Draconus snorted. ‘Most creatures of this world understand that fear can be a virtue. Errastas does not. If you seek him, he will wait for you and know your every thought. It is not a worthy path, Arathan. You are not ready to challenge Errastas.’

‘Who hunts him, Father?’

‘I don’t know.’

Distrusting that reply, Arathan shifted his attention back to the ruined house, where the dust was slow to settle. ‘Who once lived there?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Errastas used it. I would know the workings of his mind.’

Draconus strode back to Calaras. ‘Leave it, Arathan.’

‘You told Olar Ethil that you would seek the Lord of Hate. Will you still do so, Father?’

‘Yes.’ Draconus pulled himself into the saddle.

‘Will you lie to him as well?’

To that Draconus said nothing. Instead, he kicked his warhorse into motion.

Arathan chose Hellar instead of Besra and mounted up, and then set off after his father.

Draconus had grown so large in Arathan’s eyes. Now he grew small again. His father broke the women he loved, and yet feared that Mother Dark would break him. He was but a Consort; resented by the highborn and feared in the Citadel. He had forged an army out of his Houseblades and so earned the suspicions of Urusander’s Legion. He stood as a man beset on all sides.

Yet he leaves her, seeking out not a gift of love, but one of power. He thinks love is a toy. He thinks it shines like a bauble, and he makes every gesture a demand seeking love in return. Therefore, each and every thing that he does must be a thing of many meanings.

But he does not understand that this is his private language, this game of bargaining and the amassing of debts no one else comprehends.

I begin to understand the many lives of my father, and in each guise new flaws are revealed. I once vowed to hurt him if I could. A foolish conceit. Draconus knows nothing but hurts.

Did you love Karish once? Tell me, Father, will the blood of one lover feed the next? Is this the precedent Errastas spoke of? Or did he speak as a god, flush with the lifeblood of a mortal?

Arathan fixed his eyes on his father, who still rode ahead. In days past he would have spurred his mount until he was at his side, and they would converse like a father and son in search of each other, and every wound would be small and every truth would weave its way into the skein between them. He would think this both precious and natural, and value the moments all the more for their unfamiliarity.

Now he chose to remain alone, riding in a reluctant wake, on a path he no longer desired. His thoughts reached back to his memories of Feren — not the bitterness of their departure, but those times when he had shared her warmth. He wished he could surrender to her again. Night after night, if only to show his father a love that worked.

In the months to come, she would swell with the child they had made, and in her village she would fend off the questions and turn away from all the cruel comments stalking her. Her brother would come to blows defending her honour. And all of this would play out in Arathan’s absence, and he would be judged accordingly. Such venom never lost its virulence.

If he had been older, he would have fought for her. If he’d had any other father — not Lord Draconus, Consort and Suzerain of Night — he would have found the courage to defy him. Instead, the father made himself anew in his son. And I bow to it. Again and again, I bow to it.

None of this armour he wore made him strong. It but revealed the weakness of flesh.

Feren. One day I will come for you. He would weather the scorn of her neighbours, and they would ride away. They would find a world for their child.

A world that did not feed on blood.

Korya and Haut walked. Low square stone towers studded the landscape, crouched against hillsides, rising from ridges and crowding hilltops. They filled the floodplain to either side of the old river, their bulky shapes shouldering free of the tree-line where the forest had grown back, or hunched low on sunken flats where marsh grasses flowed like waves in the breeze that swept down the length of the valley.

As they passed among them, skirting the high edge of the valley’s north side, Korya saw that most were abandoned, and those few that showed signs of habitation were distant, and it seemed that Haut’s route deeper into the now dead Jaghut city deftly avoided drawing too near any of them.

She saw no evidence of industry, or farming, or manufacture. There were no outbuildings to be seen, either for storing food or stabling animals. For sustenance, these Jaghut must have supped on air.

Her thighs and calves ached from all the walking. The silence from Haut was oppressive and there was a steady pain behind her eyes and blood had soaked through the pad of moss between her legs. She awaited a word from him, something to snap at and so feel better, but he strode ahead without pause, until she felt as if he’d bound an invisible leash round her neck and was simply pulling her along like a reluctant pet. She wanted him to tug on that leash, draw her too close and so come within reach of her claws.