The enemy twists to see the rabbit in Cadoc’s hands. The little creature’s eyes have already turned milky white. It begins to convulse.

  ‘Where was I? The elf asks, terrified.

  ‘You were wherever comes next,’ the King answers, softly.

  ‘There was nothing.’

  ‘Tell me what I need to know, and I won’t send you back there.’

  ‘There was only darkness.’

  The rabbit enters its death throes, hanging limply and twitching. We can’t waste time. I step into the elf’s line of sight. ‘You called me false heir, why?’

  ‘Please don’t let me die!’

  ‘Time is running out for you. Why did you use those words?’

  It looks to the King, sensing that he is the power here. ‘Then you’ll save me?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  It seems to accept that. But then, what option does it have?

  ‘Swapped at birth. Now please, do as you promised.’

  Its words take a moment to register. The enemy made a changeling of me? I almost laugh out loud at the idea of it. ‘That’s not possible. I am Aradrath, heir to Albion.’

  The King holds his hand up to silence me. ‘Where is my son? Where was he taken?’

  My son? First my mother and now my father. How quickly they disinherit me?

  ‘To the Land of Oil and Smoke,’ the elf nods in my direction. ‘His home.’

  ‘The Land of Oil and Smoke?’ I exclaim. ‘What nonsense is that?’

  ‘Please! You said you’d save me!’

  The King glances at the rabbit which now only twitches. ‘And we will. How do we travel to this place?’

  ‘I… I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Then I can’t save you.’

  ‘I took an oath!’

  Cadoc holds the rabbit up. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘No!’ the elf twists its long body to see the rabbit whose life is connected to its own.

  The King raises his voice, impatient now. He leans on the mortuary table, the muscles in his arms bulge with tension. ‘Tell me how we get there.’

  ‘Savernake Valley!’ The elf almost screams. ‘Now save me.’

  ‘Very well,’ the King replies.

  ‘You will?’

  ‘The only salvation you can hope for. Death. This is for the people you’ve killed. The children you’ve maimed.’ He nods to Cadoc, who drops the rabbit’s body back into the cage.

  The elf’s eyes widen as it realises we will not honour our promise. ‘Wait! No! Plea-’

  Like a puppet with cut strings, it falls back, lifeless. Its body hits the slab with the loud slap of flesh on marble. Its dead eyes stare into the darkness that so terrified it.

  For a long moment, there is silence. I reel from its words. Swapped at birth? Such things belong in legends, but legends are history relayed down the generations. I refuse to be victim of a legend.

  The family are looking at me. Raylee is clearly thrilled at this development.

  ‘You’re not going to take the word of the enemy seriously, are you?’ I ask, trying to keep my tone even.

  The King turns to his brother. ‘Get a knife. A clean one. Not one that you’ve used down here. Dip it in boiling water or pass it over a flame.’ Cadoc moves off and the King turns to his daughter. ‘Tell my guard outside, we need a stripling, a birch or beach. If he hesitates, tell them it is a direct order from his King.’

  I’m left alone with my parents, or rather the two people I would have sworn were my parents when I woke this morning. This can’t be happening. How often do we say that some situation is a nightmare? But this feels like it must be one. My father comes over and takes me by the arms. He looks into my face with his one good eye. All I can think of is that our eyes are different colours. Can a man with blue eyes have a son with brown? Such questions are usually the stuff of trivia, now my entire future hangs on the answer.

  ‘Whatever happens today, Aradrath, hear this; You are my son. You are my heir. Nothing will ever change that.’

  I cannot lie and say his words do not touch me. They do. It is what I want to hear more than anything. But my father is a politician, I have heard him speak to family members and his military staff with the same seeming integrity. He may mean it in the moment, and I don’t doubt that he means it now, but I have seen him break solemn promises in the face of necessity.

  My mother does not meet my eyes, but keeps her gaze on the cold, flagstones of the mortuary. As always, where I am concerned, her thoughts are her own. Cadoc prepares an empty room for the test. I watch him wipe a slab with ethanol from a bottle. He takes a lamp down from the wall, covers his hand with a damp rag and unscrews the top. He holds a surgical scalpel over the naked flame until the blade glows amber with the heat. By the time my father’s personal guard returns with the stripling, everything is prepared. But for what, I cannot be sure.

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  My father pours a few drops of ethanol over his palm. He takes the scalpel and makes a short, but deep cut in the fleshly part of his large, callused hand. Dark red blood pools. He nods to his brother, who quickly strips the thin, young bark from the stripling and breaks it open to reveal the sap within. The King takes the exposed innards of the fledgling tree and drips his blood onto it. I flinch involuntarily as it flares hot white, like magnesium in air.

  ‘The inheritance in its purest form,’ the Warlock King whispers. ‘Burning up the energy within all living things.’

  He cleans the scalpel with ethanol and offers it to me. I realise that this is not a lesson, it’s a test. I stare at the slender blade. My entire future depends on this moment. I am not ready for the answer, but I am not being offered a choice. The man I have always believed is my father gestures again for me to take the scalpel from him. There is impatience in the gesture. He will not take no for answer. I take it and make the small cut in my palm, just as he did. It stings, but I have received worst cuts in combat practice. He holds the stripling out to me. It is still in its pot, still alive, despite having its bark stripped from its slender trunk and twisted open to reveal its sap.

  I let my blood drip onto the exposed flesh of the tree, next to the scorch mark, where my father proved his bloodline. The droplets are scarlet where they hit the yellow green of the sap. They rest there for a moment, before dripping onto the flagstones, but they do not flash or flare. They are inert.

  There is no inheritance within me.

