‘I said: Are you ready to be magnificent?’

He sighed. ‘Yes, Mother. I am ready, willing and able. Delighted, in fact.’ He offered his hand. ‘Shall we?’

Nobody else was quite as rude as Lord Lakshin Opal but all made it clear he was tolerated rather than welcome in their own ways. Lady Anuja Ruby kept to her rooms, no doubt conserving her energy, and the other Deathless actively avoided him, though he was sure his name was often on their lips.

He constantly worried about his affairs back home. Had High Lord Yadavendra noticed his absence yet? Did his mother need him? What if there was an attack on one of his settlements? Though things had been eerily quiet in the Sapphire lands of late, he couldn’t help but fear that now his back was turned, the creatures of the Wild would stir once more.

But he could not leave the Ruby High Lord’s castle.

To do so would be to confirm the worst suspicions of the other houses. If he was going to win their trust, he had to stay until he had proven himself. He needed to triumph. And so he felt a guilty kind of relief when he was urgently summoned by Lady Anuja.

As before, she sat in the Ruby High Lord’s throne. Now that he knew about her injury, it was easy to see that she still suffered from it. ‘Lord Vasin, please be welcome and attentive. I have news.’

He grasped her wrist, and she his. ‘I stand ready.’

She smiled, though it barely reached her tired eyes. ‘Good. Fourboards is requesting a hunt and I need you to go in my stead.’

‘Fourboards? Again?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s only been … this is unbelievable!’ The idea of a third hunt in the same place in less than a year was so absurd it was all he could do not to laugh. ‘It makes no sense. Where will they find more tributes? How will they sustain the losses?’

‘Fourboards has called for aid. It has offered a sacrifice and we must answer, except …’ she gestured at herself, ‘for me to hunt would mean the end of this body. If things were different I might risk it, but my house needs one of its Deathless in the living world, and so I turn to you, Ruby-friend. Will you lead a hunt in my name?’

‘You honour me.’ This was an understatement, and more than he’d dared to hope for – she was giving him a chance to show that, in the right hands, House Sapphire could be trusted again. However, in the current climate, putting him in charge was controversial. The Opal and Peridot Deathless had been here longer, and had hunted around Fourboards before. They would not be happy. That too was an understatement.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I’ll leave at once.’