow in their faces, the sure knowledge that she had willingly rejected them. Others were silent, drifting away.

 She scrambled to her feet, dripping, cold, her limbs aching. It should have been a victory, but she felt as if she was staggering away from a massacre, barely alive, every part of her hollow with anguish. They parted to let her by, a newly made pariah.

 Her father's face was absolutely heartbroken. He gazed at her as if she were alien to his eyes.

 "Oh, Phi," he said heavily.

 "Dad," she pleaded, forlorn, "are you going to be able to forgive me?"

 She saw again that man half-crazed with grief when he spoke of his parents, of the staggering betrayal of someone in his pod.

 "I don't know," he said finally. "I think you'd better go home, baby."

 He closed his eyes. She wanted there to be more, but he said nothing else and she saw how his hands trembled. Lonely, frightened, drained, she did not press him further.

 So she went home. Just a girl, mer no longer, she went home to her mother who had never known how to be anything else.

Afterwards, it seemed inevitable. At the time, it was merely horrendous.

The stairs squeaked under her feet. She trod them with a heavy heart, wrestling with tears, wrestling with despair. Some small stubborn spark guided her - the part left from days when her mother had been more than a withering woman in a bed. That part remembered careful hands which had cleaned her grazes, stories and songs, being tucked into bed and tickled and hugged.

 "Phi? Is that you?"

 She took a deep, shuddering breath. "Yes."

 "Are you all right?" The concern in her mother's voice shot hope through her.

 She'll understand - she must, she did the same. I need her now, I need my mother more than the pod do.

 "N-no..."

 Her mother gazed at her as she came in. "Sweetheart, what's-"

 And her words cut off; the eyes so like her own widened, and when Marie Thetis spoke, her voice was like the ground cracking open into an abyss.

 "Daughter of mine, what have you done?" Her eyes swept Phi and saw all that she was - and was not. "What have you done?"

 "I had to!" The cry tore from her. "I couldn't marry him, Mom, I couldn't! I didn't have any choice, it was the only way I could break the blood-oath…"

  Furious colour flooded her mother's face. It only served to highlight the sunken depths of her eyesockets. "And so you'll throw away all your father and I have worked for - the future that we have given our very lives for - that your grandparents died for!"

 "No-"

 "Do you think I did this on a whim? Do you think I raised my daughter so that she could throw her heritage into the gutter? I thought you were mer, Delphine, I thought you understood what that meant. We are more than our own selfish wishes…"

 The hypocrisy took her breath away. "Oh, yeah, ditching Laurence Ivan to run off with his best friend was incredibly unselfish. I don't know why he hasn't forgiven you. Quite a feat, Mom, almost as good as letting him get away with murder because you didn't want to believe he did it!"

 "There's no proof!" her mother shrieked, the sound thin and harsh.

 "How hard did you look?" Phi screamed back, clinging to the doorframe because her legs were so weak. She was sick and faint and blazing with fury at the same time. "Or were you already staring at the future, planning out what was best for everyone but yourselves?"

 "Oh, it's back to this, is it?" Marie Thetis thrust herself up off the pillows, arms quivering. "You know, I thought it was just teenage rebellion, I let your father soothe me and I let you have those unsavoury friends, and I thought that you would mature into the girl I hoped you'd become - kind, thoughtful, prepared-"

 "For what? Marriage with Don?"

 "For, for-" Marie Thetis mouthed, seeming to struggle for the words and then with sudden, vitriolic force she spat out, "For your duties as a member of the pod, as a leader of it. Never did I dream that you would turn your back on it. On us."

 All her anger drained away then. Gods, her mother was little more than a skeleton, her hair thinning, her cheekbones jutting out. "And what about you, Mom? You turned your back on me and Dad a long time ago. You chose to die. How can you sit there and preach at me because I've chosen not to?"

 "Don't be so melodramatic. Don Ivan wouldn't kill you or even hurt you for the same reason that Laurie would never have killed my parents. We are mer, Delphine. We are separate from the rest of the Nightworld - we are unique. We were not made with blood or sacrifice but from hope and the last true magic that exists in this world. We don't kill."

 Phi stared at her in disbelief. Bane Malefici's words echoed with sinister emphasis in her head, whispering what a mighty kingdom was Atlantis! "You can't believe that. My grandparents-"

 "Wolves," snapped her mother. "Taking a long-awaited revenge. There are things you don't understand, Phi, about the pod and the Pack-"

 "Aurora, you mean," she interrupted brutally. "I know all about her. Jess told me. You can't seriously believe that!"

 Those grey eyes were hard as steel. "I know it. And if you were truly mer, you would know it too. We have no capacity for violence-"

 A skeptical laugh escaped Phi. "How can you be so blind? Don-"

 "Is his father's son!" flared her mother.

 "That's what I'm afraid of," she said quietly.

 Her lips drew back into a grimace. "Laurence Ivan is a good man. A man I hurt without cause or better reason than love."

 "Isn't that a good enough reason?" whispered Phi.

 "It was a child's reason. I was a child." Her mother stared at her, her face severe, close to cruelty. "I wanted you to know more than I had. More than our sheltered world, so that when you came to the same choice, you would be wiser. You were going to pick up my mantle, Phi, you were going to do what I could not." Her smile was crooked and unkind. "And I suppose you have. I could never have walked away from the pod so casually."

 "It wasn't casual," she said desperately. "I tried...this was the only way..."

 "No. It was the only way you wanted to see," Marie Thetis corrected coldly. "I had such hopes. I saw such greatness for you. And you have thrown it all away on a churlish whim."

 "You don't know what Don is," she said, forcing the words through a throat swollen and painful.

 "I am tired of your hostility. It has no base better than a silly childhood accident." Marie Thetis laughed, and the sound was loud and shattering. "What does it matter now? All the futures I saw, and never a hint of this moment. You have no idea what you have destroyed today. All I've done...everything...gone."

 "Mom..." she whispered.

  "You made your choice, Delphine. Now you can take the consequences, as I did." Her mother's face was stern, bleak and absolutely awful. "You are not mer. You are not one of us. You are not my daughter."

 The world was slipping away from her, dropping into a dreadful abyss. "Mom..."

 "You are not my daughter," said Marie Thetis slowly and carefully. "Leave. There is no future for you in this house."

 She stifled a sob. "You can't..."

 "Go. I don't want to look at you anymore." Her eyes held no forgiveness, no hint of mercy.

 Not knowing what else to do, her life unhinged, Phi fled.

~*~

 The first Celia knew of what had happened was when the phone rang.  

 Her mother held out the receiver. "One of yours," she said mildly and turned her attention back to the crossword.

 Celia took it. "Hello?"

 Strange, raspy breathing. And then a terrible, drained voice barely recognizable as Phi's said, "Cee?"

 "What's wrong?" she said, full of dread.

 There was no answer, except thin coughing sounds and then she realized that Phi was crying down the phone in a soft, heartbroken way that she had never heard before, not even over her mother.

 "Phi, talk to me, please!"

 Jodie Slone glanced up from the newspaper, concerned. Celia met her eyes with a frantic moue of worry and fright.

 "It's…it's all gone wrong," Phi mumbled. "I'm not mer anymore, Cee, the Demon Fury made sure of that. I'm human now, just like y-you." Her voice cracked. "How can you stand the silence?"

 "What?" she said, bemused.

 "I can't feel them anymore. The pod - they were always there, but I didn't know. They're gone. It's all just empty and so silent."

 "You're not making any sense," she whispered. She felt cold with fear for her friend. "What happened?"

 "I went down to the lake - I had to, so they could all see that I wasn't mer, so I wouldn't have to marry Don. My dad…" A huge, shuddering breath. "Oh gods, Cee, you should have seen his face. He was devastated, and, and the way he looked at me - it was like he didn't even know me."

 "Oh, Phi…"

 "And th-then I went home. My mother, she saw me and, and, and-" Her words were dissolving rapidly under an onslaught of sobs and Celia clung to the phone, not knowing what to say or do. "She told me that I wasn't her daughter anymore. She told me to leave. Cee, where am I going to go?"

 "Oh my god! Where are you?"

 "In the payphone on the corner. I c-can't go back. I can't."

 Quickly, she covered the receiver with her hand. "Mom, Phi's been thrown out of her house. She doesn't have anywhere else to go. Can she stay here, please?"

 Her mother pursed her lips. "What happened?"

 Celia hesitated. "It's complicated."

 Jodie Slone eyed her, stern, but then she gave a small nod.

 "You can stay at mine," she urged. "We'll look after you."

 There was a long pause, then Phi said in a thick, choked voice, "Thank you."

 "Don't be silly," she said briskly. "Want me to come and get you?"

 "Please," came the timid whisper, so unlike the girl she knew. For the first time, Celia felt the knifing fear that something in Phi had been broken, something irreparable.

 No, she told herself. Not my friend. Not on my watch.

 ~*~

 Celia felt a wave of absolute shock when she saw Phi.

 She was huddled inside the phone booth, and her skin was ashen against the torrid red tumble of her hair. Between the red rims of her eyes was a shadowy, unqualified emotion, and she moved as if the merest glance might bring her to her knees.

 "I'm so sorry," Celia murmured and then flung her arms around her. Phi felt chilly to the touch, as if all the life had been poured away with her supernatural powers.

 "Me too," croaked Phi. She didn't say another word on the way back; she seemed lost in her own thoughts, lost in mourning.

 Jodie Slone took one look at her, and all her usual severity melted away into a rush of motion and mothering. With uncanny swiftness, Phi was hustled into Celia's room and furnished with a hot drink, a freshly-made camp bed, spare clothes, and it made Celia feel better to see her take it seriously.

Later, she realized that of course her mother had recognized such wounds when she saw them. Hadn't she taken Aspen into her home, hadn't she adopted him into their family with just such tender, practical care?

 So Celia took her cue from her mother, and the pair of them filled the air with chatter like two cockatoos, chirping brightly. They gabbled about Finn and Riose and Jo and Celia's siblings, the upcoming wedding, anything to keep Phi from her thoughts.

