‘Oh, what do you know?’ she snapped, glaring up at him. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, what I realized in that place.’ She shook her head that seemed to throb in frustration. ‘That I don’t know you. . . Yet here I am. I came all this way. For you. I told myself it was for an alliance with this great king. But it was for you! Don’t you see? Like some lovelorn maiden, I came here and laid down everything because I love you! But what do you give me in return? Nothing of yourself. You hide from me. Do I not deserve you? Have I not suffered enough to deserve all of you?’

‘You have me. You have all of me.’

‘No, I don’t, Erlan! Why do you hold back from me? Why did you even come into my life? Was it only to torment me? Is that all? To make me love a shadow? A ghost? I don’t even know who you are.’

‘You do know me. Of course you do,’ he insisted. He tried to reach for her but she knocked away his hand.

‘I saw it so clearly down there in the darkness. Tell me now – I’m begging you. Who are you? Who are you, Erlan? Tell me. Tell me!’ Her last words were a cry of anguish, tears bursting from her eyes at last, and she fell on him, beating her fists against his chest.

‘You know I can’t speak of that. I swore an oath. A word as strong as oak.’

‘Oh, more words!’ she spat, breaking free of him again. ‘You’ve given away so many damned words and what have they ever given you back? They bind you and twist you out of shape until you are unrecognisable from what you could have been.’ She was sobbing now, tears streaming in rivers down her cheeks. ‘What you should have been. . .’

‘A man is what he is. His past binds his future.’

‘No. No, it does not. A man is what he could become. And the present is where he has the power to change his future. Now, Erlan!’ She held out her fist in front of his face. ‘Now is when you have what you could be in the palm of your hand. Don’t you understand?’

He turned away. Hiding from her again, she thought. But she was glad of what she had said. She could not endure this false love any more. It was killing her as surely as the eunuch’s cruelty. She watched him, watched as he turned over a world of memories in his mind. At last his eyes rose to meet hers.