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Harok’s eyes flutter open. “Suskara,” he says weakly.

“Ai oliki,” Tobi says. “Ai oliki, ai oliki.”

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

“Suskara,” Harok says again. His voice sounds stronger.

Tobi lifts his hand from Harok’s chest. It's sticky with Harok’s blood but beneath it…

Beneath it the flesh is torn by the blade, but the wound is…is coming back together. Healing itself. Tobi’s heart leaps.

“Irgorye,” he says sniffing. “It hasn’t worked. It hasn’t. You’re healing. It’s healing. I cannot kill you. You are Unkillable Irgo. It didn’t work.”

Harok lifts an arm and curls his hand around Tobi’s wrist. Tobi looks at him. Harok looks solemn and serious.

“No. Not my heart,” he says. “You miss my heart. Strike too low.” Tobi watches Harok’s throat move as he swallows. “You must do it again, Suskara.” Harok grasps the blade and places its point on his own chest a little higher than the bloody wound. “Here,” he says. “You must do it here.”

Tobi feels a deep wrenching pain within him. The worst pain he has ever felt. Like there is a hook lodged deep in his guts and someone is slowly drawing it out. It took everything he had to plunge that blade into Harok.

And if he has to do it again?

Now he knows how much it hurts to look down and see the blood. To hear the sound Harok made.

“No.” He shakes his head. “No. I cannot.”

“Suskara,” Harok growls, “you must. You must.”

Tobi’s hand is shaking. He wants to throw the sword across the room. He cares nothing for the consequences. He cannot do this. He’s never had the skills for this.

He looks at Harok again. And as he does so, the door to the bedchamber bursts open.

Tobi startles. He drops the sword onto Harok’s chest.

The room is full of men. Guards racing in through the door. Some of them he recognises, including Olladin. But many others he does not. They surround the bed. Over a dozen of them.

In the centre of the crowd of guards stands Lymok.

Tobi is still naked. He darts off Harok’s chest and pulls a sheet around himself.

“Lymok,” Harok snarls, sitting up. His chest is still smeared with blood. He points at Lymok. “How did he get free of the dungeons? Seize him.”

Lymok curls his lip. “Oh, dear cousin, whatever is happening in here? Have we saved you from a kushir with murder on his mind or are you simply playing some bedchamber game?”

Harok ignores this, snarling again, “I said, seize him.”

But Tobi is certain, these guards will not be obeying Harok’s commands. “You had friends in Urynwud,” Tobi says. Hadn’t Lymok always said many in Urynwud agreed with him. Many would support his notion that they ought to make peace with the Exceli.

“Very good, kushessa,” Lymok says to Tobi. “Yes. I have many supporters, including,” — he looks at Harok — “among the warriors you send out to die fighting the Exceli for no good reason except your own pride.”

“This won’t work, Lymok,” Harok snaps. “I am Irgo. Stand down, now.” He says it in a tone so fearsome, Tobi is sure he sees Lymok whiten.

Lymok breathes in through his nose. He nods at Tobi and says, “Remove him.”

Tobi screams as two guards step forward and snatch him from the bed. As he is pulled from it he feels Harok move beneath him. Harok snatches up the sword and springs up to standing. With a sudden blur of movement, Harok slays both the men holding Tobi, one of them almost cut in half by the flying blade. Harok throws Tobi backwards, onto the floor behind the bed.

Harok is breathing hard. His naked body shielding Tobi’s, blood smeared all over his chest from the wound Tobi gave him and more from the two men he has just slain. Tobi thinks he sees it then. The demon inside Harok. The dark flash in Harok’s eyes. The demon that makes him the Unkillable Irgo.

The guards in the room yell and scream, cowering away as Harok takes up a defensive stance with the blade and roars, “Get out. All of you. Now. Get out of my bedchamber. I am your Irgo.”