 It seemed to work. She gave them faded, ghost smiles and sipped at the tea, and tried to comment. Celia thought she could see something of the old spark in her eyes, which no longer seemed as flat and pallid as fog.

 Eventually, Jodie Slone left them alone, with an exhortation to behave, or at least misbehave quietly, and Celia let her stream of chatter die.

 "Are you okay?" she said gently.

 "My mom…she said these awful things. So did I." Phi took a shuddery breath. "I can't think about it."

 "Your dad will talk some sense into her," she consoled. "She might just be shocked. She'd invested so much in your marriage, hadn't she?"

 "You didn't hear her. And my dad...I broke his heart, Cee. I don't know if he'll want me back."

 "Of course he will. They're your parents. They love you. Look at my mom! She can bite your head off if you cross her, but she'd do anything for us."

 Phi raised a weak smile. "She's pretty awesome."
 
 "Mostly," Celia said wryly. "Unless she thinks there's anything unwholesome happening. Seriously, Aspen dropped his towel coming out of the bathroom one day and she thought he was trying to sneak into Tam's room. I don't know what she said to him, but he wouldn't even hold Tam's hand for the next fortnight."

 A brief lull fell, and this time, Celia waited for Phi to speak. There was more; the shadows in her eyes confirmed that.

 "I can't feel anything outside my own body," Phi said softly. "It's like half the world has just been wiped out. Even when they were nowhere near, the pod were still close. Now...nothing. There's just me, and nothing stretching out forever. How do you stand it, Cee?"

 "Stand what?"

 In echo of the despair Celia had heard earlier, Phi raised her eyes to stare directly at her. Head on, there was no hiding her desolation. "How can you stand to be so lonely?"

 "You're not alone," she said quietly. "Not while I'm here. Not while you've got us."

 Phi's smile was more genuine, if tentative.

 "You think Finn is going to leave you alone? You've just conclusively broken off your engagement to the one guy who might have made him back off. He's going to pester you now until you cave and give him the pity sex he so very blatantly needs."

 She was relived to hear Phi's shaky laugh. "I'm kind of taken."

 "Well, then," Celia said promptly, "you're not alone, are you? Especially if you're talking about that dishy soulmate of yours."

 She was surprised to see new, raw fear in Phi's face. "Cee...I'm not mer. What if I'm not his soulmate anymore?"

 "I don't think it works like that." She thought about it. "But there's an easy way to find out. Isn't it about time you introduced us?"

 And that way, she added silently, if you're not, if the worst has happened and you are truly as alone as you fear, at least we'll be there.

 Some colour crept back into Phi. "I guess I should." She hesitated. "Cee," she said in a small voice. "I'm scared."

 Me too.

 But Celia put on her most wicked smile and said, "Don't be. I promise to hold Finn back before the pair of them incinerate each other."

 At Phi's reluctant chuckle, she felt that it might just be okay after all.

~*~

 "You lying, treacherous vile…" The speaker sputtered, as if they could find no term quite fitting, then resumed with a new burst of outrage: "...underhanded overpaid insincere toad!"

 The door crashed back with a resounding thud. Splinters flew through the air; Blue raised a hand and batted them away lazily. Chatoya Irkil strode in, her face blazing with fury.

 "Flattery will get you nowhere," he remarked, unfazed. "But do carry on."

 "What the hell are you playing at?" she shouted, and when he failed to look interested, a flush stormed up her face. She was quite magnificent in her anger; a tall, demanding and shadowy queen with eyes evergreen and wild as a faerie forest. "I refused Delphine Thetis!"

 Slowly, as if he had all of time at his leisure, his gaze shifted up from her feet to her fierce face.

 Blue gave her a smile full of satisfaction. "I did not."

 "It wasn't your decision."

 "Wasn't it? Then you can hardly blame me for it."

 Her power cracked like a whip - and the air behind him tore open into some dark, unforgiving place. Hot, sulphurous winds streamed into the room, and where they brushed his skin, burns sprang. He didn't flinch.

 "Don't toy with me, Blue," she warned. Her voice thrummed with emotion. "I'm not in the mood."

 Calm, he turned to stare into the abyss that she had opened. "Odd," he remarked.

 "What?" she snapped

 "I thought it was supposed to gaze back."

 She wore the look of someone debating whether to throw him in or not. With a sound halfway between a scream and a laugh, she chopped her hand across the air. The rift sealed.

 "And I had my reasons," he continued, as if his imminent doom hadn't just flashed before his eyes. "Sound business reasons, I might add. Rather better than your sentimental ramblings."

 "Sentiment had less to do with it than you think," she said tightly.

 "Did it?" Now that it was safe, Therese strolled in from where she'd been lingering at the threshold. In truth, Chatoya's power had unnerved her. She hadn't known the witch had mastered walking between worlds with that kind of blasé ease. "Hello Bane. You look a little...singed."

 "Telerana. You look a little…" He gave her the same familiar, ever-so-slightly disapproving look. Just to provoke him, Therese perched on the table in a way that bared most of her thighs. "Slutty."

 "That's because I'm the sexy one," she retorted. "It's the price I pay. After all, you get to be the psychotic one and Chatoya wound up as the rebellious one by default. If outrageous sexual allure is my claim to fame, who am I to argue?"

 "Four out of five people with taste would disagree," he said dryly. "You should come with a public health warning."

 "I do," she said smoothly. "They just printed it where it was most useful."

 His lips quirked. He was in a good mood then; obviously he had heard about the fireworks that the little fish had caused at the lake earlier, and Chatoya's rage had only added to his glee. Therese had to wonder what he had demanded from Delphine Thetis, though she could guess. "I dread to think."

 "Why are you standing here making jokes?" Chatoya snapped. Therese hadn't seen her quite this livid in a long time. Life in the Furies was obviously wearing on her. "We had an agreement. He broke it."

 Therese rolled her eyes. "It's what he does. The trick is making sure you wring out some concessions next time he needs a favour - which he will, eventually."

 Those green eyes were astounded. "I'm not interested in 'eventually'. He's just robbed the pod of its only viable leader."

 "She's still alive," Blue pointed out.

 "They'll never accept her."

 "Won't they?" He shrugged. "More fool them. She may not be mer, but she's still a Thetis."

 "Meaning what exactly?" demanded Chatoya.

 He reached out - tangled her hair in his fingers with a faintly dreamy look in his eyes that Therese would not have imagined she would ever see where no blood had been spilt. "Meaning you should have done your research. Or at least spoken to Ryar."

 "Ryar?" She hissed, a low feral sound. "So that was how you got around it."

 "Mmm." He eased closer to her. Therese couldn't help but feel as she was intruding on a private scene. "My witch-"

 Therese wasn't sure who was more surprised when Chatoya stepped pointedly back from him. "Oh, I don't feel like being yours for a while."

 The malice in her voice was bladed. And from the sudden, blank glaze in his eyes, it struck home. "And whose will you be, my witch?"

 Well, thought Therese. That's certainly a revenge I could never take. But then, I'm not sure I'd risk the consequences.

 "Oh, I'm not sure it'll be my decision," she said mockingly. "So whoever it is, you can hardly blame me, can you?"

 "Yes."

 That one word was like a tomb slamming shut. But credit to her, Chatoya held her ground even though her face paled. She didn't say another word before she left. She did not look back, and his eyes never left her. Therese suspected that his thoughts would follow her long after she was out of sight.

 It was an apt revenge. She just wasn't sure it was a particularly wise one.

~*~

 "We'll wait here," Celia decided. The lake wasn't quite visible from this part of the road, and they could relax on the grass while they waited for Phi. It was a balmy night, not even a breeze to carry a private conversation to them. She doubted that would stop Finn trying to listen.

 "Here?" grumbled the paranoid friend in question. "It's miles away."

 "That's the idea," Jo muttered, sitting herself down. Her eyes glinted in the moonlight. "Go on, Phi, we'll make sure he doesn't intrude."

 "I wouldn't intrude without good reason!" Finn said indignantly. At their disbelieving looks, he thumped onto the grass sulkily. "We just have different definitions of good. Right, Ri?"

 Riose looked alarmed. "Don't drag me into your protection racket. I didn't crash Cee's last date on the grounds that Mark Dietrich's eyes were too close together."

 "They were! He's shifty as hell!"

 "Maybe that was what I liked about him," Celia said sharply. "Sometimes it's okay for guys to be up to no good, Finley."

 "Sometimes," Jo put in throatily, "we're up to no good too."

 "Fine!" Finn flung up his hands. "Go, Phi, I promise not to interrupt until this lot let me."

 She nodded - she'd been so quiet, and Celia could see how nervous she was. In the faint grey light, she seemed pale as alabaster. "I'll come and get you." She licked her lips. "Here goes."

 "It'll be okay," Celia reassured her. When she saw Riose's arched eyebrow, she glared at him until he looked suitably optimistic. "Go."

 When Phi had become a silhouette merging into the gloom, Jo ventured softly, "You sure about that one, Cee?"

 "Yes," she snapped. It had to be fine. She wouldn't admit the possibility of failure.

 ~*~

 Zeke was waiting by the lake as he always did, a campfire crackling away merrily. When he glanced up, his eyes had the same fierce orange gleam, but his smile seemed dimmer, muted. Fear shot through her - he had already felt it, he knew, it was wrong, oh gods...

 "Phi?" He got up, his hair catching gold and red in the firelight. "Are you okay?"

 She took a deep breath.

 "I'm not mer," she said huskily, and all her fear swilled in her stomach. Not mer, maybe not his soulmate...

 His eyes widened. "I didn't know anyone still knew that spell."

 Her arms had somehow wrapped around her of their own accord, as if she stood in a bitter winter wind. "The Furies do."

 The mention of them didn't seem to faze him. He let out a sigh and muttered, "Figures."

 This was not how she had expected the conversation to go.

 "Most people go for knee-knocking fear," she ventured.

