Cyan’s stress and anxiety is coming to a head as he recounts the final days before his exams at Twelvelms, and his friends argue about who could be responsible for the horrors they’ve seen in the last few months…

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Implications of violent threat
• Implications of alcohol abuse
• Descriptions of sick or injured animals
• Descriptions of blood
• Descriptions of corpses
• Implication of murder

Transcript

I should be resting. I should be sleeping. It’d be easier to think if I could sleep. How much easier, I don’t know. It won’t fix our circumstances or make the decision any more clear. But I’d feel a bit less frayed around the edges, maybe. But I can only speculate because I can’t do it. Not even as a seal. I could brew a sleeping draught, I think I have everything I need, but suppose something happens once I’ve drunk it? What if you wake and you’re afraid and I don’t stir to soothe you?

If there was someone else here. If I knew Abagnale would come the way he said he would. Maybe then it’d feel safe. If this growing fear inside me, fear that comes from Felix… if it had lessened at all or shifted or changed… but it hasn’t. I can’t risk it.

I know what Quinn would say. You can’t light yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. But I think she’d also understand why this is an exception, because it’s you, and she loved you, and she’d have done anything to keep you safe, and that’s what I’m doing too. If she were here we could have slept in shifts. If anyone else were here.

If you were just a bit older. If I could teach you how to wake me from a draught aided slumber. If I’d made a familiar when Abagnale told me to. A proper one. But I didn’t. I…

If he hadn’t sent that newspaper with Taceo with the stuff about the fire. Maybe it was meant to reassure me, because there was no mention of you, no mention of bodies, but it didn’t reassure me enough that I’m glad of it. My mind is running away with me, picturing my friends lying still on the ground, glassy eyed, but maybe it’s worse than that and I should be grateful for the limits of my own imagination. Maybe that’s why he’s been sending Taceo instead of coming himself. Maybe he doesn’t trust himself to keep it from his expression. The horror of whatever’s been going on.

He’s clever and excellent at managing the mood but it’s hard for him to hide it when he’s really afraid. It doesn’t show in his expression, but I can smell it, this metallic kind of edge to the scent of his skin, dripping off him. He can fool others but he can’t fool me. My nose is too sharp. Taceo, though. She’s impenetrable. I suppose that’s why he called her that. Taceo. Silence.

Her bond with Abagnale is remarkable, even for a familiar. They know each other so well, so clearly, so instantaneously. He says its because she was younger when she was bound to him. She’d never truly learned to be a wolf before he forced her to stop being one. Decades old, she’s lived much longer a wolf should have, and conducts herself nothing like any other wolf or dog I’ve seen. The only other pair who has a bond like Abagnale and Taceo’s was the Lady Marianne and her cat, Pacifer. I have no idea how Pacifer was made a familiar, but it has to have been less controversially than Taceo’s making. Lady Marianne might’ve had a contentious heritage but she was well liked enough at the Raeg to have been made head of the dogs.

That didn’t happen until after I’d left Twelvelms, though. Back then, the Watchers were under the command of Lionel Barraclough, a wet-eyed man with a look of permanent exhaustion on his face, off-set only by occasional witty remarks that were so incisive they belied how vigilant and aware of his surroundings he really was, despite his tired appearance. His familiar was a large terrier, Ictus, who incessantly barked and yipped at me whenever I saw him. I swear he knew what I was, somehow, but thankfully his connection with his master was so tenuous that High Watcher Barraclough didn’t understand what it meant. In fact, he assumed it was because I was a Happener. Thankfully.

[This is The Twelvelms Conspiracy, episode twelve, the remains]

I’d first met Lionel Barraclough the night Abagnale brought me to Twelvelms, but I’d been in such a state of shock and horror that I barely registered him at all. He’d been there when I took my name, had even shaken my hand afterwards. His son, Theo, would become a full mage after and he said it felt good to have a bit of a rehearsal beforehand. He rarely made it to Kingivings and affirmations because his work kept him away from Quickbeam for most of the year and he’d forgotten how emotional they could be.

After the break in at Samhain, Barraclough had stopped by the university several times, but never for long, and once it seemed clear whoever it was who’d caused all the destruction wasn’t coming back, I didn’t see him again until that night when one of his Watchers had her familiar turned hollow.

