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Atticul ignores this. He sets down his pipe and jumps from the settle with an unnerving, rushing energy and walks over to the fireplace, pacing before it. “You need five, you see. Damon has three but I have two. I have you and I have Jemel.”

Lukas frowns. Now he talks as if he believes the demon is real. “I know nothing of this Jemel,” he says evenly. “Our father never declared a fifth bastard.”

Atticul smiles, seeming pleased to think he holds information Lukas does not. “I had to torture it out of Vindar. Quite the story. He is a great shame of the Darek name. But he certainly exists. Damon will want him too.”

“And where is this Jemel? Do you have him locked up in another of your chambers?” Lukas says, as coolly as he can.

In response to this, Atticul looks annoyed. “Not yet. But he is in my grasp. You, I can kill easily. You committed a great crime. I will bait my trap with you. But two is better. I will rid myself of both of you in time. To thwart Damon’s treacherous plans. How simple for him to take my throne from me by claiming to have slain a demon of legend?” Atticul continues pacing, back and forth before the fire. Clearly agitated. “Jemel, you see, he is an acolyte of Zai. I am Emperor. But to kill an acolyte, and one so notorious who has made himself well known with his odd dress…”

Lukas nods. Atticul’s ravings make his problem quite clear. This Jemel… What did Damon call him, the Hare? This Jemel has protected himself cleverly. Not only is he an acolyte of Zai, but a notorious one. One who cannot simply disappear. “So what do you plan to do to have cause to kill this acolyte?”

“Ha, you think I am a fool who will tell you anything?” Atticul walks back to the settles. This time sitting himself beside Lukas. “But you see, I can tell you anything. What can you do? Imprisoned here. I can tell you all my secrets brother.”

Lukas smiles slowly. He supposes it makes a kind of twisted sense. “You are not concerned I will tell the whole of Attar your secrets when I am standing on the punishment block?”

Atticul smiles quite happily, shrugging his shoulders. “The ravings of a traitor? Who would listen?” He takes hold of Lukas’s hook. Both hands wrapped around the stump of Lukas’s wrist inside its leather brace. Lukas shudders. Even through the leather he does not like to be touched there. There is only one person who has ever made that feel sweet. The person he does not think of. It is better not to think on things that will never happen again. Atticul looks at Lukas’s maimed arm in his hands and continues. “Did they listen to you when they did this?”

Lukas swallows. “Then how will you destroy this priest you claim is one of my brothers?”

“He shares your deviance. He too is sly. Please understand that I care little for the Book of the Rules and its tedious diktats about what men do in their own beds. I do not care how you seek pleasure. I see no reason for luxoli to be a crime. Everything will be different under me. But that particular piece of the law is useful.”

“You will accuse him of sins of the body?” Lukas says almost wanting to laugh at the idea. This poor priest.

“He will be caught in sin,” Atticul says happily. “And he will kneel beside you when you are executed.”

Some time later, Lukas is bored.

It’s really quite tiresome to have to keep pretending he does not know what is happening to Atticul.

He knows what he saw after he thrust the Blue Blade into Selim. What came through that strange light was the demon they fight. That demon is now inside Atticul.

Atticul likely thinks he is enacting his own will. He thinks he wants to rid himself of this Jemel and of Lukas himself to defy Damon and prevent him snatching his throne with a story that he is one of the Five Fae Princes reborn, but the reality is he is doing exactly what the demon needs him to do.

Lukas isn’t sure when he started believing in Damon’s demon. But he does believe it.

He wonders what it all means. He is no stranger to the idea of the Emperor of Azuria being a force of great evil, or of Zai being a demon. He had jokingly said as much before, simply for the thrill of shock. Strange to think that some of the things he had once said, only to be as scandalous as possible, had turned out to be the truth.

That demon had wanted to take control of Selim. He had taken Atticul instead. Whatever the result of that, Lukas had upset his plans.

Not that anyone would ever mark that, or give Lukas any credit for being right all along. Least of all Damon.

And amongst all his ravings, Atticul has offered him glory. The world remade. Perhaps Damon is wrong about this demon, perhaps all of them are wrong. Who can say what this demon wants? Perhaps Atticul possessed by a demon is a better Emperor than Atticul would have been alone? And with Atticul gone, who will rule the empire? Umbert? Damon himself? Why should he prefer that over this demon who wants to destroy the world?

He blinks. What is he thinking? A handful of nights in these fine rooms and he is dreaming of becoming the Chancellor to a Demon Emperor.

He pulls his mother’s mirror from around his neck and looks at it. It makes him think, not only of her, but also of Elric. No matter how hard he tries, everything makes him think of Elric.

He tries to crush the memories away, screwing his eyes shut. When he opens them again, he looks at his own face reflected in the glass. That demon took Atticul, but he was there too. It could have taken him. If it had, would he even know? Would he be like Atticul, doing the demon’s bidding but thinking he was doing his own will?

He turns the mirror over in his fingers. For some reason he remembers Oza calling it ‘tin’. Worth two dal.

He thinks again of his mother. His mother who worked in the palace. Not in fine rooms like this, but in the servants quarters on the lower floors. If he could get free of this fine prison he could find his way to the wash house where she’d worked. He could breathe that air scented with lye and old grease. The smell of her.

A knock comes at the door, while he is thinking this. He sets the mirror down on the table before him and calls out for the guest at the door to enter, hoping it is not Atticul returning. It is not. This time it is the serving woman.

The woman is slender and not tall, she has long dark curls, pulled back in a loose tie at the nape of her neck to tumble down the length of her spine. Her face is pleasing, perhaps a little more handsome than sweetly pretty in the way Azuria would value in a woman. She carries a tray of fine things. A sparkling glass flask of deep red wine, honeyed fruits, dark bread and white cheese. She curtseys — she is always quite mannered — and sets her tray down on the table beside the mirror, which she notices.

“What a fancy trinket,” she says, quite boldly. It surprises Lukas. She rarely comments on anything, certainly not unbidden from an enquiry by Lukas. He is even more surprised when she picks it up and turns it over in her hand, then looks at her reflection.