He looked away, appearing embarrassed. ‘This is going to sound very strange to you. Meical is one of the Ben-Elim.’

Cywen found it hard not to look sceptical. ‘An angel of Elyon. One of the Faithful?’

‘Yes.’

Two days ago she would have laughed at that. But since then she had seen Kadoshim boil out of a cauldron. The world was a different place now.

‘All right,’ she said, carefully. ‘Go on, then.’

‘And the Jehar call me the Seren Disglair. You remember the prophecy Edana told us about? Feels like a thousand years ago.’ Elyon and Asroth, their forthcoming battle, the God-War, their champions . . .

‘Yes.’ Cywen nodded dubiously wondering where this was going.

Corban looked even more awkward and refused to meet her eyes. ‘Seren Disglair is the Jehar’s name for the Bright Star. The prophesied champion of Elyon, enemy of Asroth. And apparently that’s me.’

Cywen gazed at the flames of the fire.

The world has gone mad. My brother, the champion of Elyon. She snorted with nervous laughter, remembering a host of moments with Corban while growing up – the day he ripped his cloak in the Baglun, when she’d attacked Rafe to defend Corban. Corban sneaking into Brina’s cottage, bringing home Storm as a pup, hitting at each other with sticks in their garden, seeing him amongst the rescue party in the Darkwood, watching him as he took his warrior trial and Long Night. And yet now they were sitting in a foreign land, Benothi giants sitting to her left, elsewhere Jehar warriors were tending to their weapons.

‘How have we reached this place?’ she said to Buddai, the hound spread beside her, his big head resting on her legs.

Figures loomed out of the darkness and sat beside her – Dath and Farrell, another with them – the red-haired girl, Coralen. She drew her sword and ran her thumb along its edge, then pulled a whetstone out of her cloak and started running it along the blade.

‘You look familiar,’ Cywen said to Coralen. There was something in the set of Coralen’s jaw, the confidence in her walk, the way she held herself.

‘She’s half-sister to Halion and Conall,’ Farrell said.

‘I can talk for myself,’ Coralen snapped at Farrell.

‘That would be it,’ Cywen said. ‘Conall was my guard for a while. We didn’t get along too well.’

Coralen just stared at her, her face a cold mask.

‘He tried to kill me. Twice,’ Cywen continued, not sure why. Something about Coralen’s emotionless expression annoyed her. ‘But, to be fair, I was trying to kill him. Pushed him off a wall the first time. Put a knife in him the second.’

A flicker of emotion, respect perhaps, crossed Coralen’s face, then it was gone. ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ Coralen said. ‘Not many live to tell the tale once Con decides they’re for the grave.’

‘You haven’t seen what Cywen can do with a knife,’ Dath said, and Cywen liked him a lot more at that moment. Coralen looked at Cywen, then went back to sharpening her sword.