‘Shhh.’ She wound her arms around him, pressing her wet body against his burning skin. Her breasts crushed against him, slippery with rainwater.

The tempest broke outside, battering the shutters with its violence, howling about the Palace rooftops. But Acir was aware only of the raging of his senses and her subtle, sinuous movements as Fiammis entwined herself around him, drawing him inside her. And inside all was dark heat and sweetness. His veins seemed to run with honey, he could feel the golden liquid coursing through his body, coursing ever stronger until it spilled over and he felt himself melting into that dark heat –

The thunder cracked overhead and the shutters blew inwards. Out went the candle-flames and the room was filled with rainwet blackness.

Acir gave a cry and rolled away, his voice swallowed by the thunder’s deafening roar that shook the whole city.

Blinded by the white glare of the flickering lightning, he rocked in silent misery, shielding his head from the storm’s fury. Fiammis lay in the lightning’s shadow, watching him. After a while he raised his head and gazed at her.

‘Why?’ It was more of a cry of pain than a word. ‘Why, Fia?’ First the sweetness, then the aftertaste. And the aftertaste, bitter-black as aloes, filled him with revulsion for what had first seemed so sweet.

‘Because I wanted you. I always wanted you.’ She stroked his cheek and he shuddered at her touch, a faint flicker of burning honey still afire in his loins. ‘And you wanted me. Your need was as great, don’t deny it. What point your vows of celibacy, what point all those fruitless years of self-denial and privation? Is that what Mhir asks of you?’

In one night he had broken the contract he had made with his god. All he foresaw now for himself was years of penance, of monastic desolation, shunned by his fellow Guerriors, despised as the man who betrayed his vows for one brief moment of love.

Sweat, colder than the gusting rain outside, chilled his body. He seized his clothes, tugging on his breeches, his boots, buckling on his sword.

‘Where are you going?’ She knelt up on the bed. ‘Don’t go. Don’t leave me.’

‘I have to go.’

‘Come back, Acir!’

He heard her still calling his name as he went down the stairs and out! into the night. He could not stay. If he had stayed, he would have broken his vows again.

She had revealed his weakness. He had vowed at Mhir’s shrine to stay pure in mind and body, the better to serve the will of the All-Seeing. If he was unable to keep that covenant, what right had be to be a Guerrior? Heedless of the driving rain or the howling wind, he walked on through the streets of the city.