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thin sheet of At provided us more than enough privacy, though it felt like a flimsy wisp of a barrier to me. It was nothing but a false sense of security. A glorified alarm system. Despite Re’s assurances that the twins’ latent power would kick in the moment they sensed danger, I couldn’t help but feel that once we were alerted to the danger, it would be too late.
    “We’ll get through this, Little Ivanov,” Marcus said, his voice barely a whisper. He was seated on my right, Re-Nik on my left. Marcus claimed my hand under the table and gripped it tight. When I tried to jerk my hand free, he held on. “ We will get through this.”
    I gritted my teeth and managed a tight, close-lipped smile. I still couldn’t bring myself to look into his lying eyes. “Of course we will,” I murmured.
    “We all know why this emergency meeting has been called,” Ivan said. “Dominic, if you would begin.”
    All eyes shifted to my half-brother, seated on Marcus’s other side, and a breathless hush fell over the room.
    “Yes, of course,” Dominic said. “The prisoners told me much, most willingly.” His dark eyes turned to Marcus, then settled on me. “They claim they did not know it would come to this. Both believed the Kin’s false goals of taking down the Council, of establishing a new world order, with a democratic system of Nejeret ruling over humans from the shadows to usher in a modern golden age. Neither was aware of an extremist faction within their ranks.” He paused to meet the eyes of every Nejeret seated around the table, virtual and otherwise. “I believe them.”
    His chest rose as he inhaled deeply. “It would seem that Carson witnessed a member of the Kin called Bree—apparently a Nejerette with a sheut, like Nik—free Apep from his prison and welcome him into her body. Carson fled and alerted Gen of what he’d seen, and together the two came straight here to warn us.” Dominic’s eyes honed in on Re-Nik. “You allowed others with sheuts to be born. You did not do a good enough job of policing the timeline.”
    “Watch yourself, Dominic,” Ivan cut in. “Do not forget to whom you are speaking.”
    “I could never forget,” Dominic said, his voice low and cold. He blinked, then seemed to shake himself out of a trance and once again scanned the faces surrounding the table. “There are more Nejerets with sheuts than just Nik and this Bree, not to mention whoever created the anti-At pocket watch. Gen claims that dozens, if not hundreds, of the Kin’s members have sheuts. Their power sounds slight in comparison to what the Meswett could do with the full Netjer sheut, but their minor sheuts do afford them a variety of special abilities, nonetheless. Somehow”—he shot a quick glare at Re-Nik—“they seem to have found a way to hide themselves from our ever watchful and diligent Great Father .”
    “Dominic,” Ivan warned.
    A thought struck me, and I sat up straighter. “Can one of them travel through time?”
    Dominic’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally. “How did you know?”
    “A time anomaly—that’s how they could be hiding from us. One of the Kin’s members being from another time would conceal them from us for, I don’t know, however long they’ve been building up their army of über-Nejerets. And it would be effortless—no need for cloaking in the echoes or anything like that. The time traveler just needs to be slightly out of time, and they and everything they influence around them won’t show up in the echoes.”
    “I am in agreement with Alexandra,” Re-Nik said. “It is the only way they could have remained hidden from me for any amount of time.”
    Dominic looked from Re-Nik to me and back. “Their leader, Mei, is supposedly ancient and somehow managed to go undetected until she discovered her ability to travel through time. For whatever reason, she started forming the Kin in utter secrecy hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. Gen and Carson were unsure. As the