Roland was talking again. Roland almost never stopped talking. Roland was saying something about the broadcast, and Rhosh was thinking how good it had felt to burn that house, how good it had felt to melt to cinders anything that belonged to the comrade of that despicable weak little Derek, who had so reminded him of Benedict at times, an eternal boy, an immortal boy, a miserable combination of a man’s rage and a child’s helplessness.

Yes, put that little earbud in your ear and listen to the program. What do I care about the program? What do I care about anything?

It seemed a great void had opened beneath him the night Benedict had left; it seemed he had seen to the depths of that void, and he’d confronted the most awful truth of his existence, that without Benedict, nothing really meant anything to him, that it had been Benedict, poor sweet Benedict, who kept him alive, not human blood and the power of Amel forever changing his cells from human to immortal—just Benedict, Benedict’s need and Benedict’s love, and all the other passions of Rhoshamandes had gone up in flames, just as surely as if Benedict had used the Fire Gift as he left Rhoshamandes’s life forever.

He thought of the Prince. He saw his smiling face; he saw his brilliant, flashing eyes; he heard the timbre of his voice. Had Rhoshamandes ever had such passion for living as the Prince had, the Prince who had already died and risen again in his short pampered vampiric life, the Prince who fed off the love around him as surely as he fed off blood, the Prince who declared love for that demon thing Amel that had brought Rhoshamandes to this ruin!—the Prince who was untouchable as long as Amel remained inside of him.

He could have turned the Fire Gift on the whole world! He could have burned these houses all around him, these trees. He could have blasted the very clouds above and brought down a storm of rain on fires that nothing could quench. He could have burned the city of London! The growing sense of his power vaguely thrilled him, warming his hard cold heart as if it might truly feel again.

Roland came striding towards him.

“The Prince is broadcasting now,” said Roland. “The Prince is inviting them to call in. The Prince says he will invite them all to come to the Château. The Prince will arrange everything.”

Roland held out the little cell phone for him to listen. How Rhosh was tempted to grind the little phone into sand, sand twinkling with tiny particles of glass. Or to turn the Fire Gift, so new, so deliciously powerful, on this one, Roland, to see just how long it took for one so old and so powerful to burn.