 "Do they?" He looked slightly bemused. "Well, I guess most people can't just vanish in a puff of smoke."

"You've...run into them?"

 "Now and then. They tend to get kind of confused when they meet me. I think it's the whole being virtually invulnerable thing. You want the definition of surprise, try rematerializing right after some guy thinks he's just decapitated you."

  She tried to smile, but it came out wobbly. "Zeke..."

 He stilled, merriment gone. "What's wrong?"

 "I'm not mer. I…I don't know what else I'm not." There. She'd said it. But the fear wasn't gone - it was there, bigger, brighter, taking her over with voracious speed and suddenly she was fracturing, tears filling her eyes and she was so empty...

 His arms were warm, steady - he was simply there and gentle and asking nothing of her at all. His hand cupped her head, stroking through her hair and she could bear it no longer; tear-blind, her world water and salt, she kissed him.

 And when their lips met, she felt the familiar pull of lightning, of sparks fizzling between them and held back by mutual choice, and she sank into the kiss with relief, she sank into him, into his arms and every sweet, intense point of contact between their bodies.

 She was not alone.

 And then he quietly kissed the tears from her cheeks, kissed her eyelids, the corners of her mouth, and she could feel the heat in his hands, driving away the cold inside her.

 "I thought…" she whispered.

 "You're not getting rid of me that easily." She felt his smile against her mouth before it slid into another kiss, soft as rain. For a moment, none of it mattered - only that they were stood there and kissing and it was entirely right and sweet and shivery-

 Someone coughed loudly and pointedly.

 With a squeak, Phi broke away and spun to see Finn stood there with his arms folded. Behind him, the other three were obviously sprinting to catch up.

 "He tricked us," gasped Celia as she came to a halt. "Sorry."

"Um. My friends," Phi said weakly. "They wanted to meet you."

 "I wouldn't go that far," growled Finn.

 "Most of us want to meet you," Celia said, neatly stamping on Finn's foot as she strode past. "Sorry. Phi was going to come and get us."

 "And now it seems like we've come to get you," purred Jo huskily. "Don't worry, darling, we don't bite. Well. Only on request."

 "Jo," protested Celia.

 "Just kidding," she said lightly and moved past him to sit beside the fire. "We've come to vet you."

 "Is that another joke?" Zeke said warily.

 Finn shoulder-barged past, giving him a glare that combined brotherly protectiveness with homicidal intent. "No."

 Zeke eyed him with something close to amusement. "Want to arm wrestle?"

 The witch looked startled. "What?"

 "I thought we were doing territorial machismo." Zeke gazed at him innocently. "I didn't bring beer, so cracking them open with our teeth is out, and there aren't any cars to hotwire and race, which leaves arm-wrestling."

 Finn stared at him with narrowed eyes. "Well, you're less stupid than every other guy she's dated."

 "The two that you didn't scare away," supplied Riose helpfully.

 "I still don't like you," Finn informed Zeke. "I think you're even dodgier than the butler in a whodunit, and you're not as well-dressed."

 "I'll take that backhanded compliment in the spirit it was given," Zeke said mildly. "And you must be Finn."

  "I'll take it my brand of roguish good looks gave it away," Finn said loftily.

 "I think your outright paranoia gave it away," Celia interrupted, squinting at Zeke. "Well, you're cute, but you don't beat Mr J."

 Bemusement was Zeke's only response. "Who?"

 "Our gym teacher," sighed Riose, seating himself around the fire. "He's a brawny shapeshifter and Celia has a bad case of what my mother calls damp knickers about him."

 He sounded slightly grumpy, Phi thought. Still, it was past midnight and he was awake, which would account for it.

 "Your...mother says that?" Zeke said warily. "To you?"

 Ri rolled his eyes. "Unfortunately. Believe me, I've told her I don't want to hear it. I'm Riose, by the way, and Miss Suggestive Comment over there is Jo."

 "I guessed." He glanced over at Phi, and she felt the electric shock of meeting his eyes. "I suppose you know who I am."

 "Phi said Fireblade made you," remarked Riose into the tense silence.

 "Yes, but don't hold that against me." He grinned ruefully. "I didn't have much choice in the matter."

 "And she said you were a gift for a woman."

 "Yes."

 "So that must make you Avarice ap Sangager's toy." The firelight played eerie tricks with Riose. His eyes were black slits surrounded by flickering orange that gave spooky animation to his face. "Among other things."

 "Wait, Avarice ap Sangager," interrupted Finn. "I've heard of Ryar, and of course Sangager was the poor bastard that the Soulless King usurped, but who's Avarice?"

 "The second daughter of Sangager," Zeke supplied. "My owner."

"Is that all?" Riose said skeptically.

 "I thought I loved her once. I was young, foolish, swayed by her charm. And she was a charming woman when she wanted to be. She promised me freedom. Gods only know what she promised herself. Lies, all of it. She became bitter and beautiful - impossible to love, but very, very easy to hate."  She heard the glimmer of anger in his voice. "The Burning Times destroyed her."

 She had known something of this story; the woman's name had been the only detail he had omitted, and no wonder. Avarice ap Sangager. A dragon princess - that was how he had known Ryar. It made sense when she thought about it: who else would Fireblade have made such a gift to except royalty?

 "So how have you spent the last thirty thousand years then?" Riose said with seeming nonchalance.

 "Drifting. Trying to find somewhere I could live." His eyes shifted to Phi and she felt warm under them. "And then I came here."

 They fired questions at him - Finn and Riose mostly, probing his past, his personality, his intentions. Most of it Phi knew; some surprised her, and she felt resentment at her friends, as if they were stealing the secrets he had been saving up to tell her on later nights. Celia was content to observe; Jo seemed indifferent, though occasionally she would glance up and Phi would see some brief icy echo of Therese in her eyes, more than ever she saw in Riose.

 "And Phi?" Finn fired at him suddenly. "What's she to you?"

 "My soulmate," Zeke said. "I thought you knew that."

 "Not good enough," said the witch flatly. "That's not an answer. That's what she is - not what she means to you."

 Zeke was silent, and then he looked straight at her, and Phi caught her breath at the intensity in his eyes which gleamed like fire, like the sun. "You're fierce and you're stubborn and you're impulsive in a way that's a little scary. You never give in on an argument, no matter how stupid it is."

 All of it was true, but she couldn't help bridling a little. It surprised her to realize how much he did know her, how much she had revealed of herself in those long, whimsical conversations - more than she had given away in the clutch of kisses or the breathless heat of embraces.

 And then she realised that she knew him just as well. Dreamer, she would have said, hiding under a cynic's guise. Hesitant, maybe fearful, but unwavering in any commitment he gave. Wise enough to laugh at the danger of his slave life and smart enough to learn from it - and yet still imprisoned by it, clinging onto a past long gone. A boy of deep, slow, sweet emotion.

 And mine. Most of all, mine.

"But..." he said in a voice that was soft, intimate as if they were alone, "but you're so passionate about everything you do. It all matters to you. You're so alive. And I'm still amazed that you'd even look at me."

 She hid her smile in the drawn-up wall of her knees, but all of them looked thunderstruck. Except Finn, who said sourly, "Join the club, firestarter."

 "Well, that's enough for me," Celia said, a smile teasing her mouth. "Ri?"

 "Um." The vampire looked flustered. "Yep. Good enough."

 "You can keep this one," Jo declared. "Finn? Are you planning to get over it anytime soon?"

 The witch's mouth twisted. "I'm deferring judgment."

 Jo sighed. "That'll do. So, Phi, what now?"

 "I've broken the blood-oath," she said softly, "but you didn't see Don's face when he realized. I don't trust him. I don't think it's over. My parents...my mother…he won't forgive them. And he's up to something with the Pack, but I don't know what."

"We know someone who might though," Jo said thoughtfully. "That wolf boy who helped rescue you."

 "Sam," Phi said, recalling his kindness.

 "I can find him," offered the wildcat. Her teeth gleamed. "I'm the only one who's got a reason to be on the Ghost Roads."

 "I can watch the lake," Riose said quietly. "And Cee and Finn could watch your house between them. We should see any trouble coming."

 "What about Phi?" demanded Finn. "Who's going to look after her?"

 Riose glanced at Zeke. And then he said, "I'm going for the person who has the most to lose if she dies. After all..." and his voice had a certain hardness to it, almost cruelty, "you can look forward to almost certain madness, unending despair and a lifetime's supply of guilt."

 "I don't think I'm the best choice," Zeke said, to her surprise - and then he winced, as if something had stung him.

 "Why not?" Celia asked, sounding as startled as Phi felt.

 "You have families who can help." His voice was strained. "People who'll notice if you get hurt."

 "None of us can turn ourselves into gigantic murderous infernos," Finn said flatly. "Not that I'm saying that's a point in your favour."

 "We don't want our families brought into this," Celia said, her eyes pained. "My mom - she'd die for us. And that's the problem. If this goes bad, she might have to. Same for Finn's family, Riose's-"

 "Don't include mine," Jo said abruptly. "They wouldn't die for me. But I wouldn't ask them to. You - look, don't take this the wrong way, but we can ask you to die for Phi. And you know what? I bet you think it's a fair price."

 Something solidified in his face - he was stern, young, terrible in that moment. "Yes," he said, and for a crazed moment Phi wanted to shout at him to take it back, not to mean it...

 But it was just words. Nothing more.

 "No one's going to die for me," she said. "We're going to make sure it doesn't happen. There's got to be a way to stop Don."
 
 Jo raised a clawed hand. "One swift blow to the throat-"

 "Another way!" she insisted. She had made her sacrifice - surely it was enough. When Don saw how her parents had reacted, when he knew she was truly outcast...she had to be the one he took revenge on. Only her. There was no reason to hurt her parents now, none at all. "We need..."

 And suddenly it came to her. Deadly, fraught...but the only way.

 "We need to trap him," she said. "And we've got the perfect bait."

