Morgan stared at his father. As well as stripping his flesh, illness had caused much of the old man’s hair to shed, leaving him bald in spreading patches. His scalp was scaled and oozing, the rot defying Ranmer’s many ointments. Even so, he’d refused to have his remaining hair clipped close. As though surrendering to the scissors was the same as surrendering to death.

“Did you ever love my mother?” he said, almost whispering.

“She stiffened me. It amounts to the same thing.”

He continued to stare, torn between revulsion and fascination.

I loved my mother. I loved Luzena. I do not count that as a weakness. Did I never see this in you before, this cool, cruel detachment?

No. Because not even one day in his life was he given cause to doubt his father’s fervent love for him.

And if you can love me, how could you not love the woman who birthed me?

“You never remarried,” he said, cautious. “I would ask you why not.”

His father shrugged. “I had no need of a second wife. I had you.”

There was flattery in that, even though he was still disconcerted. “And if I, like Luzena, had died untimely?”

“If that had happened I would have found another woman to bear me another son,” said his father. And then he frowned. “Morgan, enough. You are years too old for giddy romanticism. Breeding the next generation of mages is a serious matter. Perhaps with Luzena you could indulge whimsy, but that time is gone. Let me speak plain: I want your word given to me, here and now, that aside from your Council duties your only concern will be the finding of your unborn son’s mother.”

Before he could stop himself, his gaze flicked up as though it could penetrate every chamber between this dining room and his attic workroom.

“Your experiments?” With a grunting effort, his father levered himself to standing. “Morgan, I forbid your experiments! Until I see you wed, and hard on your vow’s heels learn of a son in the woman’s belly, I tell you there will be no more magework in this house.”

“And I tell you there will be, my lord. When I was that green youth promised to Luzena then perhaps you could forbid me. But like Luzena, those days are long dead. You are my father and I honour you but do not presume to—”

“Presume?” Fresh spittle flecked his father’s blanched lips. “When I house you? Feed you? If there is presumption to speak of, Morgan, of a surety it is yours.”

“And there’s a calumny, my lord,” he retorted. “When I stay because you beg me not to leave, because you will not hear of me finding rooms in Elvado, when I stay because—”

“Because this is your home!” said his father, and thudded back into his chair. “Where else would you live?”

Heart pounding, Morgan glared at him. “I would live where no man thinks to forbid me my life’s work.”