Danae was a grave, serious child with glossy black hair, large eyes as dark as night and a mouth like a pink rosebud. Despite her serious demeanour, she was affectionate, frequently showering her parents with spontaneous kisses. At the moment, she was near the fireplace doing important things involving a ball.

It was the fireplace that brought everything to a head and changed Sparhawk’s life forever. Danae miscalculated slightly, and her ball rolled directly into the grate. Without giving it any apparent thought, she quickly went to the fireplace, and before her father could stop her or even cry out, she reached into the flames and retrieved her toy. Sparhawk leaped to his feet with a strangled cry and rushed to her. He snatched her up and closely examined her hand.

‘What is it, father?’ she asked him quite calmly. Princess Danae was a precocious child. She had begun to speak early, and her speech by now was very nearly adult.

‘Your hand! You burned it! You know better than to stick your hand into a fire.’

‘It’s not burnt,’ she protested, holding it up and wiggling her fingers. ‘See?’

‘Don’t go near the fire again,’ he commanded.

‘No, father.’ She wriggled to be let down and then crossed the floor with her ball to continue her game in a safe corner.

Troubled, Sparhawk returned to his chair. One can thrust one’s hand into a fire and snatch it back out again without being burned, but it had not seemed that Danae had moved her hand that quickly. Sparhawk began to look more closely at his child. He had been very busy for the past several months, so he had not really looked at her but had simply accepted the fact that she was there. Danae was at an age when certain changes occur quite rapidly, and those changes, it seemed, had taken place right under Sparhawk’s inattentive gaze. As he looked at her now, however, a sudden chill gripped his heart. Unbelievingly, he saw something for the first time. He and his wife were Elenes. Their daughter was not.

He stared for a long time at his Styric daughter, then seized on the only possible explanation. ‘Aphrael?’ he said in a stunned voice. Danae only looked a little bit like Flute, but Sparhawk could see no other possibility.

‘Yes, Sparhawk?’ Her voice betrayed no surprise.

‘What have you done with my daughter?’ he shouted, half-rising to his feet in agitation.

‘Don’t be absurd, Sparhawk,’ she said quite calmly. ‘I am your daughter.’

‘That’s impossible. How –?’

‘You know I am, father. You were there when I was born. Did you think I was some kind of changeling? Some starling planted in your nest to supplant your own chick? That’s a foolish Elene superstition, you know. We don’t ever do that.’