 Each of them understood what she meant. The uproar was instant. Finn was on his feet shouting, and heat haze rose from him to ripple the air; Celia had her hands clamped to her mouth, Jo glared, Riose only groaned and toppled back to stare up at the dark sky and Zeke...

 He didn't have to say anything: he shook his head once. She saw the fear in his eyes, vast. But despite it, she knew that she was right. It was the only way to be sure.

 After all, what would Don Ivan want more than her?

"You are not making yourself bait for the Podfather!" shouted Finn, hovering on tiptoe in his rage. "That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard!"

 "Hear me out," she began.

 "I don't need to hear you out! Nothing is going to make this less insane!"

 "For once, I agree," said Jo, frowning. "Phi, Don's got an army of wolves. If he shows up with them, you're mincemeat."

 "Especially now," Riose said bluntly.  

 The words stung. For a few minutes, she had been able to forget the void inside her, the world that seemed so far distant now.

 "So you think we should just wait until he does whatever he's gearing up for?" she demanded. "In case you've forgotten, I just broke a blood-oath. What if he...if he tries to kill my parents?"

 "I thought the whole point of the Furies was that he couldn't?" Finn said tautly.

 "No. The point was that he shouldn't. But…you didn't see his face when he found out." She swallowed. "He's dangerous."

 "Then we'll watch him," Riose said flatly. "Stay with Cee in the day, make sure you stay in crowds - he won't dare do anything there. And at night, Zeke can protect you."

 "From outside the house," Finn inserted sharply. Phi resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

 Riose sat up, his eyes thoughtful. "No. That's too risky. It has to be from inside."

 Finn made a strangled noise.

That roused a groan from Celia. "Ri, there's no way my mom-"

"Who says she has to know?" he said quietly. "He's fire, isn't he? You have a candle in your room. I've seen it."

 Celia gazed at him, then turned her eyes to Zeke. "You can do that?"

 "Well, yes," he replied, throwing Phi an anxious glance. "It's not what you'd call comfortable, but I can do it."

 Her eyes went wide. "Wow."

 He grinned, abashed, as if it surprised him that anyone could think it so extraordinary.

 "That frees up me to keep an eye on Don," Riose continued, and in the dim light, his face had a ferocious cast. "Jo can chase down our wolf and find out what's going on with the Pack. Finn can keep an eye on your mom, Phi, check who comes visiting."

 It all sounded so reasonable. But a small, shadowy part of her heart whispered that it was too neat, that she had sounded the sullen depths of Don Ivan's malice and knew that he would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. Whatever they were. Whoever they hurt.

 But she could find no rational objection, and so she nodded reluctantly.

 It felt uncomfortably like a mistake.

 Even in the dim light, she can tell he quivers with barely restrained rage. In his impetuosity and his impatience, he reminds her too starkly of Fireblade, and her magical vision makes him into that old idol for a few moments, magnificent.  

 "What am I supposed to do now?" Don Ivan demands - demands, of her. The brief illusion is shattered - she sees the petulant twist of his mouth, the youth and the disgust in his eyes. "She isn't pod. I can't marry her!"

 In a distant way, she cannot help but admire the girl. Part of her wonders if she chose to support the wrong member of the mer: but then, she has always found men easier than women. True.

 "How am I supposed to win the Elders without her?" he snarls. "She's the key to those-" Brief lucidity grips him: his eyes focus upon her withered form and he changes what he was about to utter so smoothly she barely notices. "-old barnacles."

 The command is carried on a lick of power, enough to silence him. He bows his head in a show of docility, though the anger is still taut along his shoulders and arms.

 She sees the bright, brittle hunger grow in him. He has a love of pain, this one. It is what drew her to him all those years ago and what kept her watching, patient, as he grew into his cruelty and his ambition until she was ready to call him here and make him hers.

 Make her fear you, she whispers. She thinks she has escaped the oath - prove her wrong.

 "Kill them?" His voice is husky with desire.

 She considers, but only briefly. Her father tonight. Leave her mother for now - she is weak enough, and killing both will lose you any leverage with her.

 That will come later, when she has the girl in hand. Laurence Ivan will see to the second death, in his love and his hate which have only become more intense with the years.

 "What about Phi?"

 She wants to wince at his crudity. Truly he is blind if he cannot see Delphine Thetis's importance. No. She must be kept alive. I require her.

 His lips part, his tongue slips over them. "And when you're finished with her?"

 There's a chance the girl might survive him, she supposes. But it's probably better if she doesn't.

 His smile is savage, beautiful, and she catches her breath and dreams he is Fireblade. It is not enough. It never was.

 But Fireblade is dead, Ryar is dead, she alone survives and she would have back all they took from her in their vicious lover's war. That, only Delphine Thetis can provide her with.

~*~

 Ryar knocked softly on the door of the Thetis house. She wore an innocuous face, ignoring the unfamiliar feel of it; she was merely another petitioner at the oracle's threshold. When no answer came, spurred by intuition, she tried the door. Unlocked. Marie Thetis was used to visitors, then.

She slipped in with light feet, like a sea breeze come to stir the curtains.

 The room had the faint and noticeable scent of long illness. Despite that, Ryar could see the care behind it: the rose-tinted, gentle light that muted Marie Thetis's too-bony face, the heaps of pillows, the fresh flowers and chairs drawn up beside the bed.

 "Dan, is that-"

 Then Marie Thetis saw her, and she gasped. A strange reverence came over her; she had the dreamy and ethereal look of a saint waiting on ascension. "Have you come to take me away?"

 "No."

 "But you are Ryar ap Sangager."

 "The same, for my sins," she answered ruefully.

 Marie Thetis was not one to delude herself. Her hope was replaced by comprehension, leaving her haggard with pain. "And alive."

 "Yes."

They eyed one another, two woman ages apart, sprung from the same source. Then Marie Thetis said, "I'd like to hear how you escaped death. Maybe you could give me some tips."

 "I was hoping to do more than that." Ryar ran a professional eye over her. "I did not give the mer all my power."

"I don't think even a healer as great as you can help me," remarked Marie dryly. "I have nothing to fear from death."

 "None of us do," she replied. "That doesn't mean you should throw away all that precedes it."

 That bitter smile drew the skin tight on Marie's bones. "I haven't. Though someone obviously disagrees if they went to all the trouble of finding you. Who was it?"

 "Your daughter."

 The smile snapped off. "She is no longer my daughter."

 Ryar inclined her head. "I disagree."

 Sudden, furious realization dawned in Marie Thetis's face.

 "I have you to thank for that, don't I? You made us what we are - who else could have undone your work?"

 It was neither the time nor the place to say that at least one spell existed which was equal to the task. She had merely been the most convenient solution to Blue Malefici, and Ryar had no doubt that the outcome would have been the same if she was still dust in her watery tomb. "It was what she wanted."

 "She is a child! Her wants change like the weather!"

 Ryar thought of that pale, determined young woman she had met - who had gambled on the whim of Blue Malefici and faced all before her despite her fears. "Most people do not approach the Furies in a fit of temper."

 "The…the..." Her hands clutched the bedspread. "No."

 "You didn't know," she said gently.

 "The Furies." It was a harsh whisper. "You're part of the Furies?"

 "No. But they asked, and I answered." The rest, she left unspoken: for the war we fought, for all we lost, for the four who are now scattered and broken, I answered. For the life I have now, for atonement, for hope, I answered. "It was right."

 "Right? Right to destroy us?" Her face was all bones and bemusement. "She was my only child."

 "She still is."

 "In genetics, I suppose. In blood," Marie Thetis said in a thick voice. "And we are mer - blood has never been thicker than water to us. You ensured that. All we are is your power - water."

 "No," she said quietly. "Not all."

  "All that matters."

  "The smallest part of what matters!" cried Ryar, the memory of the mer a bitter haunting in her mind. "Don't you understand how much more you have become? Look at all you have - family, friends, community, children. Are you so eager to throw it away?"

 "I have devoted my life to protecting it," Marie said coldly. "I thought you would approve. I've used your gifts as best I could. It's no fault of yours that prophecy carries a penalty."

 Ryar gazed at her, momentarily speechless. She could not blame those early mer for erasing Atlantis from their history, but now she began to see how much else had been lost along the way. "It carries a penalty for a reason."

 The grey eyes widened. "You..."

 "I spent my life looking for a better future," she said in a low, fierce voice. "I gave up everything in the end - all my joy, my love, my hope, everything that is the beginning of wonder. I did not want you to make the same mistake. Why do you think prophecy has a price? I wanted you to make the right choice - to live now. To live freely, without the future haunting you."

 The woman recovered with formidable speed; her chin lifted. "It has haunted me so that it must haunt no one else. My pod has lived free because I did not."

 Ryar could feel no anger at her tone; only immense weariness. She was reminded too sharply of old ghosts, just as defiant, just as haughty. Just as condemned.

 "I knew a man as proud as you once," Ryar said softly as her hands flickered, weaving magical webs about that raddled body.

 "And will you give me some gibberish about pride and falls? In case you haven't noticed, it's a little late for warnings."

 "Yes," acknowledged Ryar as she drew back her spells with their grim news. "You have already wasted your days wishing for a better future."

 "Wrong. I have made a better future. As you did. Hardly a waste."

 "What I made was a choice, and I left others to make their own. I couldn't see a future that held any joy - and still I chose, hoping. I didn't expect anyone to follow me. I didn't expect to start a revolution."

 The woman's eyes were puzzled. "Why then?"

 "Because I could not know everything," she answered gently. "Every second changed the future - who can say what might strike us in the next moment - a comet, an earthquake, even an idea. Nothing is certain, not even death. And so all I could do was to choose, and hope it was enough."

 Silence. Then Marie Thetis said in a very calm voice, "My death is certain enough."

 "Yes. Is it what you wanted?"

 A raw, terrible emotion tore open in her eyes. Grief so profound Ryar had to look away. "It was what I needed. What they needed too."

 "I think there are people who need you alive. Your husband. Your daughter-"

 "She is not my daughter."  The woman turned her head away. "She has severed herself from our future."

