"Golden theorizes that Demetri and his lady love would have gotten along really well if her power had worked on him. She does a kind of - not-mattering thing, where you can technically see her but you can't think she's important. And Demetri could not think she wasn't important, so she had his attention constantly and couldn't stand it and was scared of him."

"Aha."

"She didn't get along that well with Golden either, except Golden could blanket her - she calls it shielding when she does it - so Demetri couldn't track her, so they worked something out."

"Now that's interesting."

"Yeah. If Golden had been more reliable about the shielding back then they could have taken over the world together, because Allirea could share, too - only with one person and only while she was faded out herself, but Golden would still be able to see her, and Golden blocked everything that got past Allirea. They could've walked into the throne room of the previous rulers and casually disassembled everyone while their next victims were trying to figure out how to blame the weather. But Golden kept slipping so they had to go with something more complicated involving Elspeth and Nathan and a straight-up fight."

"Blaming the weather? Yeah."

"Still, congratulations to Golden, not that she wants them."

"I think it's probably best if you and Golden don't directly talk to each other very much. Go through Lizzie or me."

"That's about what I figured."

"Yeah, I didn't think she was hiding it very well."

"I don't get the impression she meant to."

Tab nods. "Okay. So here's Toronto on the planet Arborea which is probably not even in the Milky Way. Home?"

She shrugs; she teleports back to her office.

Somewhere else, Corona tells Jane, [Think I'll head out now.]

[Tab wanted to talk to you about minting for her.]

[...Seriously?]

[Yep. It would not, most likely, involve setting foot on Gift's Earth at all.]

[...okay,] he says. [Where would I be setting foot instead?]

[Tab found a planet that is not even in the Milky Way probably and she's going to put Toronto on it.]

[Tab is on the planet in question, want to just go there?]

[Yeah.]

"Oh! Hi, Corona. Welcome to Arborea."