“So the insanity around here filters down from the top, then,” Orfeus said.

“That remark does not befit you.”

Orfeus shook her head, not in disagreement. She pulled her fingers through her hair, tangled, sweaty, bloodstained. “You owe me answers.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Is that not answer enough?” he said. “I sent the Wolf after you, yes. From your songs, you had potential.” He waved around. “I could use people here with some idea of history. Too many look too lightly on what we’ve lost, and forget how easily the world could slide back, without us here to guide it.”

Perhaps the world needed predators, but not ones who relished it this much. Orfeus spat on the ground. She was faintly dismayed to find her spit still stained with red. “Setting a bounty hunter after someone is a backwards recruitment strategy.”

Luga shrugged. “Not as I see it,” he said. “Nothing is lost. Either Faol would succeed, and burn out his softer heart, and be a good Leader; or you’d come looking, and you did. A promising new candidate.” He scowled, and he looked simply annoyed, not wrathful. “At the least, I wouldn’t have to watch her mooning over your recordings anymore.”

“Oh,” Orfeus said, stunned. She put that away to think on later. Faol thinking anything of her at all was still so soft and new. This, though —“You’re cruel, Luga.”

Luga nodded. “A good Leader needs to be.”

Orfeus shook her head. Luga stepped forward, and Orfeus tensed. He might be anything from simply an old man to a superhuman honed and developed by O’Hallow’s experiments, and Orfeus had nearly bled out not too long ago.

“I grow frail and my time is limited. A strong king needs a strong heir, or the kingdom will fall apart,” Luga said. “You know the stories.”

She clenched her fists, though she kept carefully still. “You buy into your own myth too much.”

“You’d know a little about that,” he said. “Another way in which you’re well suited.”

She clenched her jaw. “We are not a thing alike.” He didn’t say anything, and she shook her head. She wanted to pace, she wanted to fall down and not get up till she’d slept for a week. “Surely you can’t really want this. I’m…ill-suited to positions of power.” She’d seen too brightly and painfully what could be done with it.

“Knowing that makes you more suited than most,” Luga said calmly.