 "No. She is no longer mer. That isn't the same at all." Very slowly, Ryar laid her hand on the woman's thin shoulders. She could not heal her, but she could at least ease some of the pain which crouched inside her body like a monstrous spider. "Marie...think about it. She needs you."

 Ryar could not help but think of the long, scorched days when she had been alone, fleeing across her broken world with nowhere to go. The terror of it was still a potent memory; the nights huddled in on herself, the days searching the horizon for any glimpse of life at all, finding only the empty, denuded sky and her own despair.

"Please," she said, unable to hear the pain in her voice. "Don't leave her alone."

 Ryar lifted her hands - and Marie Thetis caught them with a surprisingly strong grip, her face soft with new, strange compassion.

"This man," she said slowly. "This man of great pride that you spoke of. Who was he?"

 "My husband," she said, and still the words brought a painful lump to her throat. It was hard to erase that old, mistaken love: a child's idolatry, a fool's dream. But love nonetheless, for all its flaws.

 "And how he fell," she whispered.

 She could stay no longer; she eased out of Marie's grip. Yet as she left, she glanced back.

 Marie Thetis had her eyes closed, but just before she pulled the door shut, Ryar thought that something gleamed under her lashes - gleamed and fell, a single bright tear.

 ~*~

   Joana Katter skirted the edge of the Ghost Roads, deadly even in the bright, unforgiving light of the afternoon. Her mind stretched out thin and flat as a net, hoping to catch the presence of a certain wolf. So involved was she, she didn't notice the intruder until he tapped her on the shoulder.

  She spun, eyes wild and fearsome, claws sprouting like daggers from her fingers.

 "Easy, hellcat!"

 Adrian Raynard took a step back, hands raised in a conciliatory gesture. His usual impish smile was replaced by concern. He was exactly the same height as her, and his ever-tousled brown hair always fell in his eyes, letting him peer through with the endearing glance of a child sneaking a peek at forbidden treats.

 She wasn't forbidden, but Jo liked to think she was quite a treat.

  Hastily, she sheathed her claws. "Foxy boy, you need to learn to be noisier."

 "And you need to learn that disemboweling people went out with the Tudors," he retorted. "What are you doing out here?"

 She eyed him. They had known one another for some time, hunting as they did the same stretch of the woods, but only recently had that acquaintance developed into something more. And while she liked his edgy wit, she wasn't sure if she should trust him with this.

 But on the other hand, he knew the woods better than she did. She'd been here a couple of years - he'd grown up here.

 "As it happens, I'm looking for someone," she admitted.

 "Me?" His hazel eyes danced with mischief.

 "A wolf called Sam. Our year. Blond. Quiet."

  "I know the guy you mean." His voice held an unfamiliar note; wariness, perhaps, something strange. "He's one of the Pack."

 "That's the one. Know where I can find him, darling?"

 His face had closed off. This wasn't the boy she knew, all lightness and merriment. "With the rest of the Pack."

 Then it hit her. "Foxy boy…are you jealous?"

 He flushed, and she knew she'd hit the mark. "I thought we were going somewhere."

 Jo resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The last thing she needed was another neurotic man to add to her collection. Finn and Riose were bad enough between them, combining as they did more commitment issues than the average Jerry Springer episode.

 "It's nothing nefarious," she said dryly. "I need some information from him - he might be Pack, but I get the impression he doesn't like it much."

 "Oh." His smile came out, slow and sheepish. "I can help in that case. He's a friend of my brother's. They're in a band together. He's the bassist. He sucks, incidentally," he added.

 "Any way I can crash their practice?" she said.

 "Sure. Come on over to mine tonight and we'll pretend to be interested in hearing them torture sound." He hesitated. "My parents are out so it's not an official visit or anything."

 She couldn't help needling him just a little. "Still your guilty secret, then?"

 "You know that's not it-" As he caught the amusement in her grin, his fierce denial trailed off. Adrian ran a hand through his hair, looking decidedly embarrassed. "And um, the whole jealous paranoia thing? I feel like an idiot."

"You're in luck, darling," she purred. "I feel like one too - and here you are!"

 He laughed. "Watch it, hellcat."

 Even though she breezed over his words with blithe banter, she couldn't help but think of the others, standing vigil over Phi. She couldn't help but worry.

  ~*~

 As evening slid in, furtive activity was taking place in Celia's room. Celia had her back flat against the door in case her mother should materialize.

 Leaning out of the window, Phi waved. "Quick," she whispered.

 A stream of smoke slid past her into the room and formed into Zeke, who looked a little astonished to see Celia pressed up against the door as if it was going to give way.

 She gaped at him. "That is incredibly cool. Phi, you didn't mention he could fly."

  "It's not exactly flying," he said. "More...drifting. And it gets really nasty if someone accidentally inhales me."

 Phi blinked. "Has that happened?"

 He shuddered. "Only once."

 "That's the downside of superpowers," Celia said firmly. "Even for boys who happen to be literally red-hot lovers."

 Phi couldn't help but blush, and saw matching colour in Zeke's cheeks.

 Celia wore a particularly evil grin. "Just keep it clean while you're here. I have to sleep in here too, and my mother knows if you're even thinking of nefarious things." She paused. "Well, mostly. She still thinks it's cartoons that Billy's looking at inside those comics. Now face the wall, Zeke, and think of pure things. Phi and I need to change for bed."

 "Why don't I just go out of the room-"

 "No way!"

 "Not a good idea," added Phi. "If her mom catches you, we're all toast."

 "I'll evaporate," he offered. "She'll think it was a trick of the light."

 Celia snorted. "She will not. Do you seriously think she doesn't know about the Nightworld?"

 "If she knows, why are we going to all this trouble?" he asked, sounding bemused.

 Celia and Phi exchanged glances. It was hard to explain to someone on the outside, someone who didn't have human friends, who didn't understand how divided the Nightworld had become, even in the supposed safe haven of Ryars Valley.

 "Because as long as she pretends she doesn't know, she's safe," Phi said finally. "Just by being who we are, where we are, there's always the possibility that someone with a grudge might come looking for us. Riose is from an old lamia family - his mom left without their permission, and one day his father might decide he needs an heir."

 And his sister is a Fury, she added silently. One of her enemies might decide they need a hostage.

 "Finn's dad got into something bad when he was a kid," she continued. "He backed out, but he had to run here. Someday he might get followed. When you live forever, you can afford to take your time over revenge."

 Celia had gone very quiet, her lips pressed together. This was the side of the Nightworld that she didn't like - that in many ways, she didn't really believe in. She hadn't seen enough of the savagery under the shimmering veneer to know as the rest of them did. They all took pains to keep it that way.

 "Jo got changed illegally. The boy who did it - well, she's the evidence of his crime, isn't she?" She didn't know how bitter she sounded, nor how hard her face was, stone against the evershifting tangle of her hair. "And me."

 "And you," he echoed, but his voice was terribly gentle. He twitched, as if he might turn to her, but then recalled himself.

 I don't need comfort, she wanted to say, but the hollow inside her was still there, yawning open.

 "I've got Don after me. If he thought he could use Cee to get to me, he would."

 And I have K'Shaia watching me, watching all of us because we were once monstrous. If they thought we had become so again - yes, I don't doubt they'd drown us one by one thinking it right. In mercy, and maybe it even would be if we were still mad and cruel.

 Irrevocably, Don's image burned on the back of her mind. Not mad, but so very cruel, ambitious, driven by the past and the future that her mother had laid before him.

 Me. The pod. All in his hands, cupped like water to be consumed.

 "He won't," Zeke said quietly. "No one's getting past m-"

 "Oh my god!" Celia screamed, and Phi whipped round to see a pale flash of motion at the window - her stomach dropped away and-

 Suddenly the glass was eclipsed by a sheet of impassable flame, hurling light into the room. Fire poured from Zeke's palms like searing stigmata, and even his body seemed mutable, rippling as if he could barely hold onto human form. Still, his face was grim and determined.

 There was commotion outside - an all-too recognisable yelp, a series of resounding thumps, and then an ominous silence.
 
  "Stop!" Celia hissed, eyes wide, gesturing to Zeke frantically. "It's Finn!"

 The fire twisted like a snake devouring itself, and vanished. Zeke looked resigned. "Don't worry. That particular trick is more for effect than for agonizing first-degree burns."

 Phi ran over to the window. A ladder stretched down to the ground, where a feebly moaning shape was moving. If that was just Finn, he'd sprouted extra limbs. "Are you all right?" she called down.

 A groan drifted up, then a pale oval recognizable as Finn's face appeared. "Yeah. I had a soft landing."

 He was shoved onto the floor by a flustered Riose. "Yes, on me."

 Phi shuffled aside as Celia came to join her, bristling with outrage. "What is wrong with you?" snarled her friend. "If you need to talk to us, you know where the damn doorbell is! What the hell were you doing?"

 Dusting himself off, Finn was the picture of chivalrous dignity. "Protecting your honour."

 "Good job," Phi said dryly. She stamped on a mad urge to giggle. "I feel very, um, protected when you start peeping through the window while I'm changing."

 "I was stopping him from ogling you!" Finn said huffily. In the background, something creaked.

 "For the record," Zeke called, "I had my back to them."

 "Keep it down," Celia said, turning to wave a hand at him. "If my mom hears-" There was another, louder creak. She froze. "That's the stairs!" she hissed. "Zeke, go...invisible or something! Boys, run!"

Oh no. Phi had only had to face the wrath of Jodie Slone once; that had been enough. With haste born of desperation, she and Celia bounded onto their beds. She grabbed a book and tried to look immersed but failed as before her eyes, Zeke seemed to collapse into flames that streamed onto the candle by Celia's bed, until it burned just a little brighter than usual.

 "Wow," muttered Celia from behind a magazine, then the door was sharply opened.

 "What on earth was that racket?" demanded Jodie Slone. Her dark, cutting gaze went straight to the open window.

 Inwardly, Phi groaned.

