‘Is that supposed to be mercy, Mother? Should I be grateful?’ He shook his head. To accept her offer of oblivion would remove any chance of escape. But how can I escape this? They’ve already caught me in their trap. He let his head hang down, defeated, and for once it was not a ploy. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

They took him from the courtyard, back towards his own chambers, and he allowed himself to be led, meek, lifeless, as if some part of his soul had already left his body. There was no hope within Satyendra, he knew he could not put off the ceremony any longer, and so he clung to something else, a last spark of hate. If this was truly to be his end, he would use his dying breath to ensure that he didn’t go alone.

The Godroad shone silver-blue below Vasin, a lone light in a nighttime sea. To either side of it was the Wild, an undulating, endless blackness. Occasionally, it would be broken by the circle of torches made by one of the Sapphire settlements clinging to the side of the Godroad. He flew past them, one after another. There would be no torches where he was going.

However, he knew these lands well, and memory told him when it was time to bank right and begin his descent. In some ways it was a blessing to be arriving in Sorn at night. It was easier to ignore the ruined overgrown buildings. Easier to pretend that perhaps people still inhabited them. Even so, he felt a great shame every time he came here. For Sorn was a ghost village. A monument to his house’s betrayal of its people.

He skimmed over the top of the encroaching trees, and dropped fast, bouncing twice before coming to a skidding stop in the middle of the village.

The door to his mother’s house was already open, Nidra’s body silhouetted black in the doorway, her blade a glowing slash of blue at her side.

He started forward to embrace her but something in her manner gave him pause. His bounding stride faltered a few paces from her. ‘Mother?’

‘Now you come. Too late as usual. Why are you always too late, Vasin?’ He was close enough now to see her in the light of his armour. Each time he came she seemed so much older. Not just in her body but in her soul. Like the spark of Nidra Un-Sapphire was dimming inside.

‘I need to speak to Lord Rochant. He’s been holding out on us.’ She made a sound. He wasn’t sure if it was a snort of laughter or a suppressed sob. ‘Mother, what’s happened?’

‘He’s gone.’

‘Dead?’ He remembered her treatment of him in the early days and shuddered. ‘Did you?’