  ‘Who is he?’ Raylee breathes.

  She does not address me directly. She does not say - Who are you? I am now an object, a curiosity, a consequence of the game of war between elves and men.

  The King turns on her, furious. ‘He is your brother. The heir to my Kingdom. And you will accord him the respect he has earned.’

  Raylee snorts and is about to speak, when my father orders her to her room. His fury is shocking. It is so obvious that it is not caused by her, but by the disappointment he feels with me. She leaves like a sullen child, I am reminded that at seventeen, she is barely more than one.

  ‘I’ll speak with her,’ the Queen says and follows her daughter out. No doubt to comfort her, not reprimand.

  The King takes me into a hug. He muscular arms hold me in a tight grip. He smells of battle, as he always does - sweat and armour grease. And beneath that, the burnt tang of the inheritance itself. I’d never noticed it before. But his power, even when dormant, is just beneath his skin, ready to ignite.

  ‘We’ll speak,’ he murmurs, and leaves without looking me in the eye.

  I’m left with Old Cadoc. A man I once felt embarrassed to call my uncle, now I would give anything to be his nephew.

  He does look me in the eye and smiles, softly. ‘Drink?’

  Old Cadoc’s rooms are small, with the same low stone ceilings of the mortuary, but a great deal more homely. There is a narrow bed at one end of the room, which is neatly made, but looks as if it is rarely slept in. A small, beautiful wooden desk, with little hidey-holes stuffed with pens and rolled parchment. Above the desk, maps and charts have been haphazardly pinned to the wall. The rest of the walls of his chambers are covered in oil paintings in gilt frames. They take up the available space on the walls, as if a gallery had been shrunken, but its paintings hadn’t. All the portraits are of long dead members of the family. We may have forgotten Cadoc, down here in the dark, but he has not forgotten us.

  A tray of bottles sits on the desk, next to a small cage, covered in a black cloth. He pours a measure from a dark brown bottle and hands it to me.

  ‘Keep the glass in your left hand.’

  I nod, bemused and sip, tentatively. The liquid burns my lips. A moment later, I feel it warm my throat, before spreading out through my body. Despite everything that has happened today, my shoulders sink an inch, and I sit down on the cushioned chair by his desk.

  ‘What is this?’ I say, marvelling at the dark liquid in the glass.

  ‘An anaesthetic,’ he says, his back to me. ‘You’ll need it.’

  ‘For what?’ I ask, but the drink is making me care less about the answer.

  Cadock turns, he has removed the black cloth from the cage, inside are half a dozen brown mice, climbing over one another and hanging from the little metal walls of their prison. He has one in his left hand. Without warning, he grips the broken finger on my right. Taken by surprise, I yelp, but he ignores me and closes his eyes.

  I don’t take my eyes from the mouse in his hands. Its eyes turn milky and it shrieks in high pitched panic. I feel Cadoc’s thoughts inside my hand, examining the bones of my finger, finding the fracture. It is close to the knuckle, a hairline break, but every time I try and grip something, the action forces the bone to part further. I tense as I feel Cadoc’s thoughts pull the bone together, insisting on it healing. Suddenly the pain leaves me and there is only the drink in my system and the old man’s hand around my finger.

  ‘There,’ Cadoc says, and let’s go of my hand. The mouse is lying limply in his grip. He places it gently, reverently on his desk. ‘You should be fine now.’

  ‘I didn’t know you have power to heal,’ I say, massaging my finger.

  ‘Few do.’

  ‘But it could be so useful.’

  ‘That’s why I keep it to myself,’ he says, with a conspiratorial smile. ‘Otherwise, they’d be a queue outside my door all day long. And anyway,’ he adds, glancing at the low ceiling. ‘Why should I waste my time and energy on those idiots up there? Let them ache and limp.’

  ‘Did you know?’

  He looks around for somewhere to sit, realises that the only place is his bed, and perches on its edge. ‘That the elves had played a trick on us?’

  ‘A trick!’ I say, indignation rising in me.

  He peers at me across the room. ‘What would you call it?’

  ‘They’ve destroyed my life!’

  He frowns. ‘Wouldn’t that rather depend on who’s life you’ve been born to live?’

  ‘I was born to a be a king!’

  ‘No,’ Cadoc insists. ‘That was the baby was stolen from his crib in the royal apartments twenty-one years ago. You were born for another life. Perhaps in poverty. Perhaps in pain. Who knows? Perhaps when the elves made a changeling of you, they did you a great favour.’

  I don’t want to hear this. I can’t think about that other life. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘Of course not, that’s not a secret I would keep.’

  ‘Is there nothing that can be done?’

  ‘To do what? Reverse time and undo the enemy’s work? Let you grow up with your blood family?’

  ‘To make me a son worthy of the King.’

  ‘The inheritance will not do that.’

  I can’t contain my fury. I want to punch the wall, but that would be the action of a lesser man. ‘I don’t need avuncular words. I need a solution. Is there no way for me to inherit? To be my father’s son?’

  ‘My boy, that all depends on who your father is.’

  ‘Cadoc! You know my meaning. Don’t confound me.’

  He startles me by getting to his feet in one brisk motion. He is more agile than I had assumed. Suddenly, his face is next to mine. ‘Then say what it is that you really want.’

  ‘I want the power I was promised.’

  ‘And what power was that?’

  ‘Something. Anything. Raylee can lift a stadium of our people. Father can make a lightning storm submit to his will. You can bring the dead back to life.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I want what that changeling has.’

  ‘Your father’s son?’

  ‘I am my father’s son. You heard him. He said so.’

  He said so? I sound like a whining child. ‘Is there a way?’