Abagnale summoned me away from my friends and I stepped towards him on shaky legs. The Watcher looked up, eyes red from crying. ‘You,’ she said, breathless. ‘You.’

The gaggle of scholars who’d gathered around her turned away from her limp, barely-breathing familiar to stare at me instead.

‘I— I didn’t.’

‘All of this is your fault,’ The Watcher bleated. ‘They know what you are!’Happeners shouldn’t be at Twelvelms,’ said the Watcher.

A tiny bit of my nerves receded, but the knot tangled up in my guts would not come undone.

‘There is nothing to suggest that this has happened because there is a Happener at Twelvelms,’ said Abagnale, calmly.

‘Should have sent him to High Peak or Kithgrove Hall! This is a place for—’

‘Enough,’ said Abagnale, firmly. ‘Enough.’

The Watcher glowered at Abagnale. ‘Of course you’d defend him. You’re the one who brought him here, and there’s no surprises why.’

Abagnale gave a short, sharp sigh. I could smell it in the air, the anger he was trying to bite back. It was the first time I’d ever smelled it, but I knew it at once. It reminded me of my father.

’I will give you grace because you are in a state of shock,’ said Abagnale. ‘But I won’t hear another word of this superstitious, elitist nonsense.’

I glanced back at my friends, made long, careful eye-contact with Reilly. She hung her head. I followed Abagnale, leaving the sobbing, wailing Watcher on her knees, pulled into the arms of Lady Ottilie.

Abagnale did not speak as we walked across the centre of Twelvelms’ grounds. As we passed the cathedral of trees which curved across the dirt altar at their heart, he paused. We could not hear the voices of the crowd anymore, on the whispers of the trees in the early evening breeze. ‘Do you know why I brought you here, Cyan?’ he asked.

‘I can guess,’ I said.

Abagnale chuckled. ‘Is that so? What is your guess?’

‘You want to prove Selkie magic and mage magic is the same thing.’

Abagnale hummed. ‘That is a part of it, yes. Do you understand why?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘Put simply, it’s this: Selkies’ existence used to be common knowledge, though details were scarce. There are dozens of stories of mages taking to bed with selkies. The children are always born unmage, lesser than both their parents. They could not follow either, not into the purlieus or into the sea. They lived doomed lives as outcasts, unable to bear children of their own, dying young and sickly.’
‘Those are the stories that mages know about selkies. Once taken for common fact, they’ve long since become myth. But they’re not the only ones which exist. Some of them have been hidden away in the vaults under the Raeg. Of those, a few are only fragments. Children of mages and selkies who’d go on to have families of their own. Who rejected their mage fathers and followed their mothers into the sea. Who spurned their mothers and hid what they were to follow their father’s into the highest places of magedom. Even some who studied here at Twelvelms.’

‘I’m not the first Selkie who has studied here?’

‘Officially, no selkie has ever studied at Twelvelms, even to this day. Officially, you are not a selkie. As far as the Raeg knows, you’re a Happener.’

‘That Watcher thought it was my fault her familiar was… not killed, but. Whatever had happened to it. She thought it was my fault.’

‘I doubt she sincerely believes that, but it doesn’t surprise me that she’d suggest it. Happeners are welcomed into magedom, but no further than just inside the gates. Their place in our society is marginal. They cannot be the best of us, it is categorically impossible according to ordinary mage thought. A Happener might be mediocre at best, but to deserve a place here, at the university we have used to shape the future of British Magedom for centuries, a stone’s throw from the Raeg itself? That’s like letting a farm boy sit at the same table as a king. Most people can’t accept it. It’s been an awfully long time since there’s been a Happener studying at Twelvelms. Officially, at least,’ said Abagnale, with a wink.

‘Why would that mean it’s my fault her familiar has been hurt?’

‘Happeners are marginal in all mage beliefs, except one. The doctrine of Respice Finem.’

‘The Spicers?’

‘Oh yes. To the Spicers, a Happener is more than just proof that mages are exceptional. They are proof of our godliness and superiority. If it is possible for a mage to be born to unmage parents, then magic truly is a gift bestowed upon us rather than something innate, and we should pay careful attention to Happeners because they are more newly chosen.
‘They would go out into unmage communities seeking out potential happeners. They were responsible for doubling the population of mages in the British Isles over the three hundred years they were active purely through this outreach. Respice Finem might’ve died in its original state when Avalon fell, but the boarding houses it built in every coven for Happeners to live in remained for decades after.
‘Of course, without the outreach programs, the number of Happeners who were discovered dwindled, and over time the Happener Homesteads were abandoned. Some of them were taken over by the Raeg as administrative centres, but most have fallen back to nature, now.’

