Calenne made to turn away. He gathered her into an embrace, their faces so close as to be almost touching, his eyes fixed on hers. “I have borne a shadow all my life. I will gladly bear yours.”

She gave the smallest of nods. “Thank you.”

As his shadow made contact with the dark seed in Calenne’s soul, Viktor briefly worried at the scale of the task – that some piece of Malatriant’s will might yet hold sway. The fear that he’d again rushed into the matter conjured further doubt, but he could no more leave Calenne beset in this manner than any other. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Viktor enfolded the seed and made it his own.

Blackness washed over him. With it came sights and sounds of a world he’d never seen, a world with a sunless sky and a broken, grinning moon. Lupine howls echoed beneath twisted, skeletal trees, while men and women cowered beneath the stones of hollowed-out, crumbling halls. And everywhere that sinking, gnawing instinct. That his skin was not his own, but a mask to slough away and run free wherever the light was not.

Viktor’s vision cleared into flame. He trembled on hands and knees, a brackish taste in his throat and umbral flecks dancing before his eyes. And his shadow? His shadow exulted. Viktor knew that he could never again do what he had done for her, not without losing himself.

“Viktor?” Calenne shook his shoulders. “Viktor! Thank Lumestra. You went so still, I thought . . .”

Viktor took her hand and set his shadow prowling once more. The seed was . . . gone. Instead of Malatriant’s darkness, he saw only an echo of his own, like gazing at a reflection in the rushing waters at Coventaj.

He squeezed her hand tight and cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”

A tremulous, uncertain smile parted her lips. “Like I can breathe for the first time in my life.”

It had worked. It had pushed him to the brink, but it had worked. With that realisation came purpose. Malatriant could be diminished – maybe even slain, if the blow were levelled at the right point. Of the thralls who’d sought to cage him, only Elda had spoken.

“You say Elda never leaves Eskavord?”

“I said I’ve not seen her leave Eskavord.”

She was feeling better to quibble so. Viktor clambered upright. “And you know a way inside?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Calenne . . .”

She rolled her eyes. “One of the exits from Skazit Maze comes up in the churchyard. It’s where I finally clambered out. It’s that or swim the Grelyt. What’s on your mind, Viktor?”

“There may be a way to end this without anyone else getting killed. If Malatriant has taken root in Elda . . .”

She shot him a look as old as the hills. “You said Josiri was bringing an army. Wait for it.”

“This started with my mistake. I have to try.”