With trembling hand, Ellren knocked on the door. “Lord Tarev?”

She braced for the bellow; the rush of footsteps and the stinging flat of his lordship’s hand. None of those things came. Silence, broken by birdsong from the gardens, was the only reply.

“Your lordship?”

She took a deep breath, turned the handle, and stepped inside.

The chamber lay thick beneath ruddy gloom, the light of the morning given hue by the heavy crimson curtains. Scents lay heavy on the still air. Ash, liquor and something else, thick and rich beneath.

The four-poster bed hadn’t been slept in. Indeed, Ellren could have believed herself the only person to have trod the carpet since the previous morning, but for the empty brandy bottle lying sidelong on the dresser. That, and the previous night’s ashes in the grate.

“Lord Tarev?” she whispered, as afraid of going unnoticed as she was of discovery. You heard stories about the nobility. Well, not Lord Tarev, who’d by all accounts led a strictured life even before his wife’s death at Zanya. But it was never too late for new interests to take root.

“Lord Tarev? It’s Ellren.” She skirted the bed and stepped through the door to the adjoining study. “Master Gosrig was wondering . . .”

She shuddered to a halt, fist jammed in her mouth to stifle a scream.

Lord Tarev lay slumped across his desk. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, his wrists bloody and his eyes staring sightlessly towards the door. A thin-stemmed glass lay on the desk. Blood pooled around it and across the trifold portrait clasped between pale fingers.

Ellren sucked in a breath. A mistake. The sour, coppery smell of cooled blood – all but undetectable in the bedroom, but suffocating here – struck the back of her throat. She clutched at the wall for support, fighting a rebellious gorge.

“Master Gosrig! Master Gosrig! Come quickly!”

Even as she shouted, she wasn’t sure why she bothered. Lord Tarev had no need of haste. Not any longer.

Malachi found Rosa in gardens grey and troubled as his mood. A pebble left her hand, shot across the river’s rushing waters and cracked against the sheer cliff of the opposing bank. Beyond, the crumbling arches of Strazyn Abbey loomed large – another reminder that all things passed, in time.

“Don’t let Lily catch you. Constans doesn’t need the encouragement.” He tried to muster a chuckle, but it wouldn’t come. “How are you?”

Rosa turned from the waters and smoothed the folds of her surcoat. “Better than I should be.”

Malachi winced. Between panic and darkness, he recalled only a little of the kernclaw’s attack. But the image of Rosa lying motionless on the floor, her nightgown shredded and her throat torn out? The stuff of nightmares to come. More than ever, he struggled to comprehend what his friend was going through.

“What about you?” she asked.