 Jodie Slone strode over and leaned out. For a moment, Phi thought they had got away with it, then Celia's mother said with deadly calm, "Hello Finley. Is there a reason you're cowering in my roses?"

 "Um..." Finn's voice floated up, sounding little short of terrified. "How did you see me?"

 "It's the hair, dear." Phi half-expected frost to form on the walls, so icy was her tone. "Roses are red. You are quite a violent shade of ginger. Now answer my question."

 "I...came to serenade Phi," came the quavering explanation.

 "I thought I had made my feelings on impromptu sing-alongs clear last time?"

 "Yes, but-"

 "And why did you bring a ladder?"

 "Because I wasn't going to sing this time." Finn sounded hopeful. "I was going to reenact the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. I thought it might make her feel better. You know, since her parents kicked her out. I thought she might like to hear something happy and lovey."

 It was quite possibly the worst excuse in the world. She met Celia'a eyes, and saw her own disbelief reflected there.

 A long, thoughtful silence prevailed. Then Jodie Slone said, "Well, it's novel, I'll grant you that. But have you actually read Romeo and Juliet, Finley?"

 "Not to the end, no."

 "Ah. I suggest you do. And then I suggest you reflect on its ending, and reconsider enacting it anywhere near my house. Otherwise you'll experience the full scope of its tragedy first-hand. Do I make myself clear?"

 "Crystal," he shouted, a definite note of relief in his voice. "Um. Sorry about the roses, Mrs S."

 "I'm sure." Jodie Slone closed the window with a firm snap. Her face had a curious rigidity, as if she was holding back some emotion. "Celia, don't let me find any more boys trying to climb into your room-"

 "It was one boy!" protested Celia.

 "Is that why Riose was hiding behind the car?" Jodie Slone raised an eyebrow and Celia fell silent, face glum. "I'm not blind. But he isn't as entertaining a liar as the pyromaniac. Don't bother getting your allowance this week. Consider it a fee for the performance."

 She strode out, but when the door slammed, Phi thought she heard something suspiciously like laughter.

 "That's so unfair," fumed Celia, slumping back onto her pillows. "I'm going to kill Finn."

 "Kill him tomorrow," Phi advised. "He's still got to climb out of the rosebush."

 "Fine. Then I'm going to get some sleep so I can be fresh for when I murder him," growled Celia. Then she sat up, and glanced at the candle. "Thanks for not looking. And for stopping Finn from looking, the paranoid idiot."

 There was no answer, but he had warned them that he couldn't talk.

 "Good night," Phi said softly.

 A whisper of heat brushed her, then a sound drifted into her ears, as low and soft as a dying flame. "Sleep well."

 She did.
 
~*~

 Out in the heights of the mountains, the winds were fierce and tyrannous, every step a fight against them. Still, Ryar had somehow found a quiet niche which was as still and sheltered as the walk there was not. Her hair was a pearly gleam in the night, her eyes dark and unreadable as she turned her head.

 "It's been a while," she said in soft greeting.

 "I've been busy," Chatoya said, feeling unaccountably defensive.

 Her mouth curved slightly. "It was a comment, not a criticism. You spend too much time with Bane."

 "So do you," she retorted.

 Once, such sharpness would have made her flinch. Now Ryar only gazed out at the indigo sky, thoughtful. "Perhaps. But whether I like it or not, he is Drax, and part of me is drawn to him as much as you." She paused. "He's an insufferable devil, of course," she added with sudden soft humour, "but then, so was Fireblade."

 "Did you accede to his every request too?" she said acidly.

 "You know full well I didn't. Is this about Delphine Thetis?"

 "Yes. I don't understand why you agreed to change her."

 Ryar's smile was gentle, full of familiar regret. "It was what she wanted."

 "It's cut her off from her family. She's lost the protection of the pod." Chatoya had to swallow down her despair, the bitterness of failure. "We have left her alone."

 "Are you sure?" She was aware of how much older Ryar was, of how much she had seen. "I thought myself alone once, but I was entirely wrong. Half a world stood behind me, and I only saw them when I had the courage to look."

 "Who do you think will protect her from the pod?" she said quietly. "Don Ivan can hurt her without fear of reprisal now."

 Sudden, icy light shone in Ryar's face - Chatoya saw the princess, the woman who had won the hearts of half a world. "I doubt it very much. He may be more like Fireblade's makings, but he is still water, still mine."

 "Fireblade's makings?"

 Ryar sighed, as if she regretted her words. But Chatoya waited, a dim memory of Bhari's tickling at the back of her skull. "He was the reason I knew I could make the mer. He was always looking for new weapons, that husband of mine. But his first making was just...curiosity, I think. To see if he could. He took some of his power, gave it shape, soul, mind - and life." Her laugh was bitter. "And then enslaved him, and gave him away like a gift because he was flawed."

 "Flawed?"

 "He made Zeke with emotions, with character - and with free will. When he turned out not be...amenable to warfare, Fireblade gave him as a gift to my sister."

 "You sound like you knew him," she prompted.

 Her smile was genuine and warm. "I did. He was a friend. We were slaves together in Sangager's court even though he wore chains and I wore none. When the war came, Fireblade decided to improve on his creation. He made more, twisting fire into flesh, but he changed almost everything about them - left them empty of anything except hate and rage, possessing no will but his."

 Yes. Bhari could remember seeing them: things that glowed as if the flames were barely contained in their skin, dead-eyed, lips slack, waiting on their next deployment. And she remembered praising them.

 "He sent them to kill - they burned the land, burned so many." Ryar shivered. "And when we thought the worst was over, there was nothing but ashes and charcoal, they blazed up again." Her laugh was thick, mirthless. "He tied them to the tides, you know, so they rose again with every moon. It was a cruel joke of his, a way to teach me a lesson."

 "He thought they were perfect," Chatoya said slowly, his words flowing to her from the distant recollections of the Burning Times. "The future of war, fought in a thousand undying fires."

 "I thought I could do better. I thought I could make something gentler. All I did was make a weapon of water." She smiled grimly. "And of them all, Delphine Thetis is closest to the dream I once had."

 "She isn't you," Chatoya said levelly.

 "That's exactly what I hoped," Ryar answered.

 "But I don't see how you can protect her. She's made herself human, Ryar. She doesn't have any powers. And her friends - look, Riose Orage is dangerous, and the wildcat might be too, but the rest of them are harmless."

 Ryar didn't answer for a moment and beyond their niche, the winds howled out like a pack of wolves, hunting on the air. "She has my protection, Chatoya. She may not be mer, but Don Ivan is. I've bound his powers - he's mer by virtue of his blood only."

 "And if he uses force?"

 Her eyelashes hide her gaze like black mesh. "Then she has friends."

 "I just don't know if that will be enough," Chatoya confessed. "I can't get involved in this. If I take a hand, it's an invitation for Blue and Therese to call open season on the pod. At the moment, it's entertainment, nothing more. I can't let them see that it matters."

 She didn't know what Ryar saw in her face. Some of the strain she felt, perhaps. Whatever it was, the Drax's cool touch on her shoulder had the feel of comfort and benediction. "I can. I'll look after her, Toya. She's still mine too."

 "How?" Chatoya said.

 Ryar didn't answer, or at least, not directly. "I thought the Burning Times were done, but they're still hanging over us, aren't they? They still haunt us, even now. I won't have her haunt me too."

 They sat then in companionable silence for a very long time while the world wailed around them. Two women, so very different, so very similar.  

~*~

 The next afternoon brought a grim gathering in Celia's back garden, if one amply supplied with sugar and caffeine. Zeke had agreed to guard them, and to that end a small wisp of smoke lingered around the garden gate, far from their ears.

 The meeting felt curiously martial, as if they were generals discussing strategy. It was no war they fought, or at least she hoped not, only a skirmish for her liberty. But deadly serious nonetheless.

 "He vanished somewhere," Riose said. "I couldn't track him."

 Jo raised an eyebrow. "You couldn't track Don Ivan? Are you losing your touch, darling?"

 For once, Riose didn't rise to the bait: he only looked anxious. "It's a possibility. I've never had anything like that happen to me before. It was as if he just...disappeared from my radar. Don Ivan's one of the most recognizable minds in this place, but he wasn't there all of a sudden."

 "Where did he vanish?" Celia said.

 "Somewhere near the hills. I went and had a look, but I couldn't sense a thing." The frustration was evident in his hunched shoulders, as if he thought they might blame him. "Something is going on, Phi, I'd swear to it."

 "Okay," she said slowly. "So Don's managed to make himself invisible..."

 "Or someone else is doing it for him," interrupted Riose darkly. "That's more likely."

 "But who else would be involved in this?" Finn pointed out around a mouthful of chips. "He's got his pod mates, he's got the Pack, but none of them are intimately acquainted with Houdini, are they?"

 "No." Riose rubbed his temples distractedly. "I don't like it, that's all."

 "What about you?" Phi asked the witch quietly.

 Finn swallowed down the junk food. "There's a lot of people visiting your mom, Phi. I know she's popular, but every single one of Don's little gang were in there yesterday and today. And a few of them came out with bits of paper."

 Her skin felt clammy. "They're asking for prophecies," she whispered. "But they know what it does..."

 "They want to keep her bedridden, then," Jo said briskly, and part of Phi wanted to fly at her for her practicality. "They don't want her to see whatever's coming."

 The cold-bloodedness of it made fury rise in her veins. That was her mother, no matter the differences between them, not some toy to be deactivated in the course of Don's schemes.

 "Then they haven't thought of us, have they?" she said, her voice flat and hard. "Did Sam tell you anything, Jo?"

 "Nothing concrete." The wildcat grimaced. "He's been kicked out of the Pack. Don didn't like his attitude. Don wanted them to do something and Sam asked too many questions. Phi, darling..."

 She could see the wariness in Jo's eyes, bright and bitter-green as lime.

 "What did he want them to do?" she demanded.

 The wildcat closed her eyes, as if she didn't want to see any of them. The words slipped out on a sigh. "Kill your dad."

