Yet the fury in her eyes had not reached the gentleness of her touch. He lifted his hands to his hair and ran his fingers through it. She had left it to his shoulders. It felt light and soft, and for the first time in months his fingers moved freely through it. Such a wonder to be entirely clean and warm. She had trimmed his nails, hands and feet, and scrubbed his back and legs and arms with a soft brush until his skin blushed pink and his scaling shone. His wounds had been cleaned and bandaged with salves and clean linen. It had felt odd and uncomfortable to be groomed as if he were a prize animal, but he had neither the strength nor the will to resist her. Even now, wrapped in soft blankets and enthroned before a fire, he felt it took all his strength just to hold his head upright. He gave up and let it loll back on the cushions. He could feel the drag of his eyelids. He struggled to stay awake: he needed to think, to put together the pieces of information they had given him.

The Chancellor had brought him here, apparently at great expense, and presented him to the Duke. The Duke had spoken kindly to him, had placed him here with this woman who tended him with both gentleness and disdain. What did they want of him? Why had his presentation to the Duke seemed so formal and portentous? Questions, but no clear answers. Life was suspended, his existence dependent on the whims of others. He had to decipher the mystery. In this woman’s care, he had the chance to regain his health. Could he manipulate that into a chance to regain his freedom?

Stay awake. Ask questions. Make plans. He fixed a smile on his face and inquired casually, ‘So. Chancellor Ellik is your father?’

She turned back to him, startled. Her upper lip was lifted like a cat’s that smelled something bad. He could not tell if she were pretty or even how old she was. He saw her pale-blue eyes and sandy lashes, a face sprinkled with faded freckles, a small mouth and a pointed chin. All else was hidden. ‘My father? No. My suitor. He wishes to marry me, to gather power to himself, so that as my father fails, he may assume it.’

‘Your father is failing?’

‘My father is dying, and has been for a long time. I wish he would accept that and do it. My father is the Duke of Chalced. Antonicus Kent.’

Selden was doubly startled. ‘Your father is the Duke of Chalced? That is his name? I’ve never heard it.’

She turned away from him again, hiding her face from his honest stare. ‘No one speaks it any more. When he made himself Duke, years before I was born, he declared that was all he would ever be, for the rest of his life. Even as a child, I did not refer to him as “father” or “papa”. No. He is always “the Duke”.’

Selden sighed, all hopes of an alliance fled. ‘So. Your father, the Duke, is my captor.’

The woman gave him an odd look. ‘Captor. That is a kind word for someone who intends to devour you in hopes of prolonging his own life.’

He stared at her without comprehension. She met his gaze. Perhaps she had intended to jab him with her words but as he looked at her, her face changed slowly. Finally she said, ‘You don’t know, do you?’

His mouth had gone dry at the look on her face. She didn’t like him, so how could she feel so much horror and pity at his fate? He drew an uncertain breath. ‘Will you tell me?’

For a moment, she bit her lower lip. Then she shrugged. ‘My father has been ill for a very long time. Or so he says. Others, I think, would simply accept it as ageing. But he has done all he could to stave off death. Many a learned healer he has brought here and many rare cures he has consumed. But over the last few years, all efforts have failed him. Death beckons, but he will not answer its call. Instead, he threatens his healers and in turn, fearing death just as much as he does, they have told him that they cannot cure him unless he can procure for them the rarest of all ingredients for their medicines. Powdered dragon liver to purify his blood. Dragon blood mixed with ground dragon’s teeth to make his own bones stop aching. The ichor from a dragon’s eye to make his own eyesight clear again. The blood of a dragon, to make his own blood run hot and strong as a young man’s.’

He shook his head at her. ‘I don’t even know where my dragon is right now. In the past three years, I have felt her mind brush mine only twice and never have I been able to reach out to her. She does not come at my call, and even if she did, she would not give up her own blood to save me. I feel sure she would be roused to killing fury at the thought of a man wishing to drink her blood or make medicine from her liver.’ He shook his head more strongly. ‘I am useless to him! He should ransom me and demand his healers find other cures for him.’