‘So, that Watcher. She thinks it’s my fault because she believes in Spicers and that they’re coming for me?’

‘No. I don’t think she believes any of it. I think she is just in pain and upset, and looking for something easier to blame.’

It didn’t make much sense to me in that moment. I’d not been a part of magedom for a full year yet and still hardly understood any of the context I was living in. It would be a long time before I began to pick apart those words, to see the meaning in them and how it echoed back not just over the months since Abagnale had brought me to Twelvelms, but for decades, centuries, even to before the fall of Avalon.

That’s why the rumours about the Spicers persisted just as strongly as the insistence that they were all gone. Mages needed a group of people whose beliefs were like their own, but worse, more extreme, so they could reassure themselves that the way they lived was righteous and good. They didn’t believe they were superior to unmages, not really. Just different. They wanted to live segregated from them not out of judgement but out of self-preservation. They didn’t want to control the unmates or laud over them. They accepted Happeners into the fold but didn’t hallow and revere them. Mages were normal and ordinary, not like the Cult of Respice Finem, who lurked in the shadows and still loom large in children’s stories and tales around campfires, and thank goodness they’re gone now and we don’t have to worry anymore. Thank goodness.

There was a rot in the foundation of the Alliance itself. It had been there when it had been twelve covens, it remains now there are just seven. It began in the roots and had reached its way into every leaf on every bough.

That day, though, I had no such well-formed opinions and very little understanding, so I was quiet until we reached the main building.

Barraclough was waiting for us outside of Abagnale’s office. Ictus flattened his ears and growled as we got closer. Taceo, remarkably for a wolf, rolled her eyes. I’ll save you the horrors of my attempts to recreate Barraclough’s accent; it’s a pretty, lilting Scottish thing, echoed in his son’s voice, too.

‘The whole department at the Raeg is already in uproar. A hundred incidents in the last month alone. These animals, they’ve been cropping up all over the purlieus and beyond them, but none of them have been familiars! If it can happen to one of us, it could happen to anyone. How are we supposed to help people feel safe?’

Abagnale almost smiled. ‘That’s beyond my skills, as you know, Lionel,’ said Abagnale. He sat down behind his large desk. He was remarkably calm. I could tell this was bothering Barraclough. Ictus fidgeted around his ankles, nose scrunched up, teeth bared under his gingery fur.

‘This is the boy in question?’ Asked Barraclough, eying me up and down.

‘You will want to impose a guard on him, I presume?’

‘Well it only makes sense. He’s a Happened, and if it really is Spicers—‘

‘It isn’t,’ said Abagnale, firmly.

‘At this stage I’d prefer to err on the side of caution.’

‘We’re approaching exam season, Barraclough. It’s of the utmost importance that whatever you plan does not disrupt Cyan’s studies, or those of his classmates.’

‘Of course. We’ll have a pair of guard accompany him from House Derwen every morning. They’ll stay with him—‘

‘They will wait outside the classrooms and lecture theatres.’

‘Yes, alright. But they’ll escort him between locations until the curfew I’ve already suggested you impose.’

‘Not practical, Barraclough; it’s exam season. I can’t stop my scholars from going to the library to study.’

‘So what, then?! You want him to have a guard with him until whatever such time he deems is appropriate to go to bed?’

‘No. Cyan is already supported by his Warden, Quinn ap Howell, who I’m sure would agree to any measures you might want her to take to keep Mr Goodman safe.’

‘Quinn’s barely a full mage herself!’

‘She’s remarkably capable. Station guards outside House Derwen and increase your patrol of the grounds, particularly in the evenings between the main building and House Derwen. Never send your Watchers alone; always send them in pairs. Nobody goes anywhere alone. I will advise my scholars to do the same. I will distribute flare wands for use in emergencies, in case panic prevents people from casting a flare themselves. Is that satisfactory?’

Barraclough stammered. ‘But. The boy…?’

