Restless but reluctant to leave Gothos’s company and make his way back to the abode he and Korya shared, Arathan sat close to the ebbing heat from one of the braziers, at last thankful for its warmth. She would be lying in wait, he suspected, to assail him once again, to scoff at his foolish romanticism. And he had little with which to fend off her arguments.

Dawn was not too far away, in any case. Winter was a pernicious beast, he decided, to make caves, holes and gloomy chambers so inviting, where musings could huddle and stretch hands out over softly glowing embers. The outer world was bleak enough without the sleeping season’s reminder of what was lost, and what still remained months away. And yet, he thought to walk the camp in the day to come, or perhaps wander once more through the ruins of abandoned Omtose Phellack, to let the musings unfurl in winter’s cold, unyielding light.

The chill and the flat light would give hue to his memories of loss, to the surrendering of his heart that, it had since turned out, was no surrender at all. He could rattle the chains he dragged in his wake, marvelling at the blue of their iron links, or the snaking trails they made through dustings of snow and frost.

He had come, forlornly, to the belief that love was given but once. No doubt, as Gothos had suggested, there was a plethora of feelings that sought the guise of love, but in truth proved to be lesser promises, guarded commitments, alliances of sympathy, and so, when exposed, revealed their fragile illusions. It was likely, in fact, that Feren had held him in such a state, with her love for him nothing more than a thinly disguised need, and in his giving her the child she wanted, she dispensed with the child whose furs she shared. It was a hard admission, to accept his inability to understand what had happened, to know that he had indeed been too young, too naive. And none of that recognition, in his misguided self, did much to ease his resentment of his father.

It was no surprise that Draconus knew Gothos, or that they shared something like friendship. The old would give account to a wisdom mutually shared, like some tattered blanket against the long night’s chill, and offer up a threadbare corner for the young to grasp – if only they would. But that was but one more burden on a young spirit, but one more thing to slip from the grasp, or see torn loose by an unexpected tug. He could not hold on to what he had not yet earned.

These notions did nothing to ease the loss that haunted him. His love for Feren was the only real emotion within him, the chains wrapped tight. It was the only truth he had earned, and every fragment of wisdom, crumbled loose, shedding like rust from the creaking links, was bitter in his heart.