I fight down the memory of a man tortured by burning, a man who took too long to die, while all of us listened and sang songs behind our prison bars. I push away the story Blackthorn told me about her husband and her little son. I struggle to keep the half-cup of brew from coming straight up again.

‘We’ll put it up on the shelf,’ says Bardán. ‘It’s that or we sleep in here on the floor.’

Gormán doesn’t look happy. Doesn’t care to have the wild man telling him what to do. But we get the lantern. Turns the sleeping quarters into a shadowy in-between place. But not quite dark, though Gormán’s shut the door on us. Still, the nightmares hang close, and Bardán sees it.

‘You all right, Grim?’

‘Have to be, won’t I? Got work to do.’

‘You can’t keep going with no sleep.’

Ripple snuggles up close. Worried. Dogs know. If I sent Ripple to Blackthorn, would she go? Would she understand what I wanted? And could I manage without her?

‘Need to get myself sorted,’ I say, talking to myself. ‘Get this finished, go home.’ Bardán doesn’t speak. But he’s sitting up, like he plans to keep me company. The two of us awake together. ‘Bardán?’

‘Mm?’

‘Thanks, brother.’

He doesn’t say anything. Me, I’m sitting there, still shaky and sick. Still wanting Blackthorn. But thinking now. Thinking a way through the shadows. Remembering what she wrote. Truth in his eyes. Love in his heart. Honour in his spirit. If I can believe in that, I know what I have to do.

‘You’re a kind man,’ I tell him. ‘A good soul.’

Bardán makes a sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. As if he thinks that notion is ridiculous.

‘Thing is,’ I say, keeping my voice low, since I don’t want Gormán hammering on the wall again or coming in to listen, ‘there’s being so beaten down and broken that you’ve got nothing left to give. Not even the weakest little glow of kindness. I’ve been there. You’ve been there. And so has Blackthorn. But it only feels that way. Go deep enough and you find that last little bit of warmth, still there, hiding away. A person might think they’re a wreck, a ruin, with the road crumbling away in front of them.’ I see myself at St Olcan’s, crawling through the mud, crying my eyes out. I see Blackthorn and me looking at each other through the bars, across the gap between the cells. I remember the day our house burned down, and Blackthorn back in the past, screaming for her man and her baby. ‘But you can make your own road. And you can find the good inside. You just did.’