“Have two goes,” Albhar said, a vicious, excited light in his eyes at the prospect. Bael realized the old man really wanted to see the creature suffer, and he wasn’t sure that want was entirely motivated by revenge. This shapeshifter business was bringing out a malicious side to his former mentor he hadn’t seen before.

“Here,” said Albhar eventually, gesturing to a thick oak door so old and heavy it had the consistency of granite. There was a small hatch in it, opening inward, stained with the remains of many slimy meals. “Here’s your shapeshifter.”

He opened the door and Bael peered through the gloom. At first he didn’t see the creature lying on the floor, naked and gray with cold and malnutrition. The cell was icy cold and stank of many things he didn’t want to name, not least the infection in the creature’s hideously swollen shoulder.

“Starved and frozen, sir, just as you said,” sniggered one of the guards.

“Yeah,” Bael said, now appalled at what his offhanded words had led to. Maybe you are as stupid as Albhar thinks.

The figure was female, huddled in the shadows with its back to the wall, arms wrapped around itself. A tangle of dark hair obscured its face. “Are you sure it’s a shapeshifter? It looks like an ordinary woman to me.” An ordinary, badly injured, half-starved woman.

“Oh yes,” Albhar said. “I saw it change myself. It’s been netted though, it can’t change now.”

“Netted?”

“A containment spell. It won’t manifest claws or anything. Can’t escape. It’ll be quite defenseless against a beating.”

Bael rounded on him to demand what sort of man Albhar thought he was to enjoy beating such a pathetic, defenseless creature, when the creature itself stirred.

And looked at him with silver eyes.

Kett had spent most of the first day in the cell loudly cursing Bael. Not a word of his conversation with his mentor had escaped her. He’d ordered her into the cell, he’d ordered her to freeze and starve, and when he finally turned up she’d planned to beat so many kinds of hell out of him that theologians would have a field day naming them all.

She’d spent the second day cursing him somewhat more quietly, her throat burning dry. Some time after sunup, the serving hatch halfway up the thick door opened inward to a ninety-degree angle and a ladle shot in. It tipped a few ounces of grayish gruel onto the hatch. A second ladle tipped water after it. Then the hatch snapped shut, leaving Kett with no more sustenance than she could scrape off the ancient, stained wood.

She spent the third day waiting with the wooden bowls she’d found stacked in the corner of the small cell, but when the hatch fell open she moved too fast for her battered body and dropped the bowls, crying out in agony as her crippled leg gave way.

On the fourth day, she couldn’t manage to lift the bowls up to the hatch when it opened. Her shoulder throbbed incessantly where the dog’s teeth had ripped into it. Red streaks shot down her arm, under her skin. Her tongue swollen in her mouth, she huddled by the door, lapping up what drips she could manage.

By the fifth day, she couldn’t even lift her head that far. Barely able to find a single part of her body that didn’t throb with agony, she lay on the floor and waited for death to claim her.

Bael lost his breath.

It’s a trick, he told himself, even as he stared at Kett’s pale, thin face, twisted with pain and hatred. It’s a shapeshifter. It can look like anyone it wants.

But why would it choose to look like the woman I thought was my mate? How did it know?

Cautiously he breathed in, and used Var’s senses to separate out the scents in the room. Somewhere here had to be the shapeshifter’s scent, and when he’d caught that, he could rest assured that it wasn’t-

“Bael,” grated the creature on the floor.

It wasn’t Kett. It couldn’t be. Its voice was dry and scratchy, like fingernails on a blackboard.

The shapeshifter smiled with cracked lips. “Come to beat me up?” it rasped. “Come to kill me?”

The guards cheered but Bael just stared.

The shapeshifter moved, its face contorted with pain, and flopped back onto the hard stone floor. “You could just wait a day,” it scratched out, “I’ll be dead by then. Rituals, Bael. Bleeding a shapeshifter. Silver chain.”

“I didn’t say you could talk,” Bael said, panic thrumming through him. If it wasn’t Kett then how did it know? Had she spilled his secrets?

His heart pounded so loudly he could barely hear her next words.

“A shapeshifter,” she croaked, “and a bleeding Nas-”

“I said shut up!” Bael yelled, and two of the guards rushed forward, kicking viciously at the creature. As a heavily booted foot connected with its ribs, he heard a snap-

Snap, as the links in his head connected. Kett was the shapeshifter.

A shapeshifter and a Nasc bound by a silver chain.

They needed a second creature.

Albhar’s sly smile.

Couldn’t do it without you.

The old man knew.

Kett was curled into a ball, coughing in pain, her body spasming pathetically as the guards stood laughing and jeering. Albhar stood there, smiling as if he wasn’t planning to string Bael up and kill him in some mad power ritual.

He stared down at Kett’s broken body. They’re going to kill us both.

“I’m sorry,” Bael whispered to Kett, horrified, but he didn’t think she heard him. To his men, he babbled, “Leave it. Don’t kill it. Leave some for me, I mean. I’ll come back later. When I’ve rested. Later. Lock it up, it’s talking rubbish. I need to get out of here.” He barged past the guards. “There’s no fucking air. It stinks. Move!”

They let him pass, and then he heard the heavy door scrape shut.

Underneath the sound was the dry wheeze of Kett’s laughter.

The hot bath and soft bed held no appeal for Bael now. Pacing his locked chamber, cold with horror, panic and guilt, he clutched at Var, who pressed close to him as an anxious, angry little cat.

Kett was a shapeshifter. She’d kept that from him the whole time! How could she have done that, especially after he’d told her that he was a Mage? The one thing that might unite them, and she’d kept it to herself.

Because she doesn’t want to be united with you, his conscience said. She went off fucking a whore the first chance she got. She clearly doesn’t want you.

Thoughts reeled around Bael’s head. Could Kett have killed his mother? No, she’d been a teenager. Not that Kett as a teenager wouldn’t have been lethal, but still. Albhar said she’d been an older woman. Kett’s mother? Maybe. Maybe Kett had been wearing age as a disguise. He wouldn’t put it past her.

And that wasn’t even the worst thing.

He set down Var and picked up his scryer, distractedly trying to remember what he’d been told about using it. Concentrate on the person you want.

The rock got warm in his hands. It vibrated. And then a voice was saying, “Bael? Are you all right?”

He opened his eyes to see Chance looking up at him from the face of the scryer, and nearly wept with relief.

“Your majesty,” he said, and she laughed prettily.

“You don’t need to go through all those formalities, Bael,” she said. “You’re practically family.”

“Yeah,” Bael said doubtfully. “Listen. This is really important. I think the Nasc are in danger. Can you warn them?”

Chance instantly snapped into business mode. “What is it?”

“There’s a ritual,” he began. “It involves a Nasc and a shapeshifter. And death. I think.”