WHEN RAFE WOKE it was dark. Weak moonlight bled into the room from two wide vents high in the wall, giving enough light for him to recognize where he was. He tried to sit up but his head thudded, pain spearing into his eyes and down his neck. He groaned, held his temples and sat up slowly, trying to hold the pain so that it did not move around. He’d had headaches before, but nothing like this. Perhaps Hope had given him some bad rotwine without his noticing. He had seen plenty of people like this in Trengborne, suffering harsh hangovers each morning and feeding them again come afternoon and evening.

He looked around the room—the walls adorned with many shadows, the odors of the place more noticeable now that he could see less—and then he saw Hope. She was sitting in a chair by the far wall. Her hair was silhouetted against the stone by the weak moonlight, sticking up like a nest of sleek snakes, and though her face was in shadow Rafe was sure he could make out her tattoos, shifting slowly to mirror the effect of her hair. He held his breath for a moment and heard her slow, heavy breathing.

He realized suddenly that he was naked. It was cold, even though a few spluttering embers remained in the open fire, and Rafe wished that he could find his clothes without moving. His headache had come to terms with him sitting upright, but still it pounded at the backs of his eyes.

He ran his hand down over his stomach. Hope had given him a reason for his lack of a navel, and it was not a reason he liked. She had been right, he had begun to wonder, but somehow the idea of asking his parents had always seemed wrong.

Something was whispering in his ear. He turned his head quickly to look behind him, wincing at the pain but holding his breath, waiting to see, wanting not to. There were only shadows, deeper within his own. The whispering continued, words in a language he could not understand. The meaning was way beyond his grasp. The source of the whispers moved to his other ear and then inside his head, soothing the ache there, numbing the pain and planting fresh, potent ideas that he shied away from. He did not understand fully, but there was nothing hiding the power that these voices imparted. They breathed the smell of grass in rolling meadows and the tang of fresh snow on mountaintops, inspired the taste of rain on his tongue and the feel of a breeze across his skin. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The voices paused as if awaiting an answer, and when none was given—he did not know how—they faded quickly away, leaving him sitting there in the dark with no headache, warm and, for the first time in two days, unafraid.