Empty, too, were the sockets of her eyes.

I started backwards, knocking into Alexsander. He was similarly shocked by the sight of Mrs Fredericks, who was weeping blood softly into her soup bowl and saying something to herself, over and over. I could not hear what, exactly, above the laughter. All the diners were without their eyes and most carried on as if nothing were the matter. I tried to stand but the magistrate’s wife gripped my shoulder with the weight of an avalanche. It was then I saw the two white pips of teeth crowning in the eye sockets, as they had in the Harsson boy’s.

At the end of the table Mrs Eder stood and crushed a glass between her hands. Only one of them bled but did so profusely, cascading blood onto the table, which silenced the room. Her head sported antlers that stretched high towards the ceiling. Impaled on each point was a letter, still sealed. She turned to me, her eyes blazing like full hearths.

Alexsander touched my hand. I did not want to see him again, nor acknowledge him in any way. He was not there. Could not be there. He was an intruder in my night. But I did follow his gaze to the southern boy, Olesca. He was not eyeless, and nor did his eyes burn with fire. He simply looked from my day-brother to me, and back again. His calm, innocent demeanour was a chilling shock amid the demonic laughter, the blood, and the ruined finery. He opened his mouth and said, ‘Sir?’ Clear and toneless across the banquet hall’s ruckus. ‘Sir?’

I blinked.

I was reaching, my hand alone, for a door handle. I was in the corridor upstairs, with the butler beside me.

‘You dropped this, sir,’ the butler said, offering me something shrivelled and blackened.

‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

‘You dropped this, sir,’ he repeated.

I gazed at the man, his cliff-like face betraying nothing.

‘Thank you,’ I said. He offered the object to me again and I had little choice but to take it. A heart, or it once was, so putrefied had it become. Small, but perhaps still big enough to be a man’s, and pricked with pins. The end of each pin was covered in candle wax. ‘Thank you.’

The butler escorted me back to the dining room. If it weren’t for his stoic presence, I may not have entered – even though I heard none of the raucous laughter of my vision. There was also none of the warmth. The magistrate’s wife was dissecting a small game bird, possibly a quail, her eyes both definitely in place and intensely focused. Mrs Fredericks appeared quite relieved by my return.

She was talking to me, but I did not hear her. Instead, I looked about the table: at Mr and Mrs Eder; their children; the fiancé, Olesca; and at the serving staff that stood behind them, that carried dishes to and fro, that entered almost unseen.