‘Is well-cared for and highly accommodating. He’ll do anything you ask of him, won’t you, Cyan?’

I nodded.

‘You see?’

Barraclough chewed his lip. ‘And you really think that will be enough?’

‘I’ve no idea, Lionel. As I say, it’s beyond my skillset. But so far there’s been a breach of the main building and an attack on a Watcher’s familiar, nothing suggests the scholars themselves are at risk, and certainly not Cyan in specific.’

‘But he was there, wasn’t he? He was there the night of the break-in, and this hollowing happened right outside House Derwen where he sleeps.’

‘Nonetheless, there is nothing which suggests this directly concerns Cyan at all.’

Barraclough looked like he wanted to argue, but he restrained himself. Eyes trained to the floor, he moved on to discussing the specific logistics and required manpower for Abagnale’s proposed guard. When he was done, he left disgruntled and muttering unintelligibly. Abagnale told me to sit down whilst we waited for Taceo to fetch Quinn.

‘Lord— Lord Abagnale might I ask a question?’

‘You already did but I’ll allow another.’

‘If you knew it would cause so much concern, why did you decide to say I was a Happener?’

‘What, you’d prefer I claim you were my legitimate son?’ Abagnale asked with a wink. ‘I knew it would cause some controversy. Enough to divert attention from the actual secret you’re keeping.’

‘So you’re covering a scandal with another?’

‘I’m not sure scandal is the right word, but essentially, yes. Because I believe you have a right to be here. You performed exceptional magic the night your father was killed. For any other mage, your talent would have been noticed much sooner, and a feat like that would grant you a place at Twelvelms without even sitting the entrance exam. Why ought that be any different, simply because your mother was a Selkie and you father locked you in an attic all your life? Safer to give them something tangible to scrutinise, otherwise you you risk them looking too close and finding the truth.

I fidgeted in my chair.

‘You’re an exceptional mage, Cyan Goodman,’

I felt unmoored by the conversation, but before I could ask anything else, Taceo returned with Quinn. Abagnale explained to her what her new duties would be. Although Quinn’s eye twitched with irritation, she didn’t argue. We headed back to House Derwen side-by-side.

‘I understand why he’d not want guards on you all the time, but it’s like he’s forgotten I’ll be doing exams too,’ she muttered, frustrated. ‘I suppose it’s better than the alternative, though. Probably be quite difficult to explain to a couple of Watchers why you need to go to the baths every night.’

‘Yeah, probably.’

Quinn didn’t head back to her own room. Instead, she pushed open Felix’. He was sat on the floor by the window, bottle of wine open in gap between his crossed legs. Reilly was perched on the edge of the bed next to a stack of books, all of them open. When we locked eyes, her cheeks turned redder than Felix’ surname.

‘We’ve been theorising,’ said Felix, loudly.

‘Well, I’ve been theorising. Felix has mostly been yapping on about Spicers and how somehow Charles Vane knows you’re a selkie.’

I blinked. ‘What?’

Felix shrugged. ‘Seems obvious to me. Why else would he be targeting you?’

‘Well I don’t think they have been targeting Cyan,’ said Reilly, sitting up and pulling a book into her lap. ‘I think it’s about Abagnale.’

‘That makes sense,’ said Quinn. ‘When you two were in the Atrium on Samhain, you said his familiar was going for Taceo, yes?’

‘Wait, wait, we don’t even know if it really was Charles Vane at all! There’s been no proof and apart from the night of the attack when Lady Ottilie suggested it, his name’s not even been mentioned. And there’s nothing to suggest that any of this is particularly associated with anything Vane used to do.’

‘There is,’ I said.

‘It’s obviously Vane.’

‘Not obviously! Plenty of people have the motivation to target Abagnale, and—’

‘But who amongst them has the means?!’ Felix barked.

‘I hate to say it,’ said Quinn, ‘but Felix is right. Whoever broke in was able to break past all the magical barriers on the school. Vane is the only mage who’s ever broken out of the Raeg’s imprisonment. He’s certainly capable.’

‘But isn’t our theory that whoever attacked us on Samhain is dead?’ Reilly snapped. ‘I mean. Didn’t Cyan… Felix, didn’t you say he thought he’d killed him?’

‘Yeah, but he clearly hasn’t because of—‘ Felix trailed off, glancing at me, shaking his head.

