They moved towards each other with a sudden rush, meeting in the middle of the room, folding into one another, his doubting mind only now believing what his hands could hold. She clasped him even tighter, as if the vision of him might slip away like smoke through her fingers if she gripped him any the less. Pain flared across his back like a hearth flame, making him suck in his breath. She immediately relented her grip.

‘You’re wounded,’ she said.

‘It’s nothing,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll live.’

‘Let me see.’

She made him sit on the small backless seat set to one side of the room and had him pull off his tunic. They said nothing as her fingers traced the lines and furrows that the scourge had drawn in his flesh, her touch light as a moth’s wing. She left off and crossed the room, soon returning with a basin of water and a cloth. The water was soothing against the hot, dull throb of the whip wounds. And soon he felt the warm patter of some other liquid on his shoulders. She was weeping.

‘You’ve tended my wounds before,’ he said. A world away, in the frozen forests of the north. ‘When I came for you. This time, it was you who came.’

‘I had to.’ She left off her swabbing and sat down beside him, lifting something from round her neck. ‘I had to return this.’ She opened her hand and there, in the dim light, he saw his amulet nestled in her palm. ‘I know it means much to you.’

Such a simple thing. Two pieces of silver fashioned into the shape of a little hammer. But she was right, its twin arms had much to tell. . . although she didn’t know what. His hand moved over hers, closing her fingers. ‘It’s yours now.’

‘I followed you to Dunsgard but I was too late.’

‘Huh. I couldn’t serve that worthless piece of—’ He stopped, not wanting to sour this moment with the memory of a man like Osvald. ‘I had to leave.’

‘Why did you come here?’

He shook his head. ‘Why did you follow?’

She sighed. ‘We have ample time to tell each other everything. It’s enough for now to know you live. You are here.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘With me.’

His gaze was falling deep into hers, but he found himself afraid. He knew how he had been there before, had not forgotten the wound that the loss of her had scoured into his heart. ‘And Ringast,’ he said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Does he live?’