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“I had no choice, Suskara. I had to live with what I had done. When I went into that pit I truly believed I could kill that creature. I wanted to with all my heart. But I wanted it because Diazuul had made it so. He had manipulated many generations of Solwen to get to a point where an Irgo would descend into the pit to try and kill him. I truly thought I would be able to do it. But I slayed only his body.”

“And then what happened? After you slayed that body, you knew Diazuul was inside you. What did you do?”

“The first few moons of it, I barely remember. The demon was raging inside me, trying to take control. I was nothing but raw anger and fear. My mother and the Verilissia were the only ones to realise I was not myself. They used magic to overpower me in this bed chamber. They chained me to this bed. For some time, my mother ruled in my stead, declaring that I had been fatefully wounded when I slayed Diazuul. All the Blood Priests that survived what I did when I emerged from the pit were imprisoned. There were rumours that I had gone mad and my mother was hiding it. Many fled Urynwud in horror. The first Exceli rebellions happened during those moons, but they were small things. My mother had command of many warriors. She kept Urynwud safe from them and from me. And over those moons the Verilissia scourged me and chanted over me, until my mother found a way to help me stay in control. She carved the sigil onto my breast. It contains the deep magic of the forest. I was able to control the demon inside me. For a time.”

Harok shakes his heavy head against the pillows. “For several years, I ruled as Irgo and I was mostly in control of the demon. I was occasionally taken by rages, but they only served to make the Solwen see me as a great and strong ruler. In battle I could take wounds that would have killed other men. I grew to understand Diazuul was keeping me alive. That his power meant I could not be killed. He could not be killed. I was the Unkillable Irgo because of him. Because he was waiting for me to grow tired and weaken. I realised my fate was to become that demon. That one day Diazuul would take control of me. That was when my mother told me her new plan. You.”

“Me.” says Suskara. Not a question. A solemn, strange acceptance. He knows what he needs to do. What he was brought here to do.

Harok reaches out and touches his sweet face. His kushir. “You, my love.”

Suskara shakes his head. “I will not. I cannot do it. Not to you.”

Harok lifts a thick arm and strokes Suskara’s cheek, “If you do not do it, Kushir, you condemn me to a far worse fate.”

Suskara shakes his head. He seems to break then. Not more anger, but something else. There are tears in his eyes. His brave, beautiful Suskara.

“That is why you took me as kushir?” Suskara says in a small, broken voice. “For that. So I would do that. Not because you ever really wanted me?”

Harok frowns, “Suskara, what do you mean?”

“You did not desire me,” Suskara says sadly. “You just wanted me for my fae blood. Because your mother told you I could wield this stupid sword and slay the demon you were becoming. Not for me. Only for that.”

Harok frowns. He looks into Suskara’s grey eyes. “Not desire you?” he says. “You think I took you to my bed only because I needed you to kill me, not because of desire?”

Suskara nods. “It’s true, isn’t it? You had to bed me for the magic to work. Yaelin told me so.” Suskara sniffs. “I thought I was being made to lie with you, but it was you that was being made to lie with me.”

“No, Suskara, no,” Harok says. He thinks of all his kushir has told him of his life, rejected and abandoned by all who he thought cared for him. And still, he gave Harok his heart. Truly, he is the most fearless of men. It’s true that Harok had little choice about taking Suskara to his bed, and even if he had felt no desire for Suskara at all, he would have bedded him. It is the cruellest trick of the Triple God that his salvation had been sent to him in the form of this beast tamer. A man he found so easy to desire. “Do you think I would have taken you the way I did tonight if I felt no desire? This whole day with you. I knew I did not have long. I wanted this one last time. One last perfect day and night with you.”

He cannot let Suskara think, even for a moment, that he did not want him.

Suskara looks at Harok. There are tears in his eyes. He shakes his head, but he says, “I am more to you than the man you brought here so he would kill you in your bed?”

“So much more, Suskara,” Harok says with his heart like iron in his chest. “I did not realise how lonely I had been before I met you. My heart was so heavy and sore. I didn't even know. And having you in my bed was so sweet. You are balm. It is true that there is a demon in me that must be slain. But there is a man in me too. And the man in me loves you, Suskara,” Harok says.

Suskara leans down and kisses Harok. “I love you too,” he whispers and it feels like cold sweet water after a long summer drought.

“Suskara, you know what you must do now.”

29

RAFUS

The sun is setting over Ceruleum. The nights are growing colder and darker. There are fires lit in barrels on the corners. All the taverns and inns and pot shops are filling up, light and laughter spilling from open doors. Crowds who have not yet decided where they will spend the night, walk the narrow streets in rowdy groups.

Prince Rafus, formerly Crown Prince of Azuria, is not out revelling. He has far more solemn business. He walks the streets alone, in a heavy cloak and arrives at the Bride House. He does not think he has ever gone anywhere alone in his life, except when he was visiting a pillow house or planning on seducing a woman. He stamps his feet against harsh winds that blow in from the dark Vashtian Ocean as he climbs the steps at the front of the Bride House. The air is knives. They may have a snow fall this night.

Years ago his son Tobi came to him and sobbed on his knees, begging Rafus to find a way to help him care for Mareena. Tobi’s mother. It had been so bitter to hear what had happened to her.

Sweet Mareena. Once the great love of Rafus’s life. A striking woman. A woman like no other. Her singing voice had been sweeter than the song of the mortingales at dawn.

He had loved her so, his own Mareena. Mareena of Archa. Loved her for one night, after he had watched her perform in the water gardens of the gleam. And seven summers later, she had introduced him to the son that single perfect night had brought to this world. Tobi. That sweet child. He had wanted to keep him, of course. Rafus had always fought to keep his children close to him.

He had raised his three legitimate children. Done his duty and sired the holders of the golden thread of the royal line. Atticul, the headstrong boy would one day be a strong Emperor. Ferra, the lilac doe, his only daughter, his sweet light, he had married to the Great Chancellor Vindar and she had given him his beloved grandson. Endrew he had lost, a pain in his heart that will stay with him until death, but before he lost his Sweetpea, he had doted on that boy. His baby.

And although he could not bestow the same honours on his bastard sons as he had on his true born children, he had always done what he could. Damon he had raised as his own when Damon’s mother, a great and celebrated pillow house beauty called Black Eyes, had died birthing him. Lukas’s mother had wanted to keep her babe and so Rafus had made sure she had a job in the wash house of the Rose Palace and her son was treated with every favour Rafus could manage. Kerik’s mother had always been difficult to handle, expecting more honour for her son than any bastard born boy could expect, and often getting it. And Jemel. He had always watched over Jemel, despite the great shame of that boy’s siring. His greatest sin.

He had wanted to keep Tobi in Attar and raise him with Damon and Lukas. But Tobi had been snatched away from him. Mareena had only been in the Rose Palace a year when she had fled in the night with no explanation, taking Tobi with her.