‘Because of what?!’ Reilly snapped.

Felix rolled his lip anxiously between his teeth, not taking his eyes off mine. ‘We’ve seen his familiar.’

There was an awful, still moment of silence. ‘What?’

‘In the tunnels, under the grounds,’ I said. ‘There’s a bunch of cells down there. The bird was in one of them.’

‘Cells?’ said Reilly. ‘No, no. I’ve seen the maps of the tunnels, there are no cells.’

‘Well I can understand why they’d not put them on there,’ Felix sighed. ‘When we saw the bird, the same one we saw that night in the atrium. It was sick, but it was alive. That means Vane is alive, too.’

Quinn sat heavily on the bed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Felix shrugged. ‘We weren’t meant to be down in the tunnels at all and when we found it you didn’t know about Cyan. We didn’t know what any of it meant and it… I don’t know. I didn’t want to burden you with it.’

‘Burden me?! Felix, it’s my job as heir to—‘

‘I know it’s your job! That’s why I didn’t say, isn’t it?! Because it’s your job and it’s too much and you were already doing way more than you should have had to even before Abagnale saddled you with Cyan without even saying what he was.’

‘Felix,’ Quinn groaned. ‘You should have told me.’

‘Yeah, maybe. And now I have.’

‘And this bird. You’re sure it’s the same one you saw on Samhain? I know that sometimes that when you get something in your head, Felix, it’s—‘

‘We’re sure,’ I said, definitively. Felix looked up at me again and smiled, small and soft.

‘What happened on Samhain. The kind of magic Cyan performed. Sure, a mage might be able to do it, with years of practice. But an 18 year old Happened? No. No way. I think that’s why he came. To see what Cyan really was.’

‘But how could he have possibly known you’d have gone to the atrium that night?’

Felix slumped a little. ‘I don’t know.’

‘None of the rest of it connects, though. Particularly not with the hollow sleepers. The first one we saw was at Derwen, remember? That fox Reilly and I found over summer. Whoever or whatever is doing this, it’s followed us here.’

‘Abagnale was at Derwen over summer,’ said Reilly, frowning.

Quinn frowned too. ‘You’re right. He was. But then Charlie and I found that bird over the Winter Solstice whilst Abagnale was here at Twelvelms.’

‘Cyan wasn’t there then, either.’

‘But you invited him,’ said Felix.

‘Yes, but over summer, we had no idea Cyan even existed, and that’s when we saw the fox.’

Felix sighed. ‘Right.’

‘And the dog was hollowed right nearby House Derwen. It might be something to do with the coven itself, not anyone in particular.’

‘I suppose that makes sense,’ said Quinn. ‘We do have an unusual amount of influence over Twelvelms in particular. That would explain why the break in was here, not at Castle Derwen or any of the other important places in Deva.’

‘Exactly,’ said Reilly.

‘But how does that connect with Thomas Vane?’ asked Felix.

‘That’s it; it doesn’t connect with him. Because it’s got nothing to do with Vane! There’s no proof it’s true, and even less proof it has anything to do with Vane.’

‘I saw him on Samhain! He spoke to me! He told me who he was!’

Quinn blinked. ‘What?’

‘Not directly, of course, but he called me an old kin, that’s what it has to mean!’

‘But if he hates Derwen, he could have been talking about that. Maybe he was excommunicated. I’m sure there’s a list of excommunicated members of the coven in the library.’

‘I’m telling you, you’re barking up the wrong tree,’ said Felix. ‘This morning, you hated Cyan’s guts more than anyone, but now I suggest that you might be right and him being here has been the source of some of the chaos that’s been happening this year, you won’t believe it?’

Reilly grit her teeth. ‘I am just trying to help.’

‘Are you? Because it seems to me that you just don’t want me to be right, because it’s important to you that I’m not, isn’t it? It’s important to you that I’m a live-wire who jumps to conclusions and—‘

Reilly got up from the bed and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

‘Excellently handled,’ said Quinn, sourly.

‘She was a shit friend to Cyan, I’m not letting her swan in here and—‘

‘Recognise an olive branch when it’s handed to you, idiot!’ Said Quinn. ‘I’m going to check the library for records of excommunicated members of Respice Finem, because she’s right, Felix; it doesn’t make any sense for this to be about Cyan. Are you going to come with me?’

