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“I knew,” Damon says.

“He will be found, don’t worry. He was a traitor, you know,” Atticul says. “Pershel the Moon Truth examined the marks on his body. They were magical. She says he is marked as meant for you. Can you imagine that? Jareleezi sent a whore just to seduce you with her dark magic. No one knows why, so he must be found.”

Damon frowns. “What do you mean? What did Jareleezi do?”

Atticul smiles. “It's written on his body. In runes across his chest. They’re in Ur-Ambolk. You don’t know what it says, do you? What was written on him? Pershel was very sure.”

“What does it say?”

Atticul’s smile slides wider. “I can’t believe you don’t know.”

Damon’s voice drops threateningly low. “What does it say on his chest?”

“It says your name, Bastard. It says Damon Darekul.”

24

LYR

Lyr hears everything.

He had been waiting in the hidden cellar while he heard the bodymen searching above, but when he heard them leave, he went up the steps so he could listen to Damon and Atticul.

When he hears Atticul tell Damon his greatest secret, he feels the pain from every one of those branded letters on his chest all at once. It’s so much he has to lean up against the stone wall and breathe hard.

She has come for him. Jareleezi. Even here she has found a way to hurt him. Deep down, he always knew she would.

He was bound to her table for it. Not an unfamiliar position. Leather straps around his wrists, waist and thighs.

Jareleezi had been enraged, her Gods had told her once more that the only way she would be able to draw Damon Darekul to her would be to send Lyr to him. She demanded another way. She lit twelve fires of different colours and chanted all night while Lyr lay bound to the altar. As it had gone on and on Lyr had felt something, a heat growing in his body. A burning that grew more and more painful.

Lyr writhed on the altar. The heat was gathering in his chest. Every breath hurt. The wooden block bound in his mouth muffled screams as shapes burned their way out of his chest. The four runes.

When Jareleezi saw them, read what they said she was so angry she hit Lyr across the face, but when she looked back at the runes she said, “So be it. I suppose they cannot make their will any clearer than that.”

And her dark Gods had marked him. Marked him for Damon Darekul. Made their message clear to Jareleezi.

“Please,” Lyr says as he bursts into the wide stone room of the keep. “Please, it’s not like that. It’s not what he says. I was not meant to seduce you. I was only sent to you.”

Damon stares at him. Eyes red. He looks like he might cry. He doesn’t seem to be listening. “You were sent to me? By her. By the Hevelikar witch. Is this magic? Did you bewitch me?”

Lyr shakes his head. “No. It wasn’t like that. She didn’t want to send me to you, but her Gods told her it was the only way.”

Lyr’s heart turns to ashes. He feels like the runes in his chest are burning cold. He takes a step forward out of the cellar doorway.

Lyr is grabbed by Atticul’s bodyman before he can cross the floor of the keep to Damon.

He struggles in the man’s grip. ”No, please.” He needs to get to Damon. He needs to make him understand.

“The only way for what?” Damon says again.

“She wanted you. Jareleezi. The Gods told her I would set you on your path.”

“You were going to take me to her?”

Lyr shakes his head. “No. You were to take me from Blackstone Castle and her Gods said it would set you on a path to her. They didn’t explain how it would happen. Only that Jareleezi must do this.”

Damon’s face twists into a kind of broken sneer. “And why do you have my name on you?”