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John follows Ryan back to the fire and starts noticing the modern conveniences scattered through the camp — solar panels in the trees, a laptop on a stump near a tent, a multitool axe leaning on a trunk. Ryan hadn't just been planted: he had set up for a long stay, and he had recruited locals into something that looks less like an invasion than like training people to throw off their own cartel. People always do like Ryan. He is the perfect cop and the perfect human being — *which,* John thinks, *is something a guy like me can exploit.*

He starts the work by introducing Ryan to Sefawynn, Thokk and Ealstan as his old partner from the other world — first as his hearthman, then as his equal, then needling that he had been the one who pushed Ryan into training. Ryan tries to swerve gently around the lie, but John keeps poking, and eventually Ryan gives in and tells the truth: John is a thief; he used to work for Ulric; he is no kind of warrior.

Sefawynn asks what kind of man he was. John cuts in to say he was good enough for Jen to choose, and Ryan, stung at last, opens up. He says John is a chronic underachiever who failed out of every program he tried, that he cheated his audience in the fighting league by throwing matches for Ulric's bettors, that he is a drain on every person who knows him, that his parents moved away and his sister will not speak to him over money. And then more comes out than Ryan meant — every program Ryan ever entered, John shadowed him into and washed out of; every girl Ryan looked at, John asked out first; even here, in another dimension, *there he is.*

John takes the onslaught, walks off into the dark, and sits down with his back to a rock outside the firelight. He had wanted it said, but hearing it said by Ryan of all people — that his failures had pulled Ryan down too — is harder than he expected. He turns off his night vision so he can sit in the actual dark. The forest is alive: groaning branches, the scratching of things in the underbrush and the canopy, the cold scent of leaves and stagnant water. Around him the strange shadows quiver, and one at a time the small ones dart in close and then flee into the deeper black of logs and thickets, more curious than dangerous.

A voice — like dried leaves shivering on a late-autumn branch before they let go — speaks at his ear. It is the wight that has been with him. *Your presence hurts them,* it tells him. *It is not only you. It is everyone from the other world. You carry an aura that poisons us. Your world bleeds into ours and kills the wights.* It survives near him because it is strong enough to live through a little of the poison. John presses: what happens if Ulric sets up a permanent base here? *Death to wights,* the voice answers. *To wyrd. To gods.* Ulric cannot control probability — he will end up destroying the very thing he is trying to dominate. The case for stopping him has just turned existential. John could, for once, actually mean something.

Leaves crunch behind him. Sefawynn has come into the trees with a small bronze candlestand, the flame cupped against the wind. *Runian?* she whispers. *Please come back. It isn't safe in here.* He notes that the clearing is supposed to be safer; she explains that it is, because of *the other aelv, the one you call Ryan* — the wights and dark things are afraid of him. John tells her the same is supposed to be true of him, that people from his world are pain to the wights. She corrects him gently: one is attached to him.

She sits down with him by the rock, candle between them, the shadows holding a perimeter ten feet out, and asks about Ryan. He knows John better than John's parents do, John admits. She tells him she is sorry Ryan said those things — she could see how much they hurt. He tells her he had provoked it, that he wanted her to understand what he was. She asks if they were true. He says yes, every one. She gives him the right epithet for it — *practically a mortal* — and he smiles, and she smiles back, and the breach he opened on purpose is mended on different terms.

She stands and holds out a hand. *The stories all say to avoid aelvs,* she says, *particularly the handsome ones. So you're probably safe.* He stands and squeezes her hand and tells her that the things Ryan said about him were true — but the man he had been, he had left behind. They walk back to the firelight hand-in-hand, holding on for different reasons. It is the first time in years he has been happy to be himself.