 And there it was. Suddenly the world clicked into place and she saw that there was no longer any world where she and Don Ivan could coexist; not now that he had aimed all his ambition and all his malice at the heart of her family.
 
 Her voice was queerly emotionless. "When?"

 "He doesn't know when or how, just that it'll be sometime soon." Jo paused. "I've never seen anyone that afraid. He said Don can do...things with his power that he shouldn't be able. He said that he nearly strangled one of the Pack without even touching them. And he said..." She licked her lips. "He said that Don enjoyed it, that he stood there smiling the whole time that he was squeezing the air out of that poor damn wolf."

 Well, that was no surprise, only confirmation of what Phi had long known. That was what had always been the worst of the whole ordeal, what had chilled her for so many years before she saw it: the crux of her fear had never been in the pain or the abandonment or the lies he told to save himself, but in the fierce grin which had opened like a crack in his face, in the satiated gleam of his eyes.

 He loves pain. He feeds on fear. He hungers for power. All he is can be distilled down to those things; pain, fear, ambition.

 She had no idea that was she sat there as icy and white as a marble statue, that even the light lift of the breeze on her fiery hair seemed sacrilege of such terrible concentration. She had no idea how hard her eyes were when at last she had decided.

 "It wasn't me he wanted then," she said. "We were wrong. It's the pod - it's my parents dead, isn't it?"

 "Looks like it," Riose agreed in a soft voice.

 She took a deep breath. "Everything changes then. We have to watch my parents - all of us, we have to do it. All the time. Every minute. We can't let him get to them."

 "Would they believe you if you warned them?" Celia asked gently.

 Her smile was rigid as iron. "No. Don's fooled them too well. And now that I'm...what I am, my word won't have as much weight with the pod."

 "Hang on," Finn put in, stern although he wilted a little under her gaze. "What's this we? Not you and Cee. Same argument still stands. You're human. What's the point in you watching if you can't get word back to anyone? Me, Jo, Ri and the human torch can do it. We'll take shifts - day and night."

 "They're my parents," she protested.

 "We've just established Don Ivan doesn't need you. Do you think he'll care if you get hurt trying to stop him?" demanded the witch, the first shreds of temper in his expression.

 Phi struggled with rage. She wanted to scream, to shout, to do anything but sit here helpless. Yet she knew they were right. She'd given up her powers - and in doing so, given up some of her control, even as she'd thought she was taking it back.

 Eventually, she put her head in her hands with a groan. "You're right," she said through her fingers. "I know you're right. I just hate it."

 "Phi..." Finn was gentle, the affectionate partner-in-crime of her childhood. "You think we won't get you involved if he does try anything? I know you'll want to administer the first kicking yourself. But the minute it does all kick off, someone has to know."

 He glanced with dislike over at the apparently random stream of smoke circling the gate.

 "Aside from anything else," he added, "he's about the most powerful thing flitting about this valley. I want him on our side when it all starts." He rolled his eyes. "If he stops Don Ivan I might even let him be your boyfriend."

 "Let?" she muttered. "As if you have a choice."

 He grinned. "I may not have a choice, but I do have intimidation and blackmail..."

 At her half-snarl, it was all conceded. None of them stayed long: Finn and Zeke had already gone to find her parents, and Riose and Jo went home to sleep as the pair of them, with their handy night-vision, got the graveyard shift.

 And Phi was left alone with Celia to wait and worry once more. Worse, this time it was not her own fate she waited on, but her family's. And she could not stop the dreadful, insidious thought that it was her fault - that if she had not struggled so hard, Don Ivan might not have broken free in impatience and anger.

 Have I brought this on us? Am I just another child of Atlantis, sacrificing blindly to a future I can only hope for?

 Oh, please no...

 The walk to the Thetis house was short but busy. He could tell that Finn had been bursting to speak from the moment they left; as soon as they were out of sight - and more importantly, earshot - he began.

  "I don't like you, you know."

 His bluntness wasn't surprising. The coolness of his voice was. From what Zeke had seen of the witch, he was all temper and affection, shifting between the two with dazzling speed. Yet now his expression was mild and analytical, and it became abruptly clear that this was something Finn had mused over until it had lost the ardour of emotion and become mere fact, mere threat.

 "I know," Zeke answered cautiously.

 "Do you know why I don't like you?"

 "Because Phi does, I think."

 Finn might not like him, but it had taken Zeke no more than a couple of minutes to decide that anyone who was that rabidly protective of Phi was someone he approved of.

 "No. It's not because she likes you. It's because she trusts you." He stopped suddenly and swung into Zeke's path: forced to a halt, he met those hostile blue eyes and waited. "Do you know how long it took for Phi to trust us? Years. That pod had a good shot at indoctrinating her to outsiders and they nearly succeeded. If her dad wasn't so liberal, she'd just be another fish in the sea, so to speak."

 "Not to me," he said quietly.

 The witch's smile was lopsided. "She'd still be your soulmate. But I don't think you'd like what the pod left as your destiny."

 He couldn't argue with that. When he thought of the pod he had known - Aurora's pod, rowdy and welcoming and mischievous, all that remained seemed mere shadows of those golden days. They had become xenophobic, locked within a tightly diminishing circle of themselves.

 Worse perhaps was the knowledge that he had helped nudge them to it.

 "And you just walk right into her heart. She trusts you because she learned to trust us first." There was hardly any bitterness in Finn's expression, subsumed in cold certainty. "You had better not betray her, because if you do, you break her trust in us too. And I won't have that. I'm not losing my friend because of you."

 "You won't," he swore, though his stomach turned, sickened.

 I will save her. I must.

  As if their conversation had been nothing more than an idle diversion, Finn resumed his slow saunter again. Nothing to see here, folks, nothing at all.

 Unconsciously, Zeke rubbed at the burn on his thumb, unaware that it had grown as if his lies were slowly consuming him.

 ~*~

 A whole anxious morning passed; an even more anxious afternoon followed. When it became obvious that her fidgeting was annoying Celia, in desperation Phi suggested a grocery run. It was evening after all - surely most of the pod would be at the lake, and the chances of seeing anyone she knew would be small.

 But even such a mundane mission seemed laced with sinister omens. She saw wolves everywhere in the town, and she could swear that their eyes followed her.

 The pod clogged the streets too. Their eyes most definitely did not follow her; it was as though there was only a gap where she stood, a nothing space, she a nothing person to them.

 Pride made her stare at them even as they avoided her, the faces she had known so long. She glared even when the tears swelled in her throat, even when her head felt hot and tight as a furnace.  

 And then she met a pair of eyes that did not look away; clear, brown, and just a little shocked.

 She could bear the rest of the pod's disdain. But she couldn't face Jessica Arryn, she couldn't bear to be rejected by her godmother.

 Panic seized her.

 "I can't stay here," she mumbled to Celia and fled into the sidestreets, leaving her human friend astonished, clutching their shopping.

 "I'll wait here," Celia called, worry resonant in the words.

 It stung that she had been outcast by the rest of the pod, but it was a muted pain, nothing compared to the horror in her father's eyes or her mother's violent, passionate reaction. To have it played out again by the one person who had always supported her and fought for her...

 The loss struck her hard and sharp, and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

 Don't cry. Not now. Not again.

 I didn't know it would be so difficult. I didn't realize how much I loved them.

 "I never thought I'd see the day when you ran from me."

 That familiar voice was acerbic, and Phi raised her head to see Jess Arryn there. Her face was quite impassive, but whether it was to be rage or despair, the rejection would come.

 Her cheeks were hot, her lips dry. What a mess she must have looked to her poised godmother, who'd seen so much - who'd tried to warn her.

 "Oh my darling," Jess said softly. "It's true then. You silly girl."

 She could only nod, and even that felt an immense effort.

 "I'm not mer anymore," she said, voice scratchy.

 Disappointment flashed in Jess's face, and she wanted to howl like a child.

 And then those old, warm arms were around her, and she was surrounded by the scent of lavender and soap.

 "Haven't you learned anything?" her godmother demanded, but it was amusement and not anger in her voice. "Did you listen to a word I said, you foolish child? Aurora chose to take dolphin form but if she'd chosen wolf form, she'd still have been mer, and so are you. Do you think you can stop being my goddaughter?"

 The words were a minor miracle. And she found the tears would not be held back, that she was weeping into her godmother's shoulder because at last someone understood.

 Jess stroked her hair, gentle as if she were made of glass.

 "We called the wolves mer too, you know, and they called us pack. Two words, but they mean exactly the same. Family is family. I heard what happened, and I shall be having words with your mother."

 "I don't think it will make any difference," she mumbled. "You didn't see her face."

 "I don't need to. I saw it the day she found her parents' bodies." Jess sighed. "That's what this is all about, Phi. She blames herself for it all - she always has. She's dedicated her whole life to making sure it would never happen again, especially to you. Why do you think she looks into the future so much?"

 "She...she always has."

 Jess gave a cracking laugh that echoed on the air. "Not when she was young! Oh, Alwyn tried to make her biddable, but he had no more luck with her than he did with my mother."

 Phi half-smiled. Jess's tales of Helga Arryn, the pod's previous seer, had thrilled her as a child. "Really?"

 "Oh yes. Marie loved her life, and she was just as stubborn as Mama. No, darling, this...obsession started after her parents died. That's the real tragedy of it all - she still blames herself, and she's so terrified of it happening to anyone else that she can't leave anything to chance."

 "But she's killing herself..."

 "She knows that. My mother would box her ears if she saw her now."

 "I wish she could," Phi said glumly. "I asked her to stop. She told me I was being selfish."

 "Of course you are. Mama was selfish as they came, bless her heart, and we loved her for it. She lived to be ninety one, and she wouldn't use her gift unless it was absolutely necessary. Alwyn used to curse her for it, and she'd curse him right back." Jess's laugh was full and joyful. "He even dared say it at her funeral when she couldn't answer back. When my father stood up to give his speech, he said, 'You're quite right, she was selfish - and I'm glad of it, because I loved that selfish woman for seventy years, and that's more than I would have had if she'd listened to you.' She had a future too, and it was just as important as all of theirs. That's what your mother doesn't understand."

