“No. You’ve simply acted according to your nature and your desires. We all yearn for life to unfold as we wish, and the Dark gives us the power to make reality of our dreams, whether we command it to or not. To make the dead walk and the living kneel. To make memory substance. And you have manipulated those around you. Even your sainted Calenne. How else could a woman love a monster she’d feared her whole life?”

“No!” He pulled fruitlessly at his bonds. “That’s not how it is!”

Calenne. Who’d lived in terror of the Black Knight and was now as infatuated with him as he with her. And she’d embraced more than Viktor himself. Her family’s hated heritage. The mantle of the Phoenix. Her desire, or his longing finding unconscious lease?

He’d never considered himself a “good” man. He couldn’t, for war didn’t allow such certainties. But he’d always held firm to the idea that he was dutiful – even righteous. Now, lost in the Dark and his every recent deed open to appalling question, Viktor’s certainty slipped.

“You are a child of the Dark, Viktor, and the Dark is power. It wants to be used, and will seek to control you if it is not. It could drive you to madness . . . but it does not have to. Drink from me. Learn from me. Be the heir I’ve longed for all these years.”

“To return the world to your peaceful Dark?”

“That choice falls to you. If my legacy is to be a shining realm of privileged squabbles, with you as its champion and Calenne at your side, then so be it. I wish you the joy of making it so. I will sleep well in the mists knowing that my legacy lives on, and that my efforts were not wholly wasted.”

A shame that Ebigail and Malatriant had never crossed paths, for they would have found much to admire in one another. History. Legacy. Strength . . . The strength of a hand clamped tight about the throat.

Viktor took a deep breath, and strove to ignore the thick, heavy pulse of his shadow. It, at least, approved of Elda’s proposal . . . but that was increasingly a reason to be wary. Where before it had been distinct from the Dark he had drawn from Calenne, now he couldn’t tell them apart. Had he poisoned himself by saving her? Had Malatriant planned matters to enfold thus?

A stray memory clicked. Playing jando with Kasamor during a lazy border watch. Kas had taken every hand, courtesy – as it transpired – of a marked deck. This felt the same way.

If he refused, Malatriant would make good her threats of terror and destruction. If he accepted, he ran the risk that her promises were lies. That Malatriant sought only to possess him as she had so many others and bind his shadow to hers.