Felix rolled his eyes and lifted the wine to his lips.

We hurried out of Felix’ room and out into the grounds of the school. Quinn trawled through the book for almost an hour. ’It’s all marriages and familial disputes. Nobody has been made to leave Derwen by force for sixty five years.Sarah Hitchens; she was asked to leave for disrespecting the consul. She was almost forty then. If she’s even still alive, she’d be over a hundred.’

That negated Reilly’s theory, at least in its simplest terms. We made our walk back to House Derwen in silence.

The next morning was stiff and difficult. Reilly sat with us, but didn’t say a word. Felix didn’t speak either. We all studied, alone but in company, downstairs in the common area. By dinner, it was still awkward, but the tension had eased a little. The presence of Watchers strolling between the tables the next morning at breakfast seemed to ease Quinn and Reilly, but it definitely put Felix on edge. He was antsy through all oof that day, and the next, and the one after. He couldn’t sit still, casting anxious glances in every direction.

It didn’t help that our exams would be taking place that very Friday, the week before the summer solstice, which was when our results would be announced. We were up studying so late that Felix and I barely had a chance to get down to the baths at all, and whilst we were there, I managed only the briefest dip before I was too tired and had to surrender and go back to House Derwen to sleep.

It continued like that all the way to Thursday night. Felix’ leg would not stop bobbing under the table. Quinn kept making eye contact with me over our potatoes. I couldn’t catch her meaning until she finally announced she needed Reilly’s help with hermetics and would she please come with her to the library?

Felix sighed and started to get to his feet. ‘No, no,’ said Quinn. ‘I need to concentrate. You’ll just distract me.’

‘Is it my incredible looks or insouciant personality?’

‘Definitely the latter,’ said Quinn with a snort. ‘We’ll see you later.’

Felix slumped in his chair. ‘Suppose we’ll go over hermetics by ourselves, then,’ said Felix, miserably.

‘You know, actually,’ I said, maybe a bit too loud. ‘I think a proper soak would help me more than any more reading.’

Felix cocked his head sidewards. ‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah. Fancy a swim?’

By then, the tunnels had begun to feel familiar. We didn’t need to look where we were going, and summoned on the glass candles more out of habit than necessity. In the baths, I twisted into my coat and flopped into the warm, salty water, and as though it had always been the way, Felix stripped down to his underwear and jumped in after me. I swam about him as he leaned against the edge of the pool and read aloud from Reilly’s hermetics notes. It was lovely, comfortable, delightful. We must have stayed in the water three hours. Felix’ fingers were starting to prune. I only made a move to get out when his yawns started to outnumber his words, and his head started to dip forward onto the pages.

We made our way sleepily out of the baths. The weather was so warm, even down in the tunnels, that neither of us bothered drying off. Felix stopped at the fork in the path which led off to the cells where the bird had been held. He looked down into the dark.

‘You want to check?’ I asked.

Felix nodded.

We made our fumbling way down the path and the stairs at the end of it, and stepped out into the room with the cells. Something was off, though. I noticed it right away, but Felix didn’t. He took a few clumsy, exhausted steps towards the cell the bird had been held in, the scattered straw that still covered the flagstone floor.

‘Still gone,’ said Felix.

I barely heard him. I was too busy staring at the end of the room, at the hollow in the wall the stream through its centre disappeared through. The iron grate that had covered it had been mangled, the metal bent and twisted up like jagged teeth. Through them, bobbing slightly on the slight current, was a pair of pale, grey feet.

I stepped forward slow, though it was clear whoever it was had been dead for some time. the skin was cut but there was no blood, limp flaps of it floating like the fins of a dead goldfish. Felix kept speaking, but the words were like ghosts of themselves, unreal, absent of colour and meaning.

All I could see were the feet, the hollow they emerged from, the jagged metal sticking out around it, like it had been forced inwards from the other side. I reached down, put my hand on one of the ankles. The body moved freely towards me. Naked, bruised, butchered. There was a slit on each of his forearms and one on his throat. All of these had partly healed, old scabs peeling away from the grey flesh. His eyes were open, staring upward, seeing nothing. His pupils had fogged over grey.

Felix crouched down beside me. ‘Tegid’s depths,’ he whispered. ‘That’s Edward March.’

[END]