But now she hung suspended in the air, in a chamber with its stone walls gouged deep on all sides, as if clawed by a trapped beast. With more rents crisscrossing the wooden floorboards, with the ceiling beams looking chewed, shredded.

She felt something like a fist curl in her belly, low down, and it grew. Back arching, Sandalath gasped as her clothes stretched, as she swelled, skin tightening. Galdan! Look what we did! I didn’t know! Mother is furious with me! She says it’s a snake – a snake inside me, and it’s growing!

Fluids spilled from between her legs. She saw Draconus, looming before her, his face twisted in something like helpless frustration. She felt one of his hands reaching down, reaching in, and dragging the baby out.

She watched as he lifted the thing between them, and saw immediately that it was lifeless, a slick, red doll with flopping limbs. Snarling, he flung it away.

Another fist made a knot in her belly, began growing.

Another dead child. A bellow of fury from Draconus as he threw it to one side.

She lost count. Stillborn after stillborn. Mind glazed with shock, eyes unable to close or even blink, with not a single breath drawn, she watched as the scene played out again and again. There was no pain, no sense of anything beyond the swelling, the terrible release, and then his howling anger.

Until everything changed.

A child’s cry, small fists waving about, feet kicking.

Mother, I didn’t mean it. I swear. I didn’t know.

Draconus pulled her close, pushed the wailing creature into her arms.

She looked up into the man’s eyes, but those eyes, she saw now, did not belong to a man. They were as black and depthless as the waters of Dorssan Ryl. When he opened his mouth, as if attempting to speak, the inky waters poured from it. Anguish twisted the face. Releasing her to drop to the ravaged wooden floor, where she almost lost her balance, the figure staggered back, as if in horror.

Sudden vehemence flooded Sandalath, and the voice that came from her was not her own. ‘This child, Draconus, has taken the best of you. This child is made pure. All the love you harboured, that you so callously hoarded, and meted out with such reluctance – it now resides in this babe, given to a mother too broken to love her back.

‘Oh, Draconus, how do you like me now?

‘Tell this to Mother Dark, when next you see her. She is neither the first nor the last, but nothing you covet and nothing you need will be found in her arms. I have wounded you, Draconus. Will she be content with what’s left of you? I doubt it.