Unease, that emotion so strange to see on the Night Haunter’s face, appeared again. He covered it by glancing back at the stasis coffin. When he looked back at Sanguinius, his contempt was in place once more. ‘So now you take me back to face our father,’ he said.

‘You will answer for your crimes.’

‘He isn’t going to execute me. We both know that.’

‘We do,’ Sanguinius agreed. A new possibility occurred to him. He turned it over and over in his mind before he allowed himself to consider it more than wishful thinking. It rose before him, not a sudden epiphany but a slow dawn. Forged in darkness, tempered in despair, it was hope, thin as a blade, but oh, how it might serve the light. How it might be salvation.

In the midst of its lies and manipulation, Madail had spoken a truth. There had been a choice. It was possible to alter fate. The question was whether that chance had only occurred on Davin.

Sanguinius put his hope to the test. ‘Father won’t have you executed,’ he said. ‘I believe He should, but you’re right. He won’t.’

‘Prison will be very dull,’ said Curze. ‘I’ll miss our conversations.’

Sanguinius ignored the taunt. ‘Father might do worse,’ he said. He watched Curze’s face closely. ‘He might forgive you.’

He struck home. Curze’s mask of contempt fell. The unease returned. The reptilian eyes widened as they saw destiny enter a state of flux. In the storm of emotions that passed in micro-tremors over the Night Haunter, Sanguinius saw anger and doubt. He saw horror again at the thought that the universe really was not as Curze had known it to be, for so long, and so absolutely. And Sanguinius saw what he was looking for. He saw the rarest of all things in Curze’s eyes. He saw hope.

That was what he needed. That was confirmation.

He pushed Curze into the stasis coffin. The Night Haunter fell back and lay prone, helpless.

‘He might forgive you,’ Sanguinius repeated. ‘I don’t. You cannot have that redemption. I won’t let you. Rest certain in your destiny. You will have it. I am not taking you to Father.’

‘You can’t kill me either. I die at the hand of Father’s assassin.’

‘I’m not going to kill you. I am going to jettison your coffin into the void. The assassin will find you when the time comes. It may be millennia, Konrad.’

The hope vanished forever from Curze’s eyes, replaced by a different form of horror.

‘You claim destiny can’t be altered,’ Sanguinius continued. ‘So be it. Yours will be as you say.’

He stepped back and depressed a pad on the side of the coffin, generating the stasis field. It froze Curze in mid-scream.