Yesterday, he went too far. He tried to flay a young woman, Leora Flint. Those convicts, Obel Whitworth and Connor Drew, are heroes for their actions. I held back the guards who would have stopped them acting. As a mark of honour to them, they have been freed from the prison.

I assure you that Dan Longsight is in the best of hands – he is receiving the highest care in a private section of the hospital. We must pray for his ancestors to show him mercy.

I hope you will see that finally we can stand together. For I understand your fear and hurt, your bewildered mourning echoes my own. You are not the only victims of Dan Longsight’s strange reign. I offer my services to you as an equal. It will be my honour to lead my community into peace and justice.

I tear the letter to pieces. There is no justice – the liars always win. I pull the covers over my head and hide away from a world that is worse than I ever could have believed.

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-one

Day and night are meaningless. Hours don’t matter. Days pass and weeks do too. A relentless cold has got into my bones and all through summer I stay in my room. Mum brings me food and cups of tea. Seb tries to tempt me with cake.

Verity visits me faithfully – she just sits on the bed next to me and holds my hand. Those are the moment I feel the permafrost could melt, but by the time I think I might speak to her, she’s gone. Until one day, the silence breaks.

“What happened to us?” Verity sighs. “You were my sister and I let you become my enemy.” She takes my hand and squeezes it. “Leora, I was so afraid of you – and afraid of believing you. Because if what you said about the blanks was true then I was living for a lie. And, yes – I see now that it was a lie. Longsight wasn’t the good man I wanted him to be, and whatever spell Jack Minnow cast that entranced me has broken. You were right that there was more than I could see and I was too scared to open my eyes.”

I can’t speak, but her words are balm. Verity touches my bare foot with her own and our tattoos are side by side.

“We got these marks because we wanted to be the same – we wanted to stay together and be entwined.” Her seed mark is still bright and clear – the vines she has inked since are flourishing. “But we weren’t in control, were we? We couldn’t hold the future.” With her brown toes she strokes my mark – the egg with its cracked shell – and I reluctantly smile at the tickle, taking a quick glance at her face. Tears stream down her cheeks.

“Just look, Leora. Your mark compared to mine.”