 When Phi dared to raise her head, she saw pride in Jess's face.

 "But you understood. You chose your own way, and I'm proud of you."

 "You're the only one," she said. "Everyone else thinks it was stubborn and reckless and selfish."

 "Oh yes, it was all those things." That wicked smile was forty years younger than the face that framed it. "But that doesn't mean it was wrong. I warned your parents that nothing good would come of marrying you off to that Ivan boy. He's rotten inside, same as his father. They didn't believe me, of course."

 If she could trust anyone, she could trust Jess. "I...have something to tell you," she said hesitantly, and quietly, as quickly as she could, she told Jess everything she knew of Don's plans: of the wolves, of the pod who were weakening her mother piece by piece, of her father.

 Her godmother listened, eyes narrowed, and when Phi was done, her mouth was a grim line.

 "I know it sounds crazy-" she began.

 "It sounds all too sane, I'm afraid. Anyone who grew up with Alwyn would see the pattern. Your father will never believe it - that's always been his flaw, wanting to think the best of everyone. Your mother - well, she won't countenance any future she can't see." A sigh escaped her. "But there are other people who will listen. I'll speak to them."

 Until relief washed over her, Phi didn't realize just how the weighty the knowledge had been. "Thank you," she whispered.

 Jess touched her cheek. "Be careful, Phi. You hurt Don's pride, and if he's anything like Laurie, he can't forgive that. Keep yourself safe."

 "I'll try," she said. It was all she could offer, knowing that Don was merely awaiting the moment to spring his trap as he hovered, arachnid, shadowy, poisonous.

~*~

In the silence of her sickroom, Marie Thetis wrote. Her hands were swollen and painful, her vision reluctant, but these letters could wait no longer. She had been composing them in her head for many years - since the day she'd held an infant in her arms, and known that she could not let her daughter make the same mistakes that she had.

 She'd known Phi's future long before she was born, and it had been a guilty pleasure of the first few years, scanning ahead to find out what wonders might lie in store for her child. After all, no seer could know their own future, so being able to guess at Phi's had been equal relief and strain.

 Relief because she had a chance of guiding her to the best path. Strain because there were so many risks, so many futures that truncated in a brief, bloody end.

 She had tried to find the best way, the one that would let her daughter be a truly great figure among the pod. Yet in so many ways, so many minor details, she had failed.

 Those outsider friends. It had seemed a good idea at the time with all Dan's gentle persuasion. Perhaps, she'd thought, it was time for the pod to live more in the outside world. It would benefit Phi, surely, help her see how lucky she was to have the pod, help her form links within the Nightworld.

 She had not seen how stubborn Phi would become, how many dangerous ideas it would breed in her.

 Not training her for her role earlier. Oh, she'd acted with dignity at the Thelasso funeral from what Dan had mentioned, and Jess never had anything but good to say, yet Phi was so distanced from her peer group, and worse from Don.

 Yes, Phi and Don. She should have set that straight far sooner instead of allowing the petty rivalries and dislikes to grow. They were the two strongest of their generation: scions of ancient families, and it was entirely natural that they should unite.

 They united, or they divided the pod. That was what she had seen - but in all those futures, Phi had been mer.

 That, she had never foreseen.

 And now the future lay before her like a mist. Marie was afraid to look now. The effort would probably kill her, and she could not imagine how there could be any hope for Phi.

 I have failed as a mother. I have failed as a prophetess. Again.

 And now my daughter is gone. All that's left is this poor empty shell who looks so like her, who will inherit her birthright but have no place within the pod, no way to withstand all the trials that lie before her.

  As she lay there, death seemed only a breath away. Her future was pared down to the thinness of a shadow.

 These were the last words she would ever write. Marie didn't need an oracle to tell her that.

 So she wrote her letters, apologizing, pouring forth the mistakes she had made, and the one great lie that she had kept in her heart through all the years because she had not wanted her daughter to relive her own caged life, riddled with mistakes like bullet-holes.

 ~*~
 
  When Phi came back to the main street, the sun was sinking lower. Her shadow stretched long and sheer across the road, where traffic mowed it down without a care.

 There was no sign of Celia. That was weird.

 When she saw their shopping strewn over the pavement, she knew something was wrong.

 "Missing something?"

 The girl appeared beside her with a swiftness that said she had been standing guard. Phi knew her as one of the Pack, and knew with terrible certainty where Celia was.

 "Where is she?" she demanded. "You'd better not have hurt her."

 The wolf gleamed in her wide, sharp smile. "Not yet. Maybe not at all if you play nicely."

 Desperate, Phi scanned the crowds for a friendly face. Jess was gone - there was no one left she could trust. And human as she was, she could not even call out to Riose or Jo as she once would have.

 She was alone.

 So what else was new? The initial panic settled into a small, grim core. "What do you want?"

 The girl linked arms with her as if they were friends and began to lead her away. "No fuss. No tricks. There's someone who wants to see you."
 
 "Don, you mean."

 "Let's not name names." The pinch of claws on the soft inside of her arm was warning enough. "Nice and quiet now."

 What choice did she have?

 ~*~

 As the woods closed in about her like a green sea, Phi knew that she was entirely at Don's mercy. The crowds were far behind now, although the rustling leaves sounded like distant voices.

 She thought of Aurora buried under the trees and could not help but wonder if she would join her.

 "Phi!"

 Celia's cry jolted her into awareness. The trees stretching up like stalagmites had given way to a large, bare clearing. Her friend was sat on the ground, looking shaken but unhurt. A pair of wolves flanked her.

 Relief was her overriding response, followed by hot guilt. It was her fault that Celia was here - if she hadn't got her involved, if she hadn't left her alone...

 "They haven't hurt you?" she asked.

 The laugh was full of mockery, and it froze her.

 "That all depends on you."

 Don eased between the trees, where he had clearly been waiting to make an entrance. The political part of her admired his instinctive showmanship. The rest of her wished him suddenly, horribly and thoroughly dead.

 "I've done what you want," she said sharply. "You've got me here. Let her go. This is our business."

 "You've done what I want so far," he corrected. The canopy of leaves strained the light to a green hue that gave him the look of some macabre totem, his beauty warped and ghoulish. "But she's an excellent guarantee of your good behaviour. And I'm not sure my wolves want to let her go."

 One of Celia's guards let out a low, rasping laugh. He reached out and stroked her cheek; body rigid, Celia bore his touch with obvious repulsion, but didn't fight back. Only then did Phi see the way she cradled her hand - and the odd angle of her little finger.

 "Stop that!" she snapped, taking a step forward-

 The wolf girl's arms clamped around her, solid as granite, and for the first time Phi was aware of how little strength she now possessed.

 "Only if you beg," Don murmured. He strolled up to her, his proximity a taunt. Pure malice gleamed in his eyes.

 Everything in her rebelled against it. But this wasn't about her pride. This was about Celia.

 "Please."

 He smiled, but the triumph in it did not outweigh the spite. "A good try. And not enough. I said beg, Phi!"

 She knew then what he wanted. The wolf's hold slackened: she slid to her knees in the dirt and the twigs. "Please, make them leave her alone. She's just a human - she's only here because of me. If you have to hurt someone, it should be me."

 "Yes, it should," he said softly.

 Before she could react, his fingers were snarled in her hair, yanking back her head to the limit of her endurance. The mere act of breathing was strained; Don seemed filtered through a haze of terror and all the more dreadful for it. Phi had no choice other than to gaze up, fixed, stricken.

 In he leaned, close, closer until she could see her own reflection imprisoned in his pupils. "You're lucky I need you," he said in a voice so calm and quiet and gentle that his words barely stirred the air. "But I don't need the human bitch, so you make sure you behave, Phi."

 "I will," she gasped, desperate now. "Don't hurt her."

 "That's your choice, not mine," he said, and with a final vicious tug, let her go. She toppled to her side, her heart thunder and fear.

 Don turned away. That simple act - turning his back on her - was so full of contempt it made her want to weep. He would never have dared a week ago, when she was pod, when she was the daughter of their leader and their prophetess.

 "Keep an eye on them," he said coolly to the wolves. "Any trouble, Cecily's got another nine fingers."

 "It's Celia," croaked her friend. It was possibly the bravest - and most foolish - thing Phi had ever seen her do. Polite even in defiance, she wasn't cowering, she wasn't crying, and she looked Don Ivan right in those empty blue eyes. "And it's seven fingers and two thumbs."

 Don gazed at her, unblinking as a toad. Then he moved so fast and silkily that he was like hurled water - there was a sharp crack ,and Celia shrieked.

 "Don't!" Phi was screaming with her - she scrabbled towards them in a half-crawl before a blow knocked her flat.

 It was as if he had never moved. Only Celia's soft gasps shredded the air. "Six fingers and two thumbs," he corrected quite calmly. "Celia."

Phi had known him for years. She had long known of his cruelty, his arrogance, his contempt. But now she saw he had found the power to match his ambition somehow; she'd never seen anyone move like that, so precise, blindingly quick.

 He is more than pod - and less human than ever.

 If she had doubted his nerve, she did so no longer. He would hurt them; he wanted to, but only the coils of his grand scheme restrained him. And with that realisation, she was very afraid of what would happen when he no longer needed her.

 "I won't be too long," he told the wolves. "Phi needs to be alive when I get back."

 "The other?"

 Don shrugged. "Optional."

 It was a warning for her and she would heed it. Across the clearing, Celia's eyes met hers, and for the first time, Phi saw new fragility in her friend, the abrupt and certain knowledge that she was human, flawed - and prey.

 We shielded you so well from the truth of the Nightworld. And maybe that was wrong.

 Whether on land or in water, our desire to survive has outlasted empires and wars. Treachery, violence, secrecy, these are our languages. We have learned your clu