Snow had always been… complicated. Taika feared it and honoured it. It remembered. It kept names and stains and shame, holding what he wanted erased, which was why he avoided marking it whenever he could.

Not tonight.

He carried the women to the car and his boots stamped ugly, soiled prints into the white. The taste of it choking him still lived sharply in his throat.

He climbed into the driver's seat and took the mountain road toward the helicopter base. The night felt crowded. The city below refused to sleep, the uninvited sampling what was not theirs and pressing greasy fingerprints on the sacred.

Like these women.

In the rear-view mirror, Melissa and Natalia slept. His moko kanohi flickered there too and, as ever, reminded him whom he stood for.

Kaitiaki. Guardian of whenua. The person his mother had wanted him to be.

He remembered growing up where the night was actually night, not washed out by city glare. His mother was Kaitiaki Wahine. She would hold him and recite the lines of their land.

Be kind, listen first, stand where the land asks you to stand.

He had wanted to be her when he grew up.

When she died, his world fell apart. Blood stamped into snow, ugly and dark and red, and his own hand was soaked in it. He packed fistfuls of powder over the wound in the world, but the red pushed through as if the snow itself wanted to remember his crime.

"Come with me, son."

And he had obeyed. The only one left for him had been Father. They were alike, Father often said, so he took Taika's training into his own hands.

But Taika hadn't wanted that. "I do not want to use my Gift to hurt people, Father."

His father's gaze hardened. "Do you want the land hurt instead?"

"No."

"Then what will you use?"

Taika lifted his chin, a stubborn child trying to be a man. "Utu."

"Define it."

"Balance, sir. Making things right. Making relationships fair."

"How admirable. Perhaps you are right. The world does not need another hammer."

Taika's shoulders eased, even as his heart stayed unsettled. "I will do everything I can to protect."

"To protect, you must observe. To observe, you must be unseen. Balance requires knowledge. Knowledge requires invisible men."

"You mean… I don't have to hurt people to be useful."

"Precisely."

"How is that possible with my Gift?"

"Think past what you know." Father set his hands behind his back. "The world is no more real than the light that outlines it."

The smile that followed was one Taika chose not to keep. The words, though, were yesterday.

"Learn to make the world stop insisting you are real. Not me. Not even…" Father raised a hand and caught a falling flake. "Not even nature itself."

Years later, Taika had learned to thin himself until light slid around him and atoms forgot to push back. The world didn't only turn unreal to him.

He turned unreal to himself.

The outlines of his own thoughts vanished alongside it.

That was the price of doing good, wasn't it? He was kaitiaki. For that, he did what he had to do.

Watch.

Until he noticed the lapses. The places where his mind went gauzy and something else moved his hands before he came back. He looked down at his grip on the steering wheel. Clean. Absolutely clean.

Then, for a heartbeat, dark and wet.

Like on the snow. Like the first time, when he was too green to make it clean.

No.

Blood was not real. Just shadow and light playing tricks.

A trick. It was only a trick, playing, playing, playing…

Focus!

"Taika?" Huka's voice cut through the old winter.

Taika must have called Huka in a panic. "I messed up. I need you. Are you still in Aoraki?"

"I am. You called me, not Ngū. So you failed, e tama."

"How fast can you get here? I'm sending the pin to my destination," Taika continued.

A few seconds of silence. Wind howled on the other end. "Seven minutes. Give or take."

"Good. I need you now. And please don't tell her."

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"How the hell did you botch a simple surveillance job? Fine." Huka's growl roughened, then the call cut.

Taika exhaled slowly. He and Huka shared no blood; they shared something older. Whānau who turn up at two in the morning without asking why. Taika trusted Ngū with his life, but not with this shame. Not another failure.

What exactly went wrong?

Taika let the snow draw his edges as he walked the path near the lake. He stopped beneath two adjoining suites: one dark with curtains open to the water, the other lit with curtains shut tight.

So Astra and Eydis had not come back yet. Where were they at this hour? It was almost one a.m.

Maybe, as Ngū suspected, they were out investigating. He changed tack, leveraged the force and leapt silently to Astra's bedroom balcony. The tinted glass made it impossible to see inside.

So he did the most foolish thing. He phased inside and saw—

Astra had Eydis pinned to the bed. Their mouths met as if the world beyond the linen had been cancelled.

Hot, he thought, almost a reflex, then reprimanded himself.

He spun to the window. He had eyes, and an appreciation for natural beauty. He also had obligations. A guardian mustn't stay in a teenager's bedroom while they were like that.

His mother would have lectured him if she were still alive. A sad smile touched his mouth.

"Aroha mai," he thought, an apology to the tapu of a space he had no right to cross.

He pressed his hand to the glass and the atoms barely resisted him. Even when he tried to feel it, it couldn't hold him. His reflection did not catch, which was a relief, yet moments like this always left him unsettled. He longed to go fully solid again, just to see his moko kanohi, and prove to himself he still existed.

Not a passing dream in a butterfly's head, as Orion liked to taunt him.

"Do not dare take that back," Astra murmured behind him. Her voice was low and warm and unearthly.

Oh.

His invisible palm met cold for a single beat. The ghost state disturbed. Not good. The scene and the sound distracted him and he could not hold a phase and a veil together without cost.

Astra had already bent Ngū's Gift earlier. He had no wish to test what else she could bend, especially when it was already a waste of mana for this.

He refocused, slid through the window and vaulted to Natalia's balcony. The bedroom was empty, but he could hear voices from the living room.

