If I were alone out here I would have starved to death long ago. She felt a surge of frustration as she observed Maquin, a moment of shame at how useless she was proving to be. What can I actually do? Run through woodland, and that not very well. Rule? And I didn’t prove to be too successful at that, either. She felt a wave of shame, thought of how the world had changed in so short a time. It was not so long ago that I dwelt in Jerolin with my husband and son. Now Aquilus is dead, Nathair gone who knows where, and I am living hand-to-mouth in the wild. Who even sits on the throne in Jerolin now? Who rules the people of Tenebral? My people. She felt a failure, felt that she’d let down all those who depended upon her.

All of those years living a life of service, bound by duty and honour. Aquilus was almost a stranger through our last years of marriage, so consumed and driven by Meical’s prophecy, and yet it all came to nothing, ended by a traitor’s blade. And Nathair, my own son, left me and then chose Lykos over me. She felt a flush of anger – the two men in her life whom she had trusted wholeheartedly, both abandoning her. Neither of them taking her into their confidences. The emotion was swiftly followed by shame - Aquilus was a good man, just preoccupied by these dangerous times. And Nathair is a good man, again, swept away by the dark times we live in.

As I have been.

But I was betrayed. It all changed with the letter from Nathair, his orders for me to step down as regent of Tenebral and hand over the stewardship of the realm to Lykos. Why did he do that? How could Nathair side with Lykos? I fear for him. Have they bewitched him too? Or is he just misled, deceived? With an effort she focused on Maquin, wrenching her thoughts away from their dark spiral, forcing herself to watch Maquin’s hands as he prepared the meat for their evening meal.

They had stopped a little earlier than usual, the sun still a handspan above the horizon as Maquin had set snares around a network of burrows that he had spied. She’d watched with fascination as he’d cut, looped and tied twine to overhanging branches, bending and pegging them to the earth, and then settled beneath a densely leaved oak a score of paces away. It had been dark when she finally heard the snap and creak of the snare tripping. Maquin had grinned at her, a rare thing, transforming his dour expression.

‘Hot meat for our supper,’ he’d said.