I shook myself. Whatever Byron’s role, it didn’t alter the issue confronting all of us.

I cleared my throat. ‘This probably isn’t the best time to bring this up but I should mention it as it has a bearing on your plan.’

Aifric appeared confused. ‘Go on.’

‘I, er, don’t have a true name.’

You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

‘Say that again?’

I licked my lips and repeated myself. ‘I don’t have a true name. I never received one.’

It started slowly. Aifric’s cheeks flushed pink then, second by second, they grew darker until his entire face was a mottled purple. His blue eyes turned icy. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

I stepped back. It wasn’t my fault. If any of them had stopped to think about it, they’d have realised. All the same a shudder of fear ran through me. What would he do now?

Byron returned to his spot next to me. Surprisingly, he wrapped his hand round my upper arm and squeezed it reassuringly. By the look on his father’s face, however, that wasn’t going to help.

‘How can you not have your name?’ He turned to the table of astonished Sidhe, fixed on the Bull and raised his voice. ‘How can she not have her name?’

The Bull’s eyes darted around in terror and I realised for the first time that the man who was such a focus for my nightmares when I was a child was actually rather unremarkable. He was morbidly obese, which detracted slightly from his Sidhe good looks and poise, but he wasn’t the monster that I remembered. Whether age had diminished him or whether it was simply that I was no longer a child, I found that I could look at the Bull and feel nothing more than vague disdain. I was neither scared nor angry nor vengeful. I had won.

‘She was eleven years old when she ran away,’ he stammered. ‘It wasn’t my responsibility.’

‘She was your responsibility!’ Aifric thundered.

Byron’s grip round my arm tightened.

‘We agreed to leave her be,’ the Bull began.

‘Enough!’

‘If she doesn’t have her true name, then she didn’t receive her Gift,’ the moany red-haired Sidhe interjected. ‘That’s why she didn’t…’ The woman’s voice trailed away as Aifric’s icy blue gaze turned on her.

I frowned. Didn’t what?

‘Byron,’ Aifric snapped, ‘you will attend to this immediately.’

He bowed. ‘Of course.’

‘We will have to delay the journey to the Foinse.’ Aifric stroked his chin. His voice dropped. ‘When was the last time one of us waited until adulthood to receive our name?’

Silence answered him. He scowled.

‘It might make the fever worse,’ a stunning blond hulk of a man muttered.

‘It could be a week before she can travel,’ someone else agreed.