Good.

"Are you truly over it? Her, I mean?" Melissa asked. She drank a glass of Moscato and chomped chocolate as if both were fuel.

"Not gonna lie, I was so cooked seeing Eydis. I'm locked in to being friends. I think I'm over her. Maybe. Pretty sure," Natalia said, a wineglass in her hand.

Huh?

"I'm too old for this," Melissa grumbled.

Thank you, Doc. Taika threw both arms up.

Natalia barrelled on. "And also, the koala twins would be thrilled to know. Facing my fears is how I get over it. I got over it. I'm not going to hide and sulk for years like with Lionel."

"Right, because that was the same," Melissa said, and Taika heard the shade of sarcasm. "But that buffoon deserves it."

"Never mind." Natalia took another long drink, then complained that it was too sweet.

So cooked meant an emotional state, not temperature. Useful and not useful. Lionel. That tied Natalia to his sister. Dr Le Bleu knew the name too.

Not suspicious, Taika told himself. Or maybe very suspicious. His thoughts doubled and tripped and split. He shut it all off. Father always warned him about overthinking. That was Ngū's lane. He was here to log details.

Taika considered heading home. So far, neither pair looked like a threat. Natalia and Melissa were here for a holiday. Eydis and Astra were here for something that rhymed with honeymoon.

In the end he stayed a little longer. The floor was chaos, littered with ski gear and weeks of luggage. Reluctantly, he sat cross-legged on the carpet by the fire.

They chatted and teased, discussing their plan for tomorrow and a bit about Melissa's time in England. Maybe they really were innocent.

He almost nodded off when Natalia crossed the room and rummaged in a bag. On reflex he went ghost.

She passed through him once, forgot something, doubled back, passed through again. His vision fuzzed. There was the faintest drag across his field, like something tasting him, the shape of him. He frowned. His mind was doing that again, making things up.

"Can you feel that, Mel?" Natalia said.

Melissa swirled her drink. "Hmm?"

"It's just…" Natalia lifted her hand. Fire opened across her palm.

Taika watched the fire dance. Ah, a Fire Gift. C-Class. Then she was just elementary. He stood to leave, planning to return and watch Astra in a few hours, when there was ample sunlight to stabilise his phasing.

Then a mote unhooked itself from the flame and drifted towards him as if curious.

He froze.

"Nat, quit trying to burn the room," Melissa muttered. "I am not filling in an incident report on holiday."

Natalia laughed and closed her hand. The flame snapped out. "It's a little hot in here, don't you think?"

"Or it's you who is naturally hot." Melissa blinked. "I mean, not physically. Not that you aren't—damn it. I am fucking drunk. Maybe we call it a night."

Natalia giggled, her face burning. "Language, Mel. I didn't know doctors swore that much."

"ER makes poets of us all," Melissa said. "Let's see… Roses are red. My patience is dead. You Goggled your symptoms and demanded a trauma bed, you fucking shithead."

Natalia laughed, cast one last look in Taika's direction, then returned to sit beside Melissa on the couch. They went on teasing each other.

Taika groaned. Were they a couple too? Were they going to do what Astra and Eydis did…

Astra.

Too beautiful. Too distracting. Even her voice felt unfair.

He shook his head to clear the thought. Now was not the time. A faint throb started behind his eyes. Too much phasing, especially at night, tired him. The field required micromanagement that the human brain was never built to sustain.

He should just go back and tell Ngū they were harmless tourists.

Before he realised what was happening, Natalia stopped in front of him, crimson eyes wide. She lifted her hand and traced the shape.

Not of his heart, although for an instant a hunger in him begged for that.

Feel it. Feel me. Tell me I exist.

She was mapping something else. A rail no one should see. The core locus of his arcane field.

"Mel, come over. This feels strange, and I'm totally not imagining things," she said softly. "Here. Uneven pockets of energy. Tiny, but I can feel them."

Impossible.

She was reading the arcane structure he had erased from the world, all the way down to the delicate micro lines no one should ever sense. Orion could only do that when he chose to be solid.

What are you?

Natalia felt more like… Father.

Fear took him by the throat, and his control collapsed.

He materialised.

Both women stared. Shock cracked through the room.

Melissa's breath faltered. Natalia stepped back. The air shook with too many thoughts and he could not tell which belonged to memory and which belonged to now.

Father's voice returned. "To watch, you must remain unseen. A phantom. But the moment someone remembers you clearly…"

"Make sure only the snow remembers they exist," Father whispered in memory, his golden eyes flaring bright. "I take care of the consequences."

The words flipped a switch. A flicker of gold lit his irises. The lapses in memory hit him even as he struck both women unconscious. Father's voice had always known where to anchor its hooks.

Before thought could catch choice, he had them over his shoulders. Outside, the snow had long stopped, and he pulled on the force again. He ran, then leaped high above, hit ground, accelerated, then drove himself away or towards the thin place in the dark where Father's smile waited.

At times like this he remembered that smile cleanly. The truth he had tried to unlearn rose clean and cold.

The hammer was always the plan.

He was the hammer.

No. No. NO.

He was kaitiaki.

And they were the problem. They were the uninvited.

Taika slammed the pedal down, speeding through the dark while reaching for his Gift. Now that he had shared his destination with Huka, he closed every pathway around the car, making it untraceable. He had no time to search either woman for a hidden tracker, but it made no difference. Any signal would die inside this cage.

He didn't understand what Astra could do, but he would rather waste mana than leave anything to chance.

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