‘My fire lives on, but it is a lonely flame. May you kiss the same cold lips. May you yearn for what you can never have, and find no warmth in this or any other world.

‘Your soldiers burned me! In hate, they hurt me! All of your careless games, Draconus, now return to you! Come back to this Finnest, see what I have done!’

Sandalath felt the presence flee her. The tiny girl in her arms, dripping with birth fluids, was plucking at her sodden blouse, hungry for what the cloth hid.

Revulsion rippled through her, but some instinct made her yield to the babe’s need. She fumbled at the clasps, pulled her blouse apart, and let the girl suckle.

Draconus was gone – she didn’t recall seeing him leave – and now, impossibly, the morning sun was pushing through the warped slats of the shutters. She could smell bitter, acrid smoke.

As the child drank eagerly, she staggered, body aching, over to the window, reaching out to tug back the shutters.

The smouldering ruin of the house surrounded the tower, the fire-cracked stones heaped up around the base. Flames had caught the barracks, but there the fire had but scorched one corner, where the stones had sunk down into a pit now filled with frozen meltwater. From beyond the outer wall, in the direction of the training field, a dozen or more columns of white smoke rose straight up, the only motion in this frozen daybreak.

She listened to the child’s deep breaths even as the mouth drew on the nipple. Already the babe felt heavier, bulkier. Its skin was onyx, its black hair fine and long. The eyes were large and strangely elongated, luminous as they stared upward, past Sandalath’s face, seemingly focused on the empty morning sky. Something in that small, round face reminded Sandalath of her mother.

You’ll get what you need, but nothing more.

Turning about, she set out for the stairs.

* * *

Ivis sat huddled in blankets as close to the stone-ringed cookfire as he could manage, yet still shivers trembled through him.

He recalled little. Standing upon the threshold to the main chamber, and then… awakening out beyond the wall, his hands shredded and torn and full of slivers.

Yalad told him that he had walked out from the raging flames, with Wreneck in his arms. But not even his clothes were singed, and the boy was also miraculously untouched. Still, there had been horror and grief in the camp when it was discovered that Lady Sandalath was missing. Yalad had clawed at his face, as the weight of a dead hostage crashed down upon him – the man given the responsibility for her safety.

The storm had moved on in the night, and now there was no wind to stir the icy air. The household of Lord Draconus, and all the Houseblades, were now homeless.