“Anyway,” Melior said after a moment, “I didn’t like the way things were going, and I wanted nothing more to do with any of them. Savant took a little longer to come to the same conclusion, but then he sees the good in everyone. His power is knowledge; he absorbs vast quantities of information at a glance, but he’s also a pacifist. He’s never hurt a soul in his life. I fell in love with him because of that quality, but it also meant that he couldn’t understand the destructive urge that I could see in the people around us.”

“But you understood it,” Skulduggery said.

“I did. When I was a kid, I hurt people. It’s why I became a doctor, to make up for the pain I’d caused. So yeah, I understood it.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing,” said Melior. “For a long time, nothing. We moved around a bit – it’s very hard to stay working in a hospital when you don’t age. We learned to forge new certificates with each passing decade. Eventually, we went back to my hometown, to Baltimore. More time passed. We hadn’t even thought of Parthenios or any of them in forty years.”

“Where’s your husband now, Doctor?”

“They have him. Parthenios Lilt and three others broke into our apartment, beat me half to death and took him away. I went to the Sanctuary, but they didn’t do anything. Two months later, I woke up to find Lethe standing over my bed. He told me who he was with, said they’d kill Savant unless I joined them.”

“When was this?”

“Five years ago.”

Valkyrie frowned. “Savant’s been gone five years?”

“Every so often, I’ll get a voice message telling me he loves me, telling me to be strong …” Melior’s voice cracked.

“Why go to the trouble of kidnapping him, though? Why doesn’t Smoke just corrupt you?”

“His touch doesn’t work on healers,” Melior said. “I don’t know why. I think it’s something to do with our power, maybe it acts as an immune system to his influence.”

“Your aura’s different,” Valkyrie said. Skulduggery looked at her and she shrugged. “It’s a different shade of orange.”

“I don’t know anything about auras,” Melior said, “but, whatever the reason, they needed some other way to control me.”

Skulduggery asked, “And Lethe’s in charge?”

“No,” Melior said. “He does what he’s told, same as everyone.”

“So who tells him what to do? Is there another Balerosh that we don’t know about?”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” said Melior, and hesitated. “It’s the voice in his head.”

“I’m sorry?”

“They all hear it,” Melior continued. “It’s their leader. I don’t know anything about her, I don’t know where she is, but I overheard some of them talking and they said a name. Abyssinia.”