But then he stopped, his foot a few inches away from the circle. ‘Your petty lies are no threat to me,’ he declared.

‘Can’t you cross the circle?’ Irene asked sympathetically. ‘How irritating for you.’

Lord Guantes pulled himself together, but his voice lacked the perfect composure of a few minutes before. ‘You’re insulting me while chained and on your knees, in a pitiful attempt to assert your superiority. Are you trying to keep up your spirits in the face of impending doom, Miss Winters, or is this merely stupidity?’

Irene looked around at the shadowy cathedral, the glowing windows and the dark heights above her. ‘I wouldn’t want to judge based on appearances,’ she said. ‘And I’m certainly afraid of Alberich. But not of you.’ A petty insult, but if he took the lure . . .

This time he nearly did cross the circle. His toe was on the very brink before he realized what he was doing and drew back, composing himself with icy fury. ‘You, my dear, are going to be Alberich’s new body. A grand fate indeed.’

‘I’m aware of his habits of skinning people and donning their skin to masquerade as them,’ Irene said, trying to sound as bored as possible, though her panic rose. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

‘Apparently you damaged his original body so much that it’s unusable. So that option’s no longer open to him. I don’t suppose you’d care to explain how you did it?’

‘Fire,’ Irene said, ‘carefully applied and in the highest possible quantity. That damages most things.’

‘How tediously obvious. Well, the good news for you – dear me, that should probably be bad news – is that he is still very much alive.’

‘I knew that already,’ Irene said flatly. If she could just goad him one step further, one inch closer . . . ‘I saw him at the People’s Palace. He explained how he was using your wife – and you.’

‘I think you’ll find that we are using him.’ Lord Guantes retorted smugly. ‘He can project a hologram of himself to another world, but only once a direct link has been forged to that world. And he can’t sustain it for very long. It’s much easier if he can inhabit a host in that world. Previously he’s been using this computer system.’ He gestured at the Sagrada Familia around them. ‘But what he really needs is a human nervous system. One that’s stronger than normal flesh and bone. He needs a Librarian.’

‘What fun,’ Irene said, her throat dry as sand. It explained why he’d wanted her alive, at least. ‘Tell me, will I be aware of this miraculous process, once it starts? Or will my own mind simply be wiped out, just like that?’ She snapped her fingers.

‘I wouldn’t know.’ Lord Guantes was enjoying himself now. ‘Previous human subjects managed to scream, but they didn’t last long. With you, we’re hoping for something more permanent.’

‘He’s hoping, you mean,’ Irene corrected him, feeling sick. Nightmarish images surged uncontrollably through her imagination – her mind being sponged away as Alberich took possession of her body. Or worse, her remaining conscious and screaming as he took up residence inside her, but unable to do anything about it. ‘It’s his project. You’re . . . just following orders.’

His gloved hands curled into fists. ‘Shall I tell you what’s happened to your friends? They’re prisoners, just like you. The dragon – no, make that both dragons – may be useful political hostages. I don’t know where the second one came from. Do you go round collecting them?’

‘They’re like buses. You wait for one, and then half a dozen turn up at once.’

‘I can only hope and trust that your ill-judged sense of humour is painfully scoured from your mind when Alberich takes possession of you,’ Lord Guantes said.

Fae think in narrative patterns, Irene reminded herself. For him, this is a story where he’s the main protagonist and his enemies come to a satisfying end. This isn’t a story which has a happy ending for me – unless I can change the plot. But I’m not sure that I can.

‘What about Vale?’ she asked, trying to muster some hope. At least Kai was alive, and Shan Yuan was with him. Maybe they could find a way out of here, or at least be traded back to their father in return for some concession.

She tried not to think about Alberich confronting Kai while wearing her body: how it might feel, and what he might do. But the image wouldn’t go away.

‘My wife has some use for the detective,’ Lord Guantes said. ‘I haven’t bothered to ask for details.’

Irene didn’t like to think about Vale’s fate either.

Lord Guantes must have seen the despair in her eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Precisely. All three of you are going to be used or destroyed. You most of all. Was it really worth it, Miss Winters? You could have been my valued servant – maybe even, in time, a friend. But now look at you.’ His gesture took in the surroundings, her restraints, her helplessness. ‘You chose to refuse me. You chose to defy me. Consider exactly how far you have fallen, Miss Winters, and—’

A mobile phone’s buzz interrupted him. ‘Excuse me one moment,’ he said, and extracted it from a pocket.

His brows drew together in a frown. ‘What? Of course not,’ he said, in answer to some unheard question. ‘I left strict instructions . . .’

He paused to glare suspiciously at Irene. She shrugged innocently.

The voice on the phone yammered something incoherent. The words might be inaudible, but the tone was very much one of rising panic.

‘I’m coming,’ Lord Guantes snapped. ‘Hold off any direct action until I’m there.’ He jammed the phone back into his pocket and turned to Catherine. ‘Accompany me – no, wait. Stay here. Keep an eye on Miss Winters. Make sure she doesn’t try anything.’

‘You seem very certain that she’ll obey you,’ Irene noted.

Scarlet light reflected from the windows, adding a gleam to Lord Guantes’ eyes. ‘She’s given me everything but her true name,’ he said, ‘and even that’s only a matter of time. I hold her far more strongly than you ever could. Just try to persuade her. I look forward to seeing your face when I return, and you’ve failed . . . assuming that Alberich hasn’t claimed you first.’

He swept out of the cathedral with an air of smug triumph, and the door slammed shut behind him. It echoed with a distant boom, underscoring his words with an air of finality. Irene could have done without it.

She weighed her odds. High-chaos worlds made it likely that narratives would follow standard patterns and stories would come true. There were two main narratives here and unfortunately, depending on one’s point of view, both were equally plausible. Heroine persuades acolyte to break free from evil versus Villainess fails to lure devotee into disobeying orders.

But she had to try something. Not just because her own life and soul were at stake, but because she’d promised to protect Catherine. And because Catherine didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserved what Lord Guantes had done to her.

‘Catherine, are you permitted to speak to me?’ she asked experimentally.

‘I haven’t been told not to,’ Catherine said sunnily